Troels Folmann Personal BLOG

Does much does electronic information weight?

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:13:29 +0000

I seem to be in a great pseudo-intellectual sprint these days … So I have been wondering about this one for a while … does electronic information have a physical weight … and if so … would it be environmentally better to write shorter emails, webpages, facebook status, linkedin profiles and so forth?

I guess that more information (in bytes) means more web traffic, takes more space on your hard drive and/or in RAM, takes longer to read, which means your monitor is on for longer and so forth. Essentially all these things lead to more use of electricity, which potentially means more damage to the environment. However the question still remains … does electronic information have a physical weight … will my computer be a nano-gram heavier – if I have LOTS of mails and programs open – contrary to a few?

Epic music made on a set of balloons

admin — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 08:58:14 +0000

I regard the whole world as an orchestra. It may not mean that everything belongs together, but sometimes the craziest things work much differently then I anticipate. Feel free to check out my latest madness. The following demo is made entirely from balloon sounds and nothing else:

Luftballon Demo 1 by T.B. Folmann

Featuring: Gnomehammer Lutfballon
Download "Luftballon Demo 1" mp3 demo

Groove is imperfection

admin — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:40:26 +0000

I find it fascinating that a groove essentially is an imperfect beat. A perfect beat (theoretically speaking) is one that is completely on the note without any variation even in milliseconds. The type of beat you will find in some electronic music (ex. techno/trance), however it tends to have a machine like feel and thereby the groove or life of the beat dies. A groove represents an “imperfect” way of playing any given beat. The notes will never be spot on, but fall some milliseconds off the theoretical correct spot, however that is exactly what makes it perfect – from the slow whiskers of a jazz drummer to the late slut claps in hip-hop beats – from the off-set ghost strokes in a funky beat to the swing like feel of the Samba. The perfect groove is imperfect.

Perfection is controlled imperfection.

Should be easy …

Consciousness of a Nation

admin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:04:04 +0000

Warning: This post is the most difficult I have written to date, so it may- or not make fully sense, since I am not exactly sure what I am talking about, so bear with me…

I read an unfortunate report by the U.N. a couple of days ago. The report concluded that over 1 billion people are in starvation. An incomprehensible number to the pain of suffering of innocent souls. The report also stated that the U.N. was having a hard time getting aid due to the current (2009) economic climate.

This conclusion led me to think more about the concept of aid. What is aid? The formal (wiki) explanation is:

“…aid , also known as international aid, overseas aid, or foreign aid, especially in the United States) is a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another, given at least partly with the objective of benefiting the recipient country… ”

I find this description mono-contextual (hey – cool new word I just made up), since it only relates to the effects of aid, but not the reasoning behind it. I believe the reasoning of aid goes much deeper, darker then the initial explanation. The “civilized” world has been giving aid for centuries to what we like to describe as lesser developed countries. Countries that haven’t fully entered the post-industrial era and countries that are not able to sustain a life style like our own.

My initial thought was simple: “Aid is the act of covering guilt.” The guilt of the western world. The colonization. All the things that we did or didn’t do to the less “civilized” countries. Like back in the days when you could redeem yourself to God by paying the church money – same thought.

Now … assuming that there is some guilt associated to aid … could it be that we have inherited this guilt from previous generations … and if so … are we actually inheriting the guilt of the nation? I guess my thought really comes down to whether a nation has a consciousness or not. We see collective type of consciousness/intelligence in so many other systems – whether its the accumulative intelligence of an organization, swarm intelligence amongst ants and bees or all the knowledge transmitted through language, culture and so forth.

Yes … very deep! Hehehe.

What is aid?Are we trying to cover over the fact that the “civilized” world is using/exploiting less fortunate countries to uphold its standards? My theory is that “aid” is a social/cultural band-aid to cover the guilt of our people – of me and you. Aid is our way of making it legitimate to uphold and retain our life style – and there is … from a conceptual point of view … nothing wrong with that.

However my feverish thoughts went further then this … The next question was: “Aid has been around for centuries in the western world… so have we inherited the guilt from our ancestors – and if so … does that mean the nation has a consciousness?”

