Musical CV: About me 2014

So, I’m a freelance presenter and music composer/hacker.  I do a lot for Click, the BBC’s tech show but I’ve also hosted BBC Orchestra events and most recently hosted my first Radio 3 show, which was great fun. I love doing projects where music and technology meet, so any excuse to do more is fallen upon with great joy.

These are the things I love.

1)     Music composition and performance –  I do a lot of classical piano and orchestral composition – including spontaneous classical piano composition in pretty much any style.  It just comes out like that, I can’t explain it, but I’m OK with showing it off now.  I really enjoy giving live recitals! https://soundcloud.com/ljrich/140420-flying-through-colour  – recently performed at BBC NBH much to the surprise of some of my work colleagues…

Here’s an informal performance from a few weeks ago:

 

2)      As well as presenting on TV (hard work but lots of fun) I enjoy hosting live events – a few weeks back I had the fabulous experience of hosting a classical orchestral concert including the National Orchestra of Wales playing the Doctor Who Theme. I also give keynote speeches on technology and social trends. I grew the @BBCClick twitter account to nearly 2 million followers, so I used to give talks about how to do that until I realised it’s much more fun to talk about future trends, music innovation and host events instead.

 

3)      Music hacking – tech/music innovation  – I filmed a feature for the BBC in Boston which involved entering MusicTechFest‘s Hackathon competition and staying up for 24 hours – I won one of the top prizes! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27067106

 

4)      The two things I liked most about my music degree were composition and critical music analysis. I do like explaining why songs work and sound good…  music theory, but with a contemporary twist. Here’s a radio pilot I made a while back

 

5)      I recently gave a talk at TedXTokyo 2014 about a musical device I built with the aim of giving other people the chance to hear the world like I do.  I built the first iteration of the device in my room while sharing a tiny apartment with a bunch of other music obsessives – the process is ‘Glitching‘ – not a new technique, but certainly easier to do with today’s tech. I’ve augmented traditional glitching with musical inserts based on what key the world is in. People doing it report the practice as a pleasurable and slightly psychedelic auditory experience. More of the story is documented in the talk, and I’m working on an epic blog post which explains a lot more.  I love classical composing in the wild! I want to do ‘glitching’ concerts in cities around the world! 

 

6)      I’m very interested in new musical interfaces and software synthesisers too – these deserve their own blog post.

 

7)     And Finally…  here’s a link to even more BBC stuff I get up to and finally, here’s a link to loads of free Music I’ve composed.  

 

More ClickBits

They say work expands to fit the time available – and in this case, the 3 minute tech round up on the BBC’s website takes the better part of a day to make.

This post is really to chronicle the 3rd and 4th episodes so I can remember where I put them on the internet…  Click on the picture to get re-directed to the BBC’s site.

Clickbits Episode 4  – can’t see the link? click here: http://bit.ly/clickbits004

The really bonkers one to do was Episode 3 which I pushed down from Las Vegas during an evening where every other technology person there was also trying to send video.   Once the video was sent back to the UK,  Zoe and Gary put the pictures together on the other end.

It was very strange sending down raw material and seeing a put-together programme emerge at the end of it.

Clickbits Episode 3  – can’t see the link? click here: http://bit.ly/clickbits003

These links were filmed next to the Intel touch-wall, which was a giant interactive cube pulling pictures down from flickr. It was being run on what looked like a normal laptop – which surprised me – the graphics card in there must have been rather tasty.

If you want to see some pictures from CES 2010 , pop over to my flickr site here for a look round some of the weird and wonderful gadgets on display here.

Click Bits!

Pilot show Click Bits - Episode 2!

(RSS/Can’t see the link? here you go: http://bit.ly/clickbits002 )

This is what I’ve been up to the last month, as well as doing quite a bit for bbc click recently… including working with the marvellous Maggie Philbin on our futurology piece. She’s done such a brilliant post here about our visit to Kingswood Warren that I don’t need to add anything…

OK, I will add that we both turned up on the ShiftRunStop podcast last week.

Here are some behind-the-scenes pics of the birthing of ClickBits.

My bag with script in - and an impressive amount of useless stuff

– yes I did eat that twirl. And I didn’t bother taking pics of the usual tv stuff including filming pieces to camera, script wrangling and finding pictures to fit. Unless you want me to next time?

