Modulate This! - Electronic & Experimental Music Tech, Technique, & People

Howard Jones Classic Albums Tour - Fall 2011 North America

Howard Jones is playing a series of dates in North America this fall . On most of the dates, he’ll be performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action albums in their entirety. I’ve copied the basic info from his tour page and pasted it below.

Both albums were remastered in 2010by Howard Jones and Robbie Bronnimann and are available on the official web store.

I caught the show in 2010 and did a show report here.

I’ve copied the basic info from Howard’s site and posted it below. For the most up to date schedule and for tickets visit Howard’s official tour page.

13th Oct 2011	Cox Auditorium, Dixie State College, St. George, Utah Performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action albums	USA
14th Oct 2011	The Music Box, Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA Performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action albums	USA
15th Oct 2011	The Summit Music Hall, Denver, Colorado 80202 Performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action album	USA
18th Oct 2011	The Flying Monkey, Main St, Plymouth, NH 03264 Performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action albums	USA
19th Oct 2011	Irving Plaza, 17 Irvine Place, New York, NY Performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action albums	USA
20th Oct 2011	Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA Performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action albums	USA
22nd Oct 2011	Walt Disney World, America Gardens Theatre, Epcot Theme Park, American Adventure Pavillion	USA
23rd Oct 2011	Walt Disney World, America Gardens Theatre, Epcot Theme Park, American Adventure Pavillion	USA
25th Oct 2011	Oakville Centre for Performing Arts, Oakville, Ontario Tickets onsale General 30/5/11 Performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action albums Presale Password Special offer for Howard Jones Fan List: Only available by phone to our box office beginning Wednesday May 25 at 11am.	Canada
26th Oct 2011	Oakville Centre for Performing Arts, Oakville, Ontario Tickets onsale General 30/5/11 Performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action albums	Canada
27th Oct 2011	Bottom Lounge, Chicago, IL Tickets onsale 15/4/11 Performing Humans Lib & Dream Into Action albums in full.	USA
28th Oct 2011	Paramount Center for the Arts, Peekskill, New York	USA

I'll see you Denver and Boulder Howard Jones fans at the show this Saturday October 15th :^)

Links

• Howard Jones - Web Site, Twitter, Facebook, Modulate This Posts
• Robbie Bronnimann - Facebook, Twitter, Modulate This Posts

Mark Mosher
Electronic/Experimental Music Artist, Boulder, CO
Synthesist | Composer | Keyboardist | Performer

Synth Geek Blog: http://modulatethis.com/
Artist Site: www.MarkMosherMusic.com

Show Report: Howard Jones & Duncan Sheik at the Boulton Centre for the Performing Arts, NY 10/22/2010

Last Friday I attended Howard Jones concert at the Boulton Center or the Performing Arts in New York. Here are a notes from the show.

Duncan Sheik
Duncan Sheik was the opening act. He sang and played his own accompaniment on acoustic guitar with some stories in between. Note - Duncan collaborated on Howard’s song, Someone You Need, and performed joined Howard's 25th Anniversary concert at the indigO2. Of course I enjoyed the hit “Barley Breathing”, my favorite song was “The Tale of Solomon Snell” off of his latest album Whisper House. It was  was quite fitting for the Halloween season. Sheik’s acoustic set offered an excellent contrast and complimented Howard’s show well.

Howard Jones

Howard performed in an Electric 3 piece band configuration with Robbie Bronnimann playing keys, doing live arrangements and sequence playback, and live mixing with Ableton Live; and Jonathan Atkinson on electronic drums.

The set list was an excellent mix of classic Howard Jones songs with newer songs from recent albums Revolution of the Heart and Ordinary Heroes mixed in.

One thing I really liked about this show was that although a lot of the songs were from Howard’s classic catalog, the show was not a “nostalgia act”. The arrangements were fresh and the performances were tight and had a vitality to them you could really feel.

Having Robbie doing the heavy lifting with Ableton Live and live mixing freed up Howard up to focus on singing, playing and interacting with the crowd. It’s clear Howard is a seasoned artist who continues to take performance seriously and really connects with the audience. Jonathan Atkinson’s drumming also brought a human groove and interesting visual element to the performance.

My favorite song of the night was “Equality”. It started off with Robbie doing a real-time jam with all sorts of beat slicing using Novation Launchpad.

Later in the show, Duncan Sheik came back on stage and he and Howard did a version of Tears for Fears “Shout”.

Live Rig Notes
After the show I got to meet and talk with Robbie Bronnimann about the show. He’s using Ableton Live running on a Mac with a Novation Remote SL MK II which he uses to play keyboard parts. He also uses the Remote SL as a controller for Live devices. He is using two Novation Launchpads to control mix, launch clips and scenes, and to control devices.

The entire rig is mounted on a custom tube system which is strapped to a V-Stand and can be packed into a flight case. Speaking of this, he mentioned that this is the only rig the entire band transport. Howard’s Fantom G8 and Jonathan’s drum kit – I believe it was a a Roland TD-20s V-Pro™ Series – are provided locally. So they show up and load their sounds prior to the show. Now that’ s a small carbon footprint.

Howard played all his parts from the Fantom G8. Patches either sounded either spot on from album versions, or where updated and freshened up but still worked very well.

Meet and Greet
Both Howard Jones and Duncan Sheik took time out after the show to do a meet and great for all attendees at the lounge at the back of the theatre which was really cool for the fans. After talking with Robbie, I did manage to get up there and was last in line and briefly met both Howard and Duncan who graciously signed my 25th Anniversary concert at the indigO2 DVD :^).

