Music Video

"How High the Sky, How Far the Moon?"

from Electric Animals Go Sleepy Bye-Byes and Other Byoots




Go to the source to watch it fullscreen!

Discography

I am working on a new album! It will be released under All Over the Where. The details again are spectacularly fuzzy. I thought you might enjoy these sacred relics though.

The "Blue Collar Sessions" CD is the first aspirations for glory. It is a live album. The initial session includes Faeli on Guitar, Jango on Drums, Me on Keyboards, and Reid on Bass.
The Second Session is included and has Bujak and Jesse thrown into the mix on guitar, drums, and maybe keysboards I think.



It is a poorly recorded album but the quality is there in the heart of the music. The album also includes "The Lost Track" - a track that wasn't recorded on Reid's computer but was captured on my cassette recorder! This album was ultra-limitedly released. It is a gift from Reid to me and consists of one CD. There have many illicit copies and who cares.

It is called the Blue Collar Session because all or most of us were wearing blue collared shirts at the time.



The "Wires and Adapters" CD is the 2nd release and the first release that captures the direction we have been heading in from the beginning. It has a wide array of sounds, mostly recorded on "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" 4 track recorder and some on my hunker cassette recorder or the dictation machine. Our wildest dreams are on this CD in audio format. It includes songs that tell a short story about chipmunks that end up drunk driving, a love song for the bottom of a lake, a song for wallowing when the donkey lost, and a song for the judicial trial of a milkweed bug, just to name a few. Another gift of a release from Reid to me - there is only one actual released copy of this album with plenty of other copies made for those who are interested.







Rend A Clonic Hell was never released:



Before my first solo album, "Rock Me Hardplace" was released, this was another potential album cover and name. "Rend A Clonic Hell" is an anagram of my name. Another one is "A Chill Clone Nerd" but was saving that one for a follow up album. Well the anagram album was altered and was eventually released as "Rock Me Hard Place" The release included 50 CDs. Each one has original art work inside as well as a number and a WOB (Word of Booklet). I still have number 1. My WOB is "Whippersnapper." This CD was still a collaboration with Reid because of the circuit bending sampling that was a main base for the album. It is considered an All Over the Where release.

The album was released at a halloween costume party, which was fitting. The charge for the album is anything you want, an idea which Radiohead stole from me for their new album, which I haven't listen to yet... I ended up making almost enough money back to pay for the party so it was worth it. The album got a great response. The artwork for the outside covers looks like this:



As with all of these you can print this out and copy your own All Over the Where album. I will send copies of the songs for each album and maybe even more artwork by email if you contact me about it!

The hit song from this album, Marsupial Moonshine, is still on my myspace page: El Colin .You can see the drawing it was based off of in the artwork. Sam and I had a bet whether a Tasmanian Devil was a marsupial. I won saying 'of course it is' and Sam had to make me a drawing, but I fulfilled my song side of the bet anyway, inspired by the drawing.


After the "Rock Me Hardplace" album (which is me between a rock and a hardplace if you didn't notice,) there was a stretch of focusing on creating new instruments and experimenting on circuit bending that took All Over the Where to a new level.

We developed "The Frog Opera" over months with some new and old instruments. There are a number of Frog Opera recordings, but the one that was released was "The Frog Opera: Live at Lovemonster's" This CD is a Live CD of the performance at Lovemonster's house in December of 2006. There is a video of the end of the second to last movement and the last movement, or 'song' here:



It is really poorly documented video wise. There is not enough light to see what is going on but The person most shown is me, Reid is in there somewhere. This was the wrap up of the whole "Opera" that turned out to be a hip hop track called "Bringin' it Back".