Also the madness of only having a finite amount of time to do an infinite amount of work is the sort of thing is familiar to techies everywhere. Editors, I’m thinking of YOU when I type this.

tape of episode 1 ! yes, tape! Click on this if you want to see episode 1, but episode 2 is better 🙂 Click on the top pic for that.

The grown-up edit suite was double booked for our first episode, but it didn’t stop us – we squeezed into a small office and crowded around a desk and computer meant for 1 person.  Final Cut Pro, in case you were wondering. And yes, we ate a LOT of choccy in  a room so cramped all our knees were touching.

on its way into the BBC system?

This was our 2nd attempt to ingest 3 mins of video into the BBC, we were thwarted by technology many times! It’s always worse when a BIG machine borks – I always (illogically, irrationally and incorrectly) expect computers with 4 screens to be, I don’t know, cleverer.

Humans 3, Machines 2

Finally, the wondrous Zoe (who is producing this with me and is the illustrious @zsk on twitter) came across this hidden terminal and executed some kind of Harry Potter spell that meant the machines had to obey her – and they did.

As I’m off to CES Las Vegas 2010 next week, Zoe and I will be attempting to make the 3rd Click bits episode a few thousand miles apart… we’ll be using yousendit and psychic powers to make that work, but if anyone can do it, it will be the 2 most stubborn people at the Beeb – us!

Nom Nom Nom 2009

…is only 10 hours away, and I’m ready.

No, of course I’m not ready, but I did source a particularly effective chef’s hat…

The last month has been brilliant, manic and, alas, almost completely sleep-free.

Excitingly I’m going to be on the BBC again next week as my piece on Music Recognition should be cooked by then – first I have to get 2 or 3 internet shots at some ridiculously unsociable hour on Monday morning, before crawling into the Edit with both Callie the Editor and the sort of coffee that causes spontaneous leg-shaking and hallucinations.

But before that in 10 hours’ time I shall be entering NomNomNom 2009, a charity cook-off where the fabulous Jemimahknight and I are charged with making a 3-course meal and serving it to 2-michelin-starred chef Tom Aikens – so no pressure there, then…

Our team is called Bork Bork Bork – will report back with pix and video assuming I survive.

 For those of you who missed me on the BBC’s Working Lunch programme:

LJ and Declan on BBC2 Working Lunch - click pic to view the vid (if it's still there)

(RSS Readers / can’t use the link? Click here  )

Here’s a still shot from my performance on BBC2, where I manage to squeeze 2 puns into under 2 seconds.

I’m not proud of that.  (OK, OK, I am…)

‘Tis the Season

only 1,000,000 shopping days left – quiiiiiiick!

As you can see from the set today, it appears that Christmas now officially lasts for 7 weeks, whether or not you’re a believer.

I entertain visions of having everything under control but it just doesn’t happen like that – I remember a year ago, I bought most of my stuff online in November (mainly at www.boots.com and  www.Firebox.com! )  – this was laughably easy and I felt especially self-satisfied – until I had to accompany all my less-organised friends to Costco anyway as they hadn’t done any of their shopping.  So there I was on the 22nd December,  being squished between various gift aisles suffering from caffeine deprivation and trolley bruises.  All my hard work and slight gloating was for nothing.

 

So, should I be panicking?  Have you done your  xmas shopping already?  Will you do anything for the festive season?  Are you incredibly organised and wrap everything beautifully? Or are you a last-minute lemming ?

 

Virgin Gadget Spy Episode 2 Now Released!

Gadget Spy Episode 2!

Yes, after all that hard work, we’ve done it, it’s been edited, and this is Episode 2 of Gadget Spy

 

Gadgets featured are:

 

Air Guitar Rockstar

Archos TV+

Power Monkey Solar Charger

PVT Video Transfer

Wattson

Jawbone headset 

Linksys Router

Port Coolfan

 

And if you’re wondering what the Bunny Rabbit was at the beginning of the video, it’s the Nabaztag Internet Bunny  which will tell you what the weather’s like and pull stockmarket and news data from the internet. 

 

…and for those of you who read my blog, here is a secret for you – hear the background music?  That’s mine, that is !! 

