My Name in Print! In Future Music 243!
Navin R Johnson once opined, “I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity – your name in print – that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.” Yes, that’s how I felt today after I wandered into my local Barnes & Noble to see if the new issue of Future Music Magazine was in yet. Future Music is a British publication that focuses on production...
Read MoreNew Album and Charitable Donations From Solarno
Two announcements to make: 1) ‘Robot Junkyard – Derivative’ is now available throughout the interwebs! 2) Solarno now giving 50% of net proceeds of all sales to charitable organizations! Yes, ‘Derivative’ is finally available at all of your favorite digital download sites including iTunes, Amazon, CDBaby, Bandcamp, and more. ’Derivative’ takes away the sound palate restrictions of the original ‘Robot Junkyard’ and breathes new life into...
Read MoreFor When I’m Not Writing Music
Hey, one can’t possibly write music all the time, especially when I still spend the better part of my days helping to save the world from inferior cycling products. So when I’m just not feeling the inspiration to sit down at the synth controller sometimes I’ll just pop a shiny silver disc into my xbox 360 and let my mind wander into another world. BTW, my gamertag on xbox live is solarno72. Feel free to hit me up. My latest wanderings have taken me into the mud covered world...
Read MoreReview of ‘Vulcan Foundry’ by Dementio13
Clicky drones? Check. Punchy drums? Check. Staccato arpeggiations? Check. The ability to make you dance without a traditional dance song structure? Check. If we step into the wayback machine and punch up the mid-90′s, cross-referenced with only those four short descriptors, you’d quickly narrow down your search. At the top would be Orbital. (Full disclosure, Orbital is one of my favorite bands of all time, and a big influence on my own productions.) But we’re not in the mid...
Read MoreI Love Shapelock!
Sometimes you come across something so cool that you have to post about it, whether it’s directly related to music or not! This is just one of those times. Last Tuesday I made a quick overnight trip to see my good friend Steve Cooley perform a live set with his musical compatriots Haptic Synapses. Hanging out with him the next day he showed me an amazing fast-prototyping material called Shapelock. It starts out as little plastic beads, but once heated in water to at least 150 degrees...
Read MoreThe Beatseqr Returns
One more video featuring Steve Cooley’s amazing Beatseqr. This time I’m using the Beatseqr to simultaneously send MIDI data to four different channel strips in Logic, each with a different instrument set up on it. Let the awesomeness ensue. ...
Read MoreBeatseqr comes to Robot Junkyard
Here are a couple of videos I recently did explaining the basics of the Beatseqr MIDI controller which is handmade by my good friend Steve Cooley. If you are interested in getting your hands on one of these bad boys, head on over to beatseqr.com to learn more. ...
Read MoreTotally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs!
This is possibly the greatest name ever for a band, and an electronic one at that. I stumbled across TEED while browsing through new and recent releases in iTunes. iTunes currently has three EPs and one single for TEED dating back to 2009, so it appears that they (actually he) are a fairly new act. Here’s a brief description of TEED from his last.fm page: Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs swings between overt musicality and scarily on-point dancefloor sensibility, ripping up clubs...
Read MoreSIDtastic! comes to Sounds of Solarno
Back in the mid to late 80′s, and into the very early 90′s, the majority of my musical experimentation was done using my venerable Commodore 64. The Commodore 64 contained a little piece of hardware called the SID, a sound chip which would go on to become one of the most influential 8-bit sound chips of all time. The signature sound of the SID can be prominently found in the recent chiptune resurgence of the past 5 years or so. Artists such as 8-Bit Weapon and Computeher...
Read MoreMeet Boxel!
A few of you have asked me about the robot on the cover of the new album Robot Junkyard. His name is Boxel, and he stands about 3″ tall, 4″ if you count his antenna, but he’s much taller in his own mind. He doesn’t typically listen to me, especially now that he’s a star. I do believe that he thinks he will be on the big screen in the future. Can you say diva? Boxel is a prototype paper box robot created by Cincinnati based artist JessWolf. She...
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