The "Frog Opera" has a 'booklet' that was given to the audience with a concise description of the performance:
Act 1
-Life on the Surface
-Stuck in the Mud
-The Great Storm
Act 2
-The Whale in My Pond
-Bringin' it Back

Above is a picture of the setup. "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" 4Track is working as a mixer and recorder. All of the audio is pumping out of the large bass amp. We were working with multiple circuit bent instruments, including a new invention of the summer I will post about at a later date. We switched tapes on the last song to a prerecorded. circuit bent, casio beat, and recorded out rap live. The rest of the performance is fully live. The high five before the last song is for not recording over the prerecorded tape we were about to rap over. Although "Bringin' it Back" was planned into "The Frog Opera" long before the performance, we did not write the song until the day of the performance. Although there were some mistakes in flow on my part, I still claim the overall performance of this song could not have been beat for the time and place. The rest of the 'opera' was executed perfectly and spontaneously but save the end of "The Whale in My Pond", mo more of it was caught on tape.

There was another very limited release of CDs for 'The Frog Opera'. About 5 were traded for other pieces of art at a gallery exhibition Reid and I performed at. There were about 5 others made personally for friends who were there through most of the process. These are two of the custom collaged covers. All of the covers included a frog and a whale and some other elements of the 'Opera':





If those of you who have the other copies of "The Frog Opera" could scan them and send the images back to us, it would be greatly appreciated. The same goes with the El Colin CD artwork. You will be rewarded for your cooperation in this matter. Ha ha ha ha (evil laugh).



The last album released is documented on the blog. Right before I left for Korea, with even more new breakthroughs in circuit bending and instrument building and song development, "Electric Animals Go Sleepy Bye-Byes and Other Byoots" is the perfect transition to a new era of All Over the Where. The description of the original release is here. Byoots stands for beauties. It is a transition album from Wires and Adapters into the new release coming soon. Again This album is inspired by, and inspires, dreams.

The CD is a 50 album release so far with other copies being made by request. The album art can be downloaded and printed. The artwork was copied at my previous employers and each CD was simply folded into the piece of paper the artwork was printed onto. If folded properly you can fold the side flaps into each other, securing the CD in the paper. The other songs on my myspace page are from the 'byoots' album.



An unreleased version of the studio "Frog Opera" song "The Whale in my Pond" can currently be found at the All Over the Where myspace page as well as two other unreleased awesomes.

There will be a sort of audio 'teaser trailer' of the new album appearing on the blog soon. The other audio is definitely worth checking out for now. Keep updated and email me :
elcolin (at) gmail.com
for copies of previous albums and artwork,copies of unreleased songs, and the like.

Strobe Light Tremolo

I got a free volume pedal from Build Your Own Clone and decided to try modify it somehow. I attached a photocell to the volume pot so now the volume can be controlled either by the pot or a light source. This may seem like a pretty silly thing to put on a volume pedal but my reasons are two fold. One is to allow ambient light effect the volume of particular instruments (for when it gets warm again and I move my set up outdoors) and the second is to try and make a strobe light/vactrol powered tremolo. Here is the video:



As you can hear the main the issue Im having is the clicking or clipping sound that happens when the volume cuts out. Not to sure how to fix that. Trimpots and resistors come to mind but I think the problem is the strobe light itself so the next test I am going to do will be with a vactrol and a pulse circuit. More to come.

forgot...

...to mention that i posted this video clip of my thesis show. this is the first short clip of several i will be posting in the coming weeks. this one is of evan demarow.

Stop Motion

I found this stop motion video bye Colin and Renae on my computer. They havent put it on youtube yet so I figured I would. Here it is, and sorry Colin and Renae if you wanted to post this!

some things i did today

Fixed Jacki's drum machine. This thing is acid house music in a box. I could literally sit with it for hours using samples and drums to make minimalist house techno. Tons of fun, but unfortunately designed poorly, the power adapter plug port thing easily brakes, and turns a perfectly functional techno machine into junk.