 

 

 

Virgin Gadget Spy Filming PhotoBlog

Filming Gadget Spy II

Yesterday was spent at Virgin Towers filming the second Gadget Spy – this was all done in a bit of a hurry,Virgin are keen to get this up and live on the web by next week – Eeeeek!

So we collected together an array of gadgets (and had some help from www.firebox.com – thankyou!) and hopefully got enough material together for our 3-minute webcast.

The gadgets include a few of the things I’ve been impressed enough to blog about or take flickr pics of, including the Cisco/Linksys Router , the Archos TV+ and the Jawbone noise-cancelling headset.

This was an incredibly fun day, it was tiring but very rewarding, as we’ve been working flat out since last week getting everything together for the magic day of filming.

We're in the studio area and setting up - within about 10 minutes, most floor space is covered with tech. There is a general need for tea. We've also realised that it's going to be boiling in here.

Phil from Virgin checks the gadgets - we have to work out which order to put them in right at the start of the show, so we can get the camera to pan across at the beginning and match our working script.

We like to have a few quirky, bonkers products in "Gadget Spy" - last time it was the Bubble Wrap Keychain. This time it's the Guitar Rockstar.

Thanks to http://www.firebox.com, who provided us with a few gadget loans for the pilot, and kindly let us borrow a few more for episode 2. Everything is boxed back up and sent back to Firebox HQ, so they'll lend us stuff again!

More tech ready for filming: you can see the top of the Pinnacle PVT Video Transfer, the Linksys Router, and the Archos TV+ as well as a few bits poking out of the case.

Dan, camera operator, checks the footage. Anyone doing any filming knows to check as soon as you do the first take, just to make sure video is actually recorded.

Here I am, "sitting in" - we're testing the shot before filming properly, we need to make sure the lighting works for the camera, and I've put a mark on the desk so I always sit in the same place!

My suitcase: Kit 'n' Heels, har har. This case got really battered when I took it to China and Dubai, and it's held a lot of tech in its time. On the way to and from Virgin Towers it's bulging with strange and wonderful stuff.

Behind the camera, filming the intro! We steam through the voiceover, the outro and each gadget, doing a couple of takes for each one - the basic rule is when you do a "good one", you do one more for safety. Normally, I'm pretty good at this, because I'm used to live TV and one chance to say something. However, by the end of the day, saying "Port Cool Fan Laptop Stand" took me about 6 tries. We got it all in the can though, and the next thing is editing it up for release - Working date : 10th September 2008

What follows is a quick look at what went on in the day.  If you want to see the Flickr Gallery, please feel free to click here.  I’m really looking forward to seeing the final cut, hope you like the pics!

CD!! CD!!! CD!!!!

Wow, I can’t believe it! I’m holding in my hands my FIRST grown-up looking CD!  Here it is:

I am soooooo excited

This CD “wot I wrote” has 4 meditation tracks on it, I think the style is formally described as “new-age” or “extremely chilled”.  Each track has been composed, produced, and mastered in my lovely new studio!_

I’ve also uploaded a sample of the tracks on to myspace – if anyone knows a sexier way to get an MP3 file to talk to wordpress, please let me know, I’m still relatively new to all this blogging lark, and quite happy to benefit from someone else’s experience and/or knowledge.

Actually, there’s another, deeper, reason I’m really excited by this, because it’s only a small (some might say very small) step on the musical ladder in the big scheme of things.  I think this CD (and showing it to you in public) symbolises an acceptance of the musical part of me, which for a long time (and for very complicated reasons) I rejected for a while. I think there is also a big helping of nerves involved in actually going for it, creating a product and placing it in the market place.  What’s very odd to me is that I’m quite comfortable standing on stage / on TV chatting to a bunch of people I don’t know, but this blog post makes me feel incredibly strange, vulnerable and exposed.

_

Oh well.  Too late for that now.  The next step is for me to put the envelope with 5 CDs in the post to CDbaby, who will then hold the copies for purchase, and convert tracks to MP3 for digital download.

inside the Jewel Case

...and the back

… right, I’ve been brave.  Now to self-medicate with chocolate and tea.

JVC MS100

So, here’s a little clip of the capabilities of the new JVC MG-MS100 SD card camcorder: 

 

 

Can’t see the link? click here

Anyhow, I’m just about to finish a DS9 Episode, then it’s off to work…