[NewMusic] Beyond the Quechupdome...

[Travis Johns]

My Quasi-annual Soapbox of Sorts, in response to Barry's inquiries...

Little of both. Finding myself broke and job prospects in the Bay a
little lacking, I took a job out in Colorado for a few months doing
solar/green energy installation and found a free place to live in the
form of a hermit-chic yurt in the middle of rangeland - totally off
the grid, miles away from... well, everyone and everything. Nice
place, fresh air, no noise or light pollution and while I can't say
that the place is safer than many of the "budget-friendly"
neighborhoods of the Bay, I'm fairly certain that the general
predatory critters indigenous to the Rocky Mountains are slightly
more...erm, righteous in their resolve to commit random
acts-o-violence, etc. Morbid as it may be, if you're mauled out here,
at least you'll end up as a tasty dinner and not just an accessory to
being in the wrong place at the right time - though I have to admit,
I'm not sure that falling asleep to the sound of coyotes is any more
comforting than the usual sirens and highway drones of Oakland  - time
will tell, I guess. However, before Polly starts slinging sausages,
I'll stop there - if you really wanna learn more about what I've been
up to in my personal life, come track me down either via email or in
person when I'm back for a few days next month and I'll tell you all
about it, promise.

Ala, the setup - nope. no performing right now - just writing. Let the
shit charge the batteries during the day and you've got an evening's
worth of juice to do with what you will - and while it's not an ideal
setup, it's posed a lot of questions, especially with regard to how
we, as musicians and artists who use electricity, either via
amplification or in ways more involved than that can be just a little
more, shall we say, eco-conscious about how we do our shit. I could
rant for hours on this subject - again, hit me up in person, etc, I'll
give you an earful - so two thoughts for the time being.

1.) Amplified/electronic music has a pretty damn big carbon footprint.
perhaps a little smaller in the bay than most places thanks to the
MASSIVE wind farms a little down the highway from us, but its still
pretty substantial. Ever see an EnergyStar label at Guitar Center?
Didn't think so. It even almost seems like the rule of thumb with
amplified music is that the more wattage involved, the better it'll
sound - tube amps suck hella juice, nice Ampeg/GK bass amps even more
so, typical house PA's even more than that - shit, I don't even want
to know how much juice RML sucks off the grid. So yah, while I don't
want to start the whole hippy treehugger lecture/spiel, it's always a
good thing to remember that for each time you plug in to harness said
creativity, on the other end of that plug is some sort of
coal/oil/nuke, etc plant permitting said creativity, and in turn
pumping tons of toxic shit into the environs while they're at it. And
yeah, while there's a million and one different arguments out there
ala climate change, etc and by no means am I encouraging anyone to
unplug to save the whales, there's always other solutions outside of
stacking wattage to produce that killer sound - its just a matter of
being creative, yo.

and,

2.) Surprisingly, a lot of the electronics under the employ of today's
electronic musician are relatively low power to begin with. My
laptop's sucking 24.5 V - not a whole lot of juice compared to the
typical guitar rig. My minidisc recorder runs at a whopping 1.5. Many
interfaces (mine included) are bus powered, as are midi controllers
and most guitar pedals all tend to still accept 9v batteries as proper
electro-currency - true, batteries themselves are also toxic as fuck,
but if you look around, you can find some less-toxic rechargeables
that'll at least reduce the amount of sludge your creativity is
creating as a by-product. If you really get frisky, a couple of the
larger electronics catalogs now carry these small film-based solar
panels that pack a decent amount of juice in a pretty small footprint
- leads are even included on the panel so all you have to do is gator
clip these suckers onto your box's terminal and boom - free-ish
energy... provided you're being all creative in the sunlight, hehheh.
So as it stands, yeah, one decent solar panel, one small wind
generator, two deep-cycle batteries and an inverter and hey, I'm not
lacking for power at all. Though you're right - amplification is the
tricky part ala this whole experiment and for the time being I'm
content just using headphones. Some kits do exist to take your sounds
off the grid and sound slightly better than computer speakers wired to
a lump of AA's, but they're usually fairly pricey - though I ran into
Curtis Bahn over the summer playing with Pauline O's RPI ensemble up
at the Wave Farm in Akra, NY and he was running a pretty impressive
surround rig that he hacked together for a reasonable price - I cant
seem to find any specs on the web, but I'm sure if you bug him, he'll
probably toss some info your way.

So, erm, yah - two thoughts for the masses - been thinking of a proper
Mad Max-themed ending for this little diatribe, but shit, what's the
point of beating a single pop culture reference to the ground...

thoughts?

t.



On 9/10/07, barry threw <bthrew at gmail.com> wrote:
> Start raising pigs and you could rule Bartertown.
>
> Is that setup out of need or want? Do you perform with that?  With
> what amplifiers?
>
> Me, I'm happy using an outlet for my creativity.
>
> b
>
> > coming from someone currently living off the grid, at least in the
> > traditional sense (making electronic music with only a small solar
> > panel, a wind generator and one or two car batteries hooked to an
> > inverter - very interesting...)
>
>
> Barry Threw
> Media Art and Technology
>
>
> San Francisco, CA       Work: 857-544-3967
> Email: bthrew at gmail.com
> IM: captogreadmore (AIM)
> http:/www.barrythrew.com
>
>
>
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