Also finished Jacki's keyboard. Didnt do anything too out of the ordinary with this one. Standard pitch-bend and body contact with a 1/8inch output. I also added two LEDs which ended up being totally useless. I tried to wire them to the audio output so they would flash in time with the music but using one two of them would make the audio too low to hear. My next thought was to use it for some photocell action, but then realized that if they dont change with the music or modulate in some way its sorta useless. Although I did figure out a neat little trick to make them turn on and off with the keyboard without having to deal with those really annoying PCB slidey switches all circuit benders hate. All you gotta do is add a new wire from the LED to the + of the battery and attached the LED ground to the speakers ground and it works perfect. I tried to think of cool things to do with the lights, but nothing work so Im leaving them as is. I also tried to etch/scratch it with a dremel but the plastic was really brittle and proved way more difficult than I anticipated.



Started building a really simple volume pedal I got for free from Build Your Own Clone. Its the simplest possible pedal, but it is apparently pretty nice, so Im adding among other things a photocell to control the volume. I dont know if this is a terrible idea or not (Im guessing it probably is) but I think it might let me make really ghetto tremolo effects in a dark room with a flashlight with some delay. Put some reverb on that, and I could probably get some nice volume swell effects going on as well.

Tomorrow I am going to Hand Made Music (scroll down a few entries on the cmd blog to find info) with Jen. Its a very cool looking/sounding event in Brooklyn dedicated to homemade instruments and audio devices so expect some photos and words on that later.

Most amazing bike/scooter/robot ever

A few months back while walking home from Mason Gross, Jen and I saw this AMAZING bike contraption. It was sitting in the sidewalk in front of Tumultys with no owner around so I took some quick photos to remember the total beauty of the thing. I definitely have some innate attraction to anything that looks hand made with wires, switches, knobs, and random electronic components hanging out all over the place, so it naturally caught my eye. When I got closer though it transcended and destroyed any notions I had about it, bikes, or electrical design by the sheer attention to detail, resourcefulness, and the oddly organic way it was built. ***YOU HAVE TO DOWNLOAD THESE PHOTOS OR AT LEAST CLICK ON THEM AND ZOOM IN TO REALLY SEE THE AMAZING ATTENTION TO DETAIL PUT INTO THIS BIKE. BLOGGERS PHOTOS ARE JUST NOT BIG ENOUGH TO CATCH IT ALL***


This is the bike from the side. From this you can notice many upgrades and interesting customizations. Starting more generally, the bike itself seems like it used to be a motor scooter that was retro-fitted with bicycle pedals. I dont actually know if the motor works or if its 100% pedal power, but from the looks it seems like the pedals are there for a reason. Next most obvious thing is the front wheel. Obviously a totally sweet addition done by the owner. Mountain bike wheels and shocks are perfect for the crappy sidewalks and potholed streets of New Brunswick. As I stated before I love anything with an excessive amount of knobs, switches, wires, and buttons. This bike has them all with the steering wheel/front (I really dont know what to call it) of the bike has two or three joysticks (one is wood!) a whole lot of wires, and a bunch of switches. Most of them look like they were installed by hand and werent originally there. Also note the totally sweet fan for those hot NB summer days.

This bike is a total mystery though, when I saw it, it completely defied all normal, professional, or rational electronic/design thought and theory. Which is exactly why I am utterly in love with it. It completely defies any notion of logic when it comes to building and modifying with electronics, and in a discipline based on the laws and reason of math and science, this sort of illogic is pure brilliance. Here are two photos of the front of the bike:


First of all, note the amazing World Heavy Weight Champion plastic belt piece I remember friends having when I was in Elementry school! Also, many smaller details such as the "bend and peel here sticker" and the definitely hand mounted switches (I wish I knew what they did!). Also visible, maybe a bit better in the first photo, is a totally sweet rear view mirror.


This photo really shows the brilliance of whoever made this bike. Ever have trouble seeing at night while biking? Why not use a light bulb?!


