Jig Blog

Eco Coke Bottle design

This new coke bottle design looks very cool. I would buy it. They should make it.

Smartphone with background noise cancellation - Google Nexus 1

  Here is my rough explanation of how noise cancellation works. I'm not hot on the physics of audio, so techies, feel free to correct me!

The google Nexus 1 smartphone has two microphones on it. The one for your voice, like any other microphone, picks up all the sounds coming into it. That means it receives your voice plus any background noise.

The extra microphone is positioned to pick up background noises MORE than your voice. That means it will be aimed away from your mouth (on the other side of the handset, I presume).

So there are two audio signals going into the phone, with some pretty much identical audio content (i.e. the background noise).

Basic noise cancellation involves taking two signals, inverting the phase of the waveform of one of them, then mixing them together. One waveform goes "up" and an identical one goes "down" (because it's been inverted). That way, the downward waveform "cancels out" the upward one. If both signals are identical, you get silence. If the two signals are virtually identical (as is the case with two mics at slightly different positions) you get a reduction in the volume.

It's only the bits of the audio which are different in the two mics (primarily, your voice) which don't get affected.

So this phone can turn down background noise. Cool, eh? It's the same principle that happens with noise cancelling headphones, and it's a technique I've used in the studio to check the phase settings of mics (e.g. recording a drum kit).

It's strange that this technology has not been effectively recruited up until now. I'd say that's a far more vital feature than many of the apps you get on other smartphones...

Avatar: a big h3Dache

I finally got around to seeing Avatar 3d yesterday.

Can I suggest that if you've never seen a 3d film before, don't pop your 3d cherry with an epic that seems to be about 9 hours long.

If you want to know why I felt it was a truly rubbish movie, check out my Jiggers facebook profile from today where I discuss it in laborious detail. 

The main problem with 3d is that you have a huge screen in front of you, and only certain sections are in focus: the bits you're *supposed* to be looking at. I don't know why, but I want to look at every possible section of the screen, and take in all the details. So I ended up with a rather distracting headache. I often just took off the 3d glasses (which cost 80p, mind) and watched it all "in blurry".

To find out more about "h3daches", see this article

Look at this...Don't look at this? Actually, I think I'd prefer to not look at any of it, James. It's a lovely sunny day outside in *actual* 3d. I might go and appreciate that instead.

Apple Iphad announced

Apple's new tablet PC. Full unbiased reviews, pros & cons, measured and thoughtful analysis of the Apple iPad. On the Jigblog? iThinknot.

 

 

(yeah, these are all from b3ta, obviously)

A brief guide to electronic music

I've been spending a few hours enjoying this site: Ishkur's guide to Electronic Music. It's rude, ironic, opinionated and really quite funny. But it provides a fascinating insight into the development of electronic music, and traces stylistic strands and influences across such genres as house, hip hop, disco, jungle, dub and numerous ludicrous subcategories (booty bass and terrorcore to name but two).

Many of the inferences and deliniations will no doubt be highly contested by dance afficionados, but to do that is to miss the point. It documents the chemical reaction of culture, youth, media, politics and creativity over the dawn of the electronic age, and highlights key figures, moments and places in the history of electronic music. It also provides numerous audio samples to let you hear for yourself.

The funny thing is that I seemed to come to electronic music from completely the other end. I've grown up with the pop-ified version of electronic music: only the most accessible, catchy material that made it out of the clubs and onto radio (mine was a relatively innocent childhood!) But I didn't necessarily hear anything I definitely wanted to emulate. My musical training was classical and rock & pop. Guitars and keyboards and verse-chorus-bridge stuff.

I first developed an interest in making electronic music when I discover the sequencing software Logic Audio while studying music at uni. It just seemed to make sense, much more than written scores (I've always been poor at sightreading).

The interesting thing is that most of the electronic music I've made has not been consciously imitating certain artists or style. I had no idea that the drum loop I was using under that synth line meant I was making a breakbeat record. Or that adding reverb to that patch made this section sound like epic eurotrance. So it added a kind of naivety, but also a kind of freedom. You just make the music that sounds good to you, and don't worry about whether it's cool, or whether it's been done before. I wonder whether that stands in your favour if you want to get your music noticed? Does it help to "know" the genre you are working in? Or does it just make you seize up, discarding every idea that sounds a little like something else, because you're on a mission to make something original?

