Next weekend I’m presenting a workshop / audio art experiment at the The Megapolis Audio Festival in Baltimore.  I’m calling the workshop “WikiMixing,” and I’ve set up a separate page about the project at www.drivebyhighfive.net/wikimixing. I’m mirroring it in this blog post:

Mixing on a computer is usually a solitary endeavor: one person controlling one mouse and keyboard making one decision at a time. We’re going to try to fix that. Part workshop and part experiment in “crowd-sourced” audio art, this is like editing Wikipedia but with sound instead of text. Participants will be asked to provide four short sounds with four different sonic characteristics. (Details below.) We’ll import all these sounds into a computer and collectively mix and manipulate them as a group in real-time using a bunch of colorful customized keyboard controllers, all connected to a single computer. The idea is to get as many hands/ears/minds at once collaborating (and competing) on the same soundscape, so that whatever strange, beautiful, or frightening noises that emerge are the product of our group’s collective will. Everyone is in control at the same time and yet no one is! NO prior audio software experience is necessary; everything you need to know is on the keyboards. (Pics coming soon!) Recordings of our experiments will be available immediately following the workshop.

For anyone who knows me through the AIR board, I’ve frequently mentioned how much I prefer using Logic Pro over Pro Tools.  I use a number of audio programs, but for most of my “work work” (as opposed to fun stuff), I find myself hopping back and forth between Logic and Pro Tools for different projects.  I used to say that the only thing I liked better about Pro Tools was its general approach to audio editing.  Now that I’ve really gotten used to Logic, however, I’d just say that each program’s approach to editing is somewhat different and 90%(+) of the time I’d rather be working in Logic than PT. There are a bunch of other reasons for this outside of general editing work-flow, but I won’t get into them here.  Instead, I’d just like to focus on how I use Logic specifically to edit radio-style projects, so that any radio/podcast people out there can give Logic a try. It’s written with someone in mind who is reasonably familiar with basic “radio-style” editing in Pro Tools.