If you look closely at the first photo you will notice on the "head" or thing with all the joysticks on it there is a bunch (8) of speaker wire inputs. It took me a while to put this together but who ever built this has an entire stereo system set up within the bike! It is shown much better in this photo:



If you look closely there is tape deck! And I didnt get a good shot of it, but I swear on the other side there is cd player!!! The black rectangular box that is directly below the chair (which I realize now is also totally added on their and not originally part of the bike) is a cd deck. I counted at least 3 maybe 4 speakers all around the bike. In this photo there is one sorta under the seat, and if you look by the pedals there is a speaker facing up, and sorta under the seat another potential speaker.

After looking at all these photos and seeing all the amazing hacks and additions to this bike, there has to be a battery somewhere inside the back of the thing. Theres no other way to power a cd player, tape deck, light bulb, and those really cool orange and red car lights that he attached to the bike.

Another thing that boggles my mind is the drill mounted upside down and inside the chassis of the bike! Not only is it mounted perfectly but I have no idea what it does, why its there, and how its being held into place (upon further inspection I see there is a spring that is holding it in place). There is no battery on it so at first I thought it was just sort of there, BUT, I just looked closely at the photographs and there are two small white and red wires coming out of it meaning that the drill is ALSO powered by some sort of internal battery. Now this is a total stretch, but why would someone have a drill pointed inward like that? Maybe its to turn the gears/chain! Which is fucking genius, such a simple thought, it turns, probably with enough torque (although this thing looks pretty heavy) to move it, but it must be so much more complicated to implement like that. You can buy tiny motors for your bike that cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars, but this guy did it with a frickin drill!!! The utter resourcefulness of this bike is completely inspiring.


This photo shows a few more nice details. The tupper ware top patching up a hole, a nice leatherish pouch for holding stuff, and my favorite, a tape holder mounted directly on the bike next to the 2nd drink holder. Or it could really be the tape is also patching up some sort of structural flaw, either way both are cool with me. Also note sweet green hubcap attachments, and a knob to the right of the drill. I wish I knew what this knob did!!



This is a photo of the back side. More cool orange and red car lights, a ton of stray wires, a random 2 chord power chord from somewhere, and my favorite part, a power outlet!!! I dream of being able to talk to the guy who made this and ask a million questions only to be answered in yoda esque cryptic messages and riddles. And for the icing on the cake, a z100 sticker, fanny back (if the bike had a "fanny" the pack is placed in the appropriate area) and antenna for receiving radio transmissions from space and beyond. Or maybe....BROADCASTING transmissions to space. Probably not, but this thing took off with a hidden jet pack or something I would not be surprised.

To this day I wish I sat next to this beautiful bike and waited for its owner/mad genius builder to show up and had a long conversation with him (I know its a guy btw because I saw him later that day when I was driving by George and Albany). But I was in hurry probably to something unimportant and missed my chance. If ANYONE knows ANYTHING about this bike, who built, anything at all PLEASE EMAIL ME!!! reidbingham [[at]] gmail [[dot]] com. I would be forever grateful, especially with winter coming up and my chances of seeing thing outdoors diminishing.

El Colin is el victorious!

El Colin (aka Colin) won the circuit bending challenge!!!!

Go to creatdigitalmusic.com to see the deets about the challenge, all the other submissions, and the other 2 winners.

CONGRATULATIONS COLIN!!!!
With MacGyver like skills across the world, making the rockinest bent guitar ever.

coleco bending

I started bending the Coleco Vision plug n play video toy I got an amazing yard sale a few weeks ago (3 of them for 2 bucks each!!!).