Official H1N1 (swineflu) survivor

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:00:01 +0000

I am now officially a swineflu survivor. The flu itself is pretty much like any other flu. It lasts for a week – and its reasonably easy to overcome with a cocktail of Advil and Tylenol. However it does seem to have a harder hit on the airways and respiratory functions, so the aftermatter is just days and days of coughing. But in summary its not better or worse then any other flu and I would take it any day over food poisoning, which is still the worst I have ever tried.

What a charming topic …

A Talking Piano (literally)

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:16:16 +0000

Love it – and a very, very interesting finding, since it breaks down the border between music and language – in a more then obvious way.

Music made from wooden poles

admin — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:31:23 +0000

I just made a couple of demos for Tonehammer. All the percussion in the demos is made with different types of wooden materials, primarily wooden poles that were clacked together. I also added a variety of other instruments on top of the wooden percussion to give it more life and such, including Terrie (African Singer), strings, tablas and some synths. See if you can enjoy.

Clack Demo 1 by T.B. Folmann

Featuring: Tonehammer Clack, Tonehammer Anti-Drum 2. Additional Strings and Synths.
Note: This library also features samples from two upcoming Tonehammer libraries: Psalterium and African oriented Forgotten Voices: ”Terrie”
Note: Reverb applied to demo
Download “Clack Demo 1″ mp3 demo
Download “Clack Demo 1″ (Clack only) mp3 demo

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Clack Demo 2 by T.B. Folmann

Featuring: Tonehammer Clack, Tonehammer Mini, Tonehammer Additional Synths.
Note: This library also features samples from two upcoming Tonehammer libraries: Tabla and African oriented Forgotten Voices: ”Terrie”
Note: Reverb applied to demo
Download “Clack Demo 1″ mp3 demo
Download “Clack Demo 1″ (Clack only) mp3 demo

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2001 – the real music

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:56:07 +0000

So … I came across this hilarious youtube video … where the talented Portsmouth Sinfonia Highschool orchestra is playing their version of the famous 2001 theme by Richard Strauss (I love Alex North original score too, but Kubrick dissed it) … Anyway … The video made me laugh, but also made me think that this is actually a great, great version of the piece. The beginning of 2001 is all about the dawn of humanity and how it all started – so to a certain degree – the music should also represent this, which the Portmouth Sinfonia really seems to embrace in its full glory.

Plastic Saxophone and Toy Accordion

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:51:07 +0000

It can sometimes be healthy to experiment with new sounds and instruments – in this case my eyes- and ears fell for the beautiful yellow plastic saxophone and a red toy accordion. I decided to create three pieces of music that each embraces these wonderful instruments in various ways.

Little Pump Reeds Demo 1 by T.B. Folmann and Steve Tavaglione

Featuring: Tonehammer Little Pump Reeds, Mini and glitched beats
Note: This library also features samples from upcoming Tonehammer libraries: Tabla and African oriented Forgotten Voices: ”Terrie”
Note: All solos and ambiences are played by Steve Tavaglione using EWI and Baby Accordion only.
Download “Little Pump Reeds Demo 1″ mp3 demo

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Little Pump Reeds Demo 2 by T.B. Folmann

Featuring: Tonehammer Little Pump Reeds, Symphobia, Custom Orchestra and Choir
Download “Little Pump Reeds Demo 2″ mp3 demo

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Little Pump Reeds Demo 3 by T.B. Folmann and Steve Tavaglione

Featuring: Tonehammer Little Pump Reeds and chip eating from our Mini library
Note: The desire of this demo was to see how wacky we could take the library. The solos is made as a chase between Tavaglione and Folmann.
Download “Little Pump Reeds Demo 3″ mp3 demo

Cajon and Bongo Ensemble

admin — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:29:29 +0000

I made a demo tonight using a combination of Cajon- and Bongo ensembles for an epic/ethnic type of tribal track. The track also contains synths, live guitar and live bass. Enjoy!

Cajon and Bongo Ensemble demo

Download “Cajon and Bongo Ensemble Demo” mp3 demo