I have to say though, I think my favourite genre in this whole list is what he calls "VGM". Video Game Music. Created using the audio chips from Commodore 64s and ZX spectrums, this music was probably the music I listened to more than any other in my youth, and still creates a soft nostalgic feeling when I hear it. You can hear that influence quite strongly in much of my own electronic music. Go listen: it's on the bottom left of the Techno category.

And another great example of this kind of music I discovered today (on Spotify), listen to this.

Rave on, ravers, as my dad used to say.

New Adventures In Hifi: volume 2, Oxalis Triangularis

...Following on from yesterday's post...

On the subject of moisture getting into the unit, this is coincidentally what happened when I watered the beautiful but slightly wilty oxalis triangularis plant which I had tastefully positioned atop my living room hifi. I had one of those unfortunate "cup runneth over" moments.

 For a while, you had to keep your finger on the play button to play a CD: letting go would switch off the unit. I envisaged that would prove rather impractical at the next party I held.  A little prodding inside the circuitry of the unit with a screwdriver seemed to do the trick. Now it doesn't work at all.

So...Any suggestions on a good midi hifi unit for my living room? I'm thinking about one of these pretty little things from Sony. Visually discrete enough to not require disguising with an oxalis triangularis. Why do they make hifi's in such tasteless,gaudy faux-futurific designs? And who exactly has black furniture nowadays anyway?

DAB radio review: Pure One Elite

This week has seen some new adventures in hi-fi at Jiggers Castle.

I'm an audio snob, I admit. And daily ablutions need a soundtrack. I addressed these consumer needs after much comparisoning (yes it's a word) and opted to get this wee beauty: a Pure One Elite DAB digital radio. £70 from a rather random website here.

It sounds nice. It has stereo.It has treble/bass controls. It's got a cool function where you can rewind live radio, which is natty. It has reasonable clarity and good volume for a radio of this size. It has incremental volume control, which is a bit annoying, as sometimes I really just want it half a db quieter, not 3db. But then, I'm an audio snob. Everything else is details. I'd recommend it, so far, so good.

Instead of buying the £30 battery pack that you have to recharge every week or so (yawn), I opted to drill a hole in the wall and do what every health and safety manual tells you not to. I installed a plug socket in my bathroom.

To reduce the likelihood of my dying, and more importantly to prevent moisture getting into the unit*, I've taped up the edges of the radio. And the days of a 45 minute shower are over, too. So I guess this is good for the environment over all. Especially if it kills me by electrocution. Think of the carbon footprint that would save!

*For more on this subject, tune in tomorrow...

England: Where I went (and how it smelled)

Just back from a lovely fortnight down in England. It's a nice place. Do you know it? Just a bit south of Glasgow. I like it down there, even though they don't really do mountains properly,and even if they're a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to knowing how to run a ceilidh.

I like to live a bit of a rock and roll lifestyle, I'll admit. I'm a crazy, thrill-seeking, caution-to-the-wind, adventure junkie kind of a chap. So it's unsurprising that the highlight of our holiday was a visit to this place. That's right. We went on a guided tour of a Perfume Factory in the Cotswolds.

It was actually pretty interesting.

No, really.

Centred around the skills of their master perfumer John Stephen, the business depends on his developing and combining scents to create a perfume which successfully tick the boxes of the remit of a corporate client order. It's hardly glamorous. But please enough people in those marketing test groups, and you could find your secret concoction flying out of the door by the thousands of gallons, appearing on a million different shelves around the world.

 And yet it's basically a business that revolves around one guy's nose. That aspect appealed to me as a music producer and songwriter. You can get all the delivery infrastructure you like,whether it's a factory or a multi-faceted delivery and promotion network. But in the end it all comes down to the core product, whether it's a song or a smell. A riff or a whiff, if you will.

 If you ever intend to visit the Cotswolds (and I recommend you do, just to spend a day in the amazingly quaint Bourton-On-The-Water, which looks as though it should be populated entirely by Hobbits) then do go on the 45 minute tour of this factory.

Scents and perfumes is a market dominated by marketing companies. The brands of perfume you buy are nothing more than that: brands. About 80-90% of the cost of the product is ploughed into marketing. The global cosmetics, toiletries and fragrance industry is worth £6.2 billion.

Not something to be sniffed at.

(re: the pictures...Perfume marketing has a glamorous sexy public image, but I like to think these images uncover the startling reality of the seamy underworld where perfume really comes from.)