This is the first episode of Noah's "Nerd House" podcast. Nerd house mixes two of my favorite things, deep intellectual lectures and public talks with deep, emotional techno and house music.
For this mix I used Bruce Sterling's closing lecture from the Reboot 11 conference. I downloaded the video as an MP4, extracted the audio using Fusion as a .wav, then mixed that live using Traktor and an external midi controller.
This was my first attempt at blending the two genres. I learned several things. First, the whole show was recorded in one take, which provides for some spontaneous moments of emergence and excitement. I didn't do any post-processing or editing other than conversion of the final .wav file to MP3 and then adding a voice over at the introduction.
In general I think the live mixing approach worked well, but you be the judge. Because I was mixing live and with no preplanning, a really interesting conversation began to emerge between the peaks and valleys of Bruce's talk and the peaks and valleys of the music beneath. This was totally emergent and unexpected, adding additional energy and emphasis in some places and reducing the energy in others.
In some cases, for example, the music led the transitions in the talk by a few seconds, presaging a big shift in tone or topic. In other cases it was the other way around, where a shift in the message of the speech proceeded a shift in the music. There were also a couple of cases where they both correspond perfectly, creating a couple of particularly effective, high intensity moments.
All of this created a really interesting back and forth between the "music" of the talk and the "message" of the music. Next time I'll program out a few key transition points in the message of the talk and keep these in mind as "targets" to mix towards as the house music progresses. We'll see how that works.
Next episode I plan on showcasing either Kevin Kelley's talk at the Long Now Foundation a few years back, one of my favorite Martin Luther King, Jr. speech from the CBC Massey Lectures, or one of my favorite Dave Snowden lectures from Australia.
If anyone listens to this I'd really love your feedback, either on the house, the lecture, or on their dialogue. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for Episode 2!
UPDATE:
Track listing:
1. Journey to the Sun (Dennis Ferrer Remix) - The Sunburst Band - Z Records
2. Halleluyah Yeah - Guillaume & the Coutu Dumonts - L'Ete Des Indiens
3. Groove La Chord - Aril Brikha - Fragile Records
4. Unfinished Business - AphroDisiax
5. Limoncello (Secret Recipe (FG Good Times in Roma Organic Drums)) - Fabio Genito
6. Beletage - My My - Playhouse
7. Some white label bootleg from circa 2003 I picked up in Denver - Community Recordings
8. Interceptor (RZ Muzik) - M1
9. Another digital white label, name lost to time, from San Francisco circa 2001
10. Carib's Leap (MKDVJC unreleased Twisted Musicapella) - Ian Friday - West End
11. Sunshine People (Original mix) - Jay-J and Torin Rea