These are the things I learned.
-It only has sports games--> Base/Basket/Foot/Raquet Ball, Soccer, and Hockey
-The graphics are definitely Coleco Vision quality pixels and colors
-If I apply a jewelers screw driver to a certain components I can pick up a pretty clear radio signal
-Short circuiting and crossing connections on the main chip create all sorts of glitches
-You can still play the games while glitching out the game
-Some glitches will freeze the game but still allow more glitches
-Sometimes the freezes become covered in a single color, usually green, causing the whole screen/image to break down
-Connecting the component that causes radio transmission with the main microchip create feedback of different tones depending on where on the chip the connection is made
-Batt tree deprivation bends work but only freezes the game first then deteriorates the images on screen till its all black. Use a 1k pot, turn slowly.
-If batt tree power is lessened during the opening game animation of the exploding football helmets, it will freeze on that scene of the explosion and repeat the exploding sound. The batt tree bend will then degrade the quality of the exploding sound.

This is a video of some glitching, which shows that you can still play the game while bent, the buzzing tones are the feedback, and the random speaking and singing is the radio signals the toy is picking up.



This is a video of bat tree deprivation bend that causes the beginning explody sound to loop.



Please forgive the quality of the videos and photos, they are all done rather hastily. I will post a better quality comprehensive demo of the possible glitches in the near future.

NearFuture plans:
-Wire out to 4x4 patch bay with intensity controls for each row
-Audio Responsive????????
-Wire out to keyboard so playing a keyboard will create glitches and activate a corresponding tone of feedback
-Interface with one of the sports the game has to create glitch (use a soccer ball to create glitches, or a racquet ball racket {or is it a paddle?}, etc)

F R I D A Y ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

New-s-Pooky-Monster-Awesomeness

I am not sure what happened when I wired it, but the speaker is also a microphone now as well!
It made a crazy feedback that I have never heard the likes of through the Awesomeator

reids circuit bending challenge

this is the yard sale where i got these toys...


a my music maker keyboard, a toy cassette tape player, and a odd barbie keyboard dance mat thing for a buck fifty


the barbie dance mat keyboard proved useless so i went for the good ol music maker




for the final product i added a pitch bend...


body contacts...


a switch to turn on/off...


the photocell


all with a 1/8 inch output automatic shut off


the finished bent challenger, somtime around 1 or 2am

its threee am! all is done, ill edit the movies tomorrow. happy circuit bending challenge day!!!

El Colin and the Circuit Bending Challenge

This is a day that will go down in history for me. I am tired, burned, bloodied, and so happy that it doesn't matter.

I have two videos that will explain most of my ups and downs today.

There rest I will try to put in words and show you some pictures.

I just recently moved to South Korea. It is hard for me to find the things I need sometimes and I don't have everything I need for circuit bending yet.



At first, I wasn't able to find anything.


I found some proof it is the 28th.


I found this keyboard but it wasn't very exciting.


I bought a blue version of this guitar a week ago. I was wary to buy it but the rules said find one today! So I bought this one. I like pink better anyway. Experience the sweetness feel to flying the music sea! I decided to go with the guitar, mainly because of that saying.


There is a pretty simple, black-blob circuit, with a cap and a resistor.


I found this hunker in the street the first day I was here.


I tried replacing the cap with other caps, a transistor, and what I think is a mega transistor, but I still don't know.


The mega transistor is super money! It makes everything perfect.


My modest set up with the few supplies I have collected (see the video for more details.)


I went to the stationary store two blocks away to find body contacts.


I couldn't cut the 'Supa-clip' so I had to go back to the store. I tried to cut smaller clips. I eventually gave up and used little binder ring things.


Everything goes wrong as soon as I decide to start finalizing everything. I ripped part of the circuit board out of the black-blob. Luckily, I had the same guitar from a week ago. (Circuit "Bending" the rules a little.)


The aftermath.


From the ashes of the dead, a godly creature springs forth to create happiness.


The Monster.


Below are the Videos. The Challenge video is everything leading up to the end product. It is about 10 minutes long. It is fun and shows me freaking out and having a blast and talking to you; a video diary of sorts. The outcome video is the final performance before midnight. It is an awesome little guitar and I am happy even though it is so terribly planned out. I have made some nice instruments before but this one has a special place in my heart. Thanks Circuit Bending Challenge! I can't wait to see what everyone else ended up with.

