My live session recorded for the Meet the Music program, which aired 11/3/2011 on WBOI 89.1 FM. Free to download or stream. Part one is comprised of sequenced pieces, all taken from Summer Sequences, volume one:

1. Notochord + Los minúsculos
2. Nodules + Revolutions
3. El jardín + Paraíso 
4. Sunshine State + Asynchronous

Part two is comprised of two freeform sound art pieces, similar to work on  melton.granular.mixtape , melton.drone.mixtape , melton.granular.01 , melton.granular.02 and upcoming releases.

From the Unwind Autumn Equinox party, bidding goodbye to Summer and welcome to Autumn. Free to download or stream.

Unwind, the popular weekly event for ambient, downtempo electronic and nuJazz music, will bid goodbye to Summer and welcome Autumn with a special party on Friday, September 23, 2011, the Autumnal Equinox.

Join residents Adejai (aka Josh Helton), Josh Elias, Nofi (aka Jeffrey Melton) and other special guests as we celebrate a summer of wonderful nights and look forward to another season. The event starts at 8 p.m. until later on the patio at CS3: Calhoun Street Soups, Salads, and Spirits.

All ages are welcome on the patio until 10pm; 21 and over with proper ID in the bar and after 10pm on the patio. There is NO cover charge.

Calhoun Street Soups, Salads, and Spirits is located at 1915 South Calhoun Street Fort Wayne, IN 46802-5261. Call 260.456.7005 for more information.

View the event on Facebook and RSVP.

View a list of my live sessions from Unwind.

My final weekly live set of the summer: Original ambient, downtempo, dub and minimal electronic music; free to download or stream. NOTE: the last 15 minutes weren’t recorded, because my Macbook Pro was having issues with the summer heat.

1. Workflow One involves using Ableton Suite in a somewhat traditional way—probably the way most people use their preferred DAW. I sketch out beats, synth patterns and basslines with clips in the session view to record an arrangement before editing, mixing, mastering and rendering to produce a finished track. This may be done all-at-once or over multiple sittings. More recently with Max for Live I’ve been able to add step sequencers, generative devices and random/ probabilistic elements for added variety, but it’s still a pretty straightforward approach. Many of the pieces in my Sequenced set on Soundcloud are the result of this workflow.
2. Workflow Two also involves working in Ableton Suite but geared towards live performance and improvisation. This method centers around various monome-enabled instruments for writing and mixing on-the-fly: obo, polygome64 and press cafe from Stretta‘s monome suite as well as raptor, bound, Flinn, and mm4lr factor heavily in this method for my live performances. Since M4L devices don’t always generate and/or save automation data, I tend to record an audio mix of these live sessions. My Unwind and live sessions from last year are the result of this workflow. UPDATE: I thought to add that while I do use numerous clips of beats and synth patterns, mostly from work I’ve already composed (aka stems), they’re more for backup, and the focus of this mode is on creating new material on-the-fly. By design, every live session is different.
3. Workflow Three departs from the above and centers around using the Density granular synthesizer and Pulsaret instruments to explore sound particles and drones, non-sequenced rhythms and the diversity of organic and synthetic timbres. With this approach, I appropriate tone colors from anywhere—strings; flute; toy piano, bells and cymbals; vinyl records— as well as basic sound waveforms to build up microsound-scapes, which I then take into Ableton to edit, arrange and build compositions. I usually add processing effects such as resonant filters, grain delay, reverb and EQ to help the mix gel. My recent microsound releases and side-project, The Silent Stars, are the result of this workflow.

Each workflow has its strengths, and they all depend on what the situation calls for. Of all the DAWs I’ve tried, Ableton has the best mental model for how I like to work. I feel I could make some improvements to Workflow Two, but it is still very rewarding and leads to some fun live sessions.

My next from-the-vault podcast is a live practice set from April, 1997 (53min:36sec, 97.4 MB MP3). I don’t recall what event this was in preparation for or have a tracklist, so I’ll just offer it without specifics.

NOTES: My gear for the set consisted of an Akai MPC-2000 sampler/sequencer, Alesis SR-16 drum machine, Novation BassStation analog monosynth, Korg Prophecy digital monosynth, Yamaha TG-33 digital synth, Tascam Porta 07 4-track/mixer, Alesis Microverb III multi-effects, Digitech RDS-4000 flanger/chorus/delay, DOD distortion and flanger pedals. I added EQ, multiband dynamics, stereo widening and loudness maximizing to clean up the mix and remaster for 2010.

My next from-the-vault podcast is a live set at a show called Reunion, from October, 2002 (46min:13sec, 83.2 MB MP3). It is similar in style to my recent podcast of Live bedroom session, 2003-04-06 (2010 Remaster). IIRC, I hadn’t had a live show for some time before this one, so it was a chance for me to pull-out all the stops. I had developed a semi-modular performance approach at the time, mixing between sequences on both the MPC and Nord Micro Modular while tweaking EQ, filters and envelopes on-the-fly.

NOTES: My gear for this session consisted of an Akai MPC-2000 sampler/sequencer, Nord Lead 2 digital synth, Nord Micro Modular synth, Mackie 1604-VLZ mixer, Digitech Studio 400 multi-effects, Alesis Microverb III multi-effects, Digitech RDS-4000, Presonus stereo compressor. I added EQ, multiband dynamics, stereo widening and loudness maximizing to clean up the mix and remaster for 2010.

NOTES: My gear for this session consisted of an Akai MPC-2000 sampler/sequencer, Nord Lead 2 digital synth, Nord Micro Modular synth, Mackie 1604-VLZ mixer, Digitech Studio 400 multi-effects, Alesis Microverb III multi-effects, Digitech RDS-4000, Presonus stereo compressor. I added EQ, multiband dynamics, stereo widening and loudness maximizing to clean up the mix and remaster for 2010.

First up is a live set recorded at Boogie Man in October, 1997 (1hr:01min, 116 MB MP3). IIRC, the event took place in a former slaughterhouse in New Haven, IN, surrounded by disused warehouses and busy railroad tracks. Musically, it sounds like I was trying to combine hard, abstract techno polyrhythms with hooky electro melodies and funky dub basslines. Parts sound a bit rigid and muddy now, but it was 13 years ago and I’ve come a long way, baby.

Tracklist (made from notes at the time; most titles likely would have changed since then):

1. 3MB
2. Beeg
3. Beg2
4. Untitled (1997-09-21)
5. Homeward, Spirus (1997-09-22)
6. Orgy
7. Beq 01
8. Dexu 01

NOTES: My gear for the show consisted of an Akai MPC-2000 sampler/sequencer, Alesis SR-16 drum machine, Novation BassStation analog monosynth, Korg Prophecy digital monosynth, Yamaha TG-33 digital synth, Fostex line mixer (it doesn’t sound like I had my Mackie yet), Alesis Microverb III multi-effects, Digitech RDS-4000 flanger/chorus/delay, DOD distortion and flanger pedals. The overdrive on the SR-16 drums is intentional, and the occasional ducking comes from the automatic limiter on the minidisc recorder. I added EQ, multiband dynamics, stereo widening and loudness maximizing to clean up the mix and remaster for 2010.

I’ve been exploring Max for Live and my new monome grayscale 64 using Stretta’s MFL Monome Suite and thought I would share some of the results. Max For Live/Monome experiments (31:00min, 51 MB MP3) is an aimless mix of four different pieces I’ve been working on:

1. Slim demo, slightly eerie and broken
2. Silver Keys demo, distorted and glitchy
3. Monome jam session, starts overly busy but finds its groove halfway through before finding maximum chill
4. Spectral Drone demo, a cinematic space drone