chris caines

Unfiltered cigarettes

chris caines — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:23:31 +0000

25th anniversary the other day of the french secret service bombing of the greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. I can still remember the outrage people felt, how obviously french products disappeared from the shops (cigarettes, cheeses, wines). Certainly Gitanes and Gauloises never returned though the wine and cheese certainly did and I wonder how many people alive at the time remember it at all, I’d certainly forgotten all about it, though I think it formed a lot of my underlying attitudes about France. In retrospect it also seems like the last gasp of the french flexing old colonial muscle in the pacific.

Call and response: Daily commute version

chris caines — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 04:49:53 +0000

Indigenous rock

chris caines — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:06:39 +0000

I was looking through the fantastic archive of Australian music videos on youtube and was reminded of what a blossoming of indigenous rock/pop there was in the 1980s. Seems to have ended with the Yothu Yindi hit in 91 and nothing like it has resurfaced since.

This is No Fixed Address from the 1980 film Wrong Side of the Road that gave them some profile.

This is Coloured Stone from 1984 – Black Boy.

Them also doing Dancing in the Moonlight from 86.

The fabulous Warumpi Band doing Black Fella, White Fella from 87.

And the original of My Island Home from 88.

Kev Carmody with Thou Shall Not Steal from 89.

Archie Roach, Down City Streets from 91.

Mixer for the visualist community

chris caines — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 08:32:41 +0000

I can well understand the motivation for building this DVI mixing box that Toby Spark outlines the making of in his presentation below. You can hear the battle scars in his voice when he talks about the terror of relying on a small laptop in front of a huge audience. The simple lack of tools to fade to black or mix between two hi-res (computer screen) sources in live visuals is bewildering considering how cheap and ubiquitous these tools are in the audio world. Even though I have access to a Edirol 440HD I’d still like one of these, primarily because of how small it is. But also how simple. I love that it is built form an arduino too.

*spark d-fuser: dvi mixer project presentation [2010] from toby*spark on Vimeo.

I had the leaky eye problem too.

chris caines — Fri, 21 May 2010 11:38:03 +0000

Extraordinary 24hr Metafilter odyssey crowdsourcing a human trafficking rescue. Here.

treme

chris caines — Tue, 18 May 2010 06:35:45 +0000

What do you think of Treme so far? We’ve been enjoying it, a change of pace from The Wire certainly (and strewn with Wire references if you care to trainspot). I found it hard to believe someone wasn’t about to get killed in the first couple of eps. Used to the slow character building now, only 4 eps in but looking forward to it each week. Doesn’t have the air of a series made by some people given a blank cheque after the success of a hit, though on the other hand you can’t imagine anyone being given the opportunity to make something like this in many other circumstances.

Zed

chris caines — Tue, 18 May 2010 05:45:34 +0000

Saw that movie from last year “Gamer” last night rugged up on the couch supping herbal tea treating my cold with hearty chicken stew and TV time. I didn’t think they made B movie scifi flicks like this anymore, films like Escape From New York and Videodrome. Usually a collection of earnest alternate scifi ideas cribbed from literary scifi of the previous decades and done with trashy intensity and a sense of fun. I for one am glad these films are still around and Gamer is a pretty decent example helped along by the Gladiatoresque looks and performance of its star Gerard Butler and the first person shooter aesthetics of the camera and cgi work.

The novelty of having a Hollywood film deal with social networks and gaming as a setting alone makes it worth a look. But there are also good performances and pyrotechnic pacing to enjoy amongst the schlock. Trailer:

friday night in marrickville

chris caines — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 10:18:32 +0000

Here is a little fragment from wandering around the streets of Marrickville last friday night.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Most beloved iPhone apps – part 2: songwriting

chris caines — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:20:09 +0000

The wealth of music making apps being launched all around the place for the iPad this week has reminded me to post the next in my most beloved apps series. This one being about songwriting tools, I’m not talking about actual audio creation tools or instruments, but more tools for coming up with chord progression ideas. The best of these is called ProChords and whichever starting chord you choose to begin with it gives you a series of chord choices to continue with based on a huge song database ranging from the most common to least common following chords from your starting point.

You can then save combinations and sequences for refining later on the keyboard or fretboard of your choice. Unfortunately all of the samples used to play the chords are of big acoustic piano sounds so it can feel like you are writing a 90s house anthem. Nonetheless it is a great way to tinker around with sequences you might not come up with otherwise. Simple Songwriter uses the same idea but restricted to a smaller pool of chords, the LE version is however free.

The only instrument I have enough fluency on to then start fleshing something out is the guitar, and I’ve found this Chordmaster app invaluable as a chord lookup dictionary. Again there is a free LE version, I eventually moved on to the pay one for the wide range of different voicings up and down the fretboard for trying out the progressions I’d made.

footage from a short river journey

chris caines — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:00:36 +0000

[See post to watch Flash video]