This next track was actually written and performed by DJ Sanctuary & DJ Asterix, not by me. I did do some extra programming on it though, and it was produced and mixed at my place. A really cool track, one of those that can be said to take the listener ‘on a journey’:
To finish, a late-period Blue Train track with Natalia Farrán-Graves on vocals, Dave Westmore on bass and backing vocals, Steve Waterman on trumpet:
According to its creators, Mabuse is a piece of “real-time audio-visual composition and performance software.” It’s an application written using Max/MSP that allows users to create audio tracks and manipulate video in real-time using graphical sequencing tools they call modulators: as usual you can create your own patterns or draw on an existing bank of presets. Check out this short tutorial video for an overview:
Presumably to allow for a greater degree of flexibility with the audio composition and processing aspects they’ve also released Mabuse as a VST plug-in for Ableton Live. It’s only available on the Mac as yet, but say that a PC version will be forthcoming given the interest:
There’s also a video tutorial here.
Although I suspect the VST plug-in won’t really take off until the promised full-screen version is available, overall these are very clever pieces of software that deserve to succeed. The seamless integration of the audio and video elements—and their real-time capabilities as performance and composition tools—make Mabuse very powerful. It’s a fabulous example of convergence!
I think if I was still performing techno music live this is what I would be using. Hooked up to a Lemur, natch…
© 2010 Paul Hazel. All Rights Reserved.