Great Show!
What a great night. The music and performances were fantastic and the crowd was really into it and often sang along. While this was the last show of this short American tour, I recommend you visit http://howardjones.com/touring.html to stay informed about upcoming shows.

Links

• Howard Jones - Web Site, Twitter, Facebook, Modulate This Posts
• Robbie Bronnimann - Facebook, Twitter, Modulate This Posts
• Jonathan Atkinson - Twitter
• Duncan Sheik - Web Site

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Mark Mosher
Electronic Musician, Boulder, CO
www.ModulateThis.com
www.MarkMosherMusic.com

Videos on The Making of Robbie Bronnimann's Upcoming Album "Rotations"

Robbie Bronnimann dropped me an email recently letting me know about a very cool series of videos he’s posting over at Sonic State.

First off, if you're not familiar with Robbie’s work, he’s a London-based composer and producer. He also has released music under the name dba with vocalist Shaz Sparks and acted as a writer/producer The Sugababes. He has also collaborated and produced the last few Howard Jones albums and has also toured with Howard (see this Modulate This Post on their Australian Tour).

Now Robbie is working on his own solo album project called Rotations and is shooting video along the way. The videos are great and show a behind-the-scenes view of how a seasoned producer works. I recommend you watch them all as Robbie does a great job explaining his studio and technology - and more importantly goes beyond technology and talks a lot about the creative process.

I’ve embedded the first 5 videos below to get you started. This is a work in progress so you’ll want to bookmark http://www.sonicstate.com/news/studiolog (Note they are posted in reverse date order). My favorite is Video 5 where he brings in Shaz Sparks and his 5 year old daughter  to record vocals. He then build’s up tracks using elements of their voices.

I'm really looking forward to Rotations!

Video 1: Robbie Bronnimanns Journey

Video 2: The Journey Begins

Video 3: Samples, Hits, and out of RAM

Video 3: Sound processing, recording the box

 

Video 4: Granular hits and transitions, DSI Evolver action  

Video 5: Recording Vocals

Links:

• Robbie’s Facebook Fan Page
• Robbie on MySpace
• Robbie on Twitter
• Videos of Laura Clapp & Robbie Bronnimann - Ableton Live, TC Electronics Interfaces, and Live Vocal FX Processing

Mark Mosher
Electronic Musician, Boulder CO
www.MarkMosherMusic.com
www.ModulateThis.com

Sonic State Behind the Scenes Video - Howard Jones, Robbie Bronnimann, and Laura Clapp On Tour in Australia

I found this series of vides via pedx1ng’s post on the Ableton Live forum, who found it on Matrixsynth. These videos by Sonic State cover Howard Jone's tour in Australia. I've re-blogged them here with annotation.

I've always liked Howard Jones's music and the fact that he's not all about nostalgia but is still writing and experimenting with technology in Live performance.

Also, my first exposure to Ableton Live was at a Howard Jones show back in the day of Ableton 3.0. Like now, he was using it to play scenes on the fly so he wasn’t locked into one arrangement for the whole song. After the show, I ran home and did some research and then bought Ableton Live 3.0 right away. Thanks Howard and Robbie and Ableton for changing the way I compose :^).

Video 1: In this first installment, Howard Jones has Robbie Bronnimmann leave a blizzard strewn UK and head for Australia and meet up with Laura Clapp in Adelaide Australia. He also talks about he now uses the Roland Fantom G8 to simplify his rig and work in a graphical way. He also discusses the polyphony and feel of the Fantom.

Video 2: In this video Howard Jones and Robbie Bronnimmann are in Perth Australia and explain the how they use Ableton Live, and bus powered devices (Motu audio interface, Novation Remote SL, Novation Nocturn) on their tour in Australia. Robbie describes who he uses Live to trigger sequences on-the-fly, do real-time FX processing on backing tracks and live vocals using built-in Ableton Live plugins.

Video 3: Howard Jones has Robbie Bronnimmann, Laura Clapp at sound check in Brisbane. A little taste of "Always Asking Questions". Laura discusses how shes uses TC-Helicon Voice Live and a Novation ReMote SL Compact to create harmonies and vocal effects on the fly. The also explains that he's his own warm-up band as he's doing a 30 minute acoustic set prior to the electronic trio taking the stage.

Links:

• Howard Jones Web Site
• Robbie Bronnimmann MySpace Page
• Laura Clap Official Web Site| Laura Clap's Blog

Mark Mosher
www.markmoshermusic.com
www.modulatethis.com
www.twitter.com/markmosher

New Howard Jones album on iTunes

It's been 20 years since the 80s synth-pop icon Howard Jones exploded on to the music scene.What's he been up to? Well, back in 1997 he started his own label, dtox.  He is releasing new material on this label as well as material from other bands such as dba. I think it's quite inspirational to see an 80's icon remaining vital as an artist and staying current by collaborating with new artists.

Howard recently released a brand new album called Revolution of the Heart which is now available on iTunes. Click this button to preview some tracks  . 

This album is worth a listen for a many reasons. One of course is if you are a Howard Jones fan, you'll still enjoy his electronic synth-pop with a positive message. Second, for you producers out there, the album was co-written/produced by dba's Robbie Bronniman resulting in some very cool mixes.

I actually saw Howard Jones perform his electronic set with a band twice in the last two years. He has quite an interesting laptop-based live rig that I’ll comment on in a future article.

Dig deeper here - www.howardjones.com

Mark