Reid, I wish you were here for this.

Video of "The Challenge"


Video of "The Outcome"


The guitar sounds great. The cigar box pedal in the beginning of the clip (The Awesomeator - see the earlier blog post) actually makes the same sound that the guitar does. It has something to do with the transistors and radio signals. Twice I got a Yankees game to come on through my Awesomeator!!!!! I can't wait to play this guitar using the Awesomator as a pedal for it; that will be spectacular. It would keep me up all night though and I need to go to work tomorrow, so good night and for the rest of you still working, good luck and have fun. I look forward to seeing the results of this most excellent day.

Check out the other benders here :

getlofi

createdigitalmusic

Need I Say More?

Keep posted today for progress.

Jazz Hero Live in Seoul

alloverthewhere dot org

i just did some crappy ach tee am elling to get the all over the where site back up again. i definitely spent wayyy to long trying to get that color fade.

i also finally got the glitch hikers guide to the galaxy up on the vvvvvv.
as i say on aotw i suck at graphic design and html and didnt know how to present it in a easy user friendly way. it ended up being a 950kb file that is 800 pixels tall and you scroll sideways to see. if you know of a better way to present it so people can actually use it please let me know. anyways, hurrah for the free exchange of information and sharing of ideas. it really does make my heart glow happiness when i see soldering irons on peoples desks and circuit boards strewn about.

oh, and on oct 28 is the international circuit bending challenge. im doing it, who else is in? if we work together, it will be better!

Experience the Sweetness Feel to Flying the Music Sea!

I bought a new toy guitar that wants to remind everyone of the sweetness feel to flying the music sea. Also, I performed live on stage with the Hero guitar this weekend! It was awesome. The Korean crowd was diggin' it. A video will be up soon.

Glitch Suit

Here are some video experiments/sketches I did a few days ago. These are just the first tests, there will be more to come, hopefully with better content. All the footage is from past projects I had lying around, just recycling old videos. The dancing thing I do apologize for cause I look like an ass but that was point of that particular project. I was doing a reinterpretation or response to The Perfect Human and as seen from the The Five Obstructions. I filmed the head torso and legs of myself dancing and had them on three stacked tvs so it was life size. Anyway, my eventual goal for this idea is to have all the original footage replaced with keyed out videos. Posterize the video into 4 colors, photoshop each frame four times (once for each color) to create a mask for each color and then re composite them back together so every color is now replaced by a different video. Sorta like animating with multiple layers of videos. Kinda hard to explain but once I photoshop a few thousand frames youll get to see the final result.

the white version with one layer (black) keyed out



The glitch version with two layers keyed out


oh and the song in the white one is crystal castles "February" and the other song is professor murder "free stress test"

check youtube.com/alloverthewhere for more videos and descriptions.

Katamari Chorus

While searching for images to make Colins Katamari Damacy themed chorus pedal, titled Katamari Chorus or King of All Chorus here are some interesting things I found.

a top 5 list

a New Criticism (Marxist, Post-Structuralist, Feminist, etc) critique of Katamari Damacy. Part 2, Part 3.

a nice quote from the games creator Keita Takahashi:

'Everyday life is full of many fun and stimulating things. The feeling of just riding a bicycle or the sensation of sand on bare feet when you walk along a beach […] the happy feeling you get when you just decide to skip, or the increase in heartbeat when you decide to stop in the middle of a road crossing. You couldn’t really say that they're punk rock things, but all of them are stimulating, and all of them help to make you realize that everyday life can be quite fun as well. Things like these have ended up making me think that you don't necessarily need games to have fun, and you possibly don't even need games at all,' (2005)

and an amazing croquet pattern to create your own little prince.

act now while supplies last

Go to Jeffrey Thompsons ArtForum Ad Project and buy yourself a 3/16' inch of real estate. Also, tell your 3,900 friends they can buy a square as well.

soots

wish i could wear this to the parade