The MoinSound Studio Sessions

The End of the MoinSound Studio Sessions


In June 2011, the MSSS were, rather quietly and without any proper announcement, discontinued.

Apart from some boredom on the side of the performer (and surely on the side of the audience as well - there had been sessions with only one spectator), the main reason was another music project: the #secretalbum.

The full video archives of this project can be found below.

Synopsis


The MoinSound Studio Sessions is a bi-weekly music event series first established in April 2009.

Every Saturday in an even calendar week at 1600 UTC, Rainer Straschill transmits a virtual concert via internet video stream from the "MoinSound Studio" to a virtual audience. Attending those performances is free and possible without any kind of registration. All you need is a computer (although a smartphone will do), a web browser with flash payer plugin and a sufficiently fast (read: normal DSL or fast mobile) internet connection.

The scope of those solo music performances is sometimes expanded: by including additional musicians, by making the session part of a virtual festival, by doing a "feature week" or by transmitting from another location as part of a special event.

All of the performances are recorded and are available for later playback. Plus, several album releases have come from the recorded material.

Genesis


Ever since the early days of the kybermusik project, the next logical step was already on the roadmap: how to transmit music performances to virtual audiences via the internet - in both sound and vision.

Back in 2005, the technology just wasn't there. Such things were available, but they came at huge costs financially, and even so, most home-based DSL links didn't offer the necessary upstream bandwidth to do something like this.

First tests started already late in 2006, however: a chance meeting with a marketeer working for a platform then called onlinemusicstar (now ligx) led to a few preliminary test runs still in the beta stage of this platform (the sound here is a catastrophe).

The MoinSound Studio Sessions are born


One sort of a key event was when guitarist Matt Stevens, back in April 2009, announced an internet video transmission of a performance of his. Quickly checking out the resources used, Straschill found that obviously, the time had come for the technology and the business model being mature enough to allow for that on a mainstream basis: read, available to everyone, both on the performer and on the viewer side.

Following some first test runs, an event series was built around the concept:

Every other Saturday at 1600 UTC, (to be precise: every Saturday in an even-numbered calendar week), a performance would be transmitted, starting May 2009.

Ever since, this series has continued, only missing in total two shows, and on the other hand bringing several special events in addition to that.

About the music...


The most interesting question might be: where does it go, and what does it contain, musically?

As with all of Straschill's work, this isn't exactly easy to answer:

Ever since the start of the MoinSound Studio Sessions, the following has been included:

  • Style: minimalist noise, jazz piano, contemporary classical, dub, ambient, breaks, and some other things.
  • Instruments: trombone, recorder, soprano saxophone, found percussion, noise electronics, ambient noise, synthesizers, piano, drum machines, vocal noises, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, nose flute, electric bass guitar.
  • Settings: in addition to the eponymous MoinSound Studio, this included the t-u-b-e location, the countryside around München (driving around in a car), München city centre (also driving around in a car).

Now: how to access it?


In some easy-to-follow steps:

You need some thing that can play flash contents and connect to the internet. This is typically some kind of computer, including most smartphones.

You'll need a web browser that can play flash content. For this, a proprietary plugin is required which you can get free of charge at Adobe. Typically, you'll already have that (simple rule: if you can play youtube videos, you're set). If not, your browser willl tell you what to do.

The internet connection needs a sufficiently large downstream bandwith. How large? As a rule of thumb, 600 kbps will work, everything above 700 kbps is completely sufficient. To bring that into perspective, here's a rule of thumb:

  • any DSL connection is enough (assuming it's not shared with too many other services/users).
  • any 3G+ mobile networks (e.g. HSDPA, HSUPA, LTE) are enough (assuming proper reception at the location).
  • any 1G or 2G mobile network is not enough (e.g. GSM, GMTS, UMTS).

To access the show, simply use the player below, or go to the show's site at ustream. Note that watching the show does not require any kind of registration; however, participating in the chat does require (free) registration at the site.

For quickly accessing the show, use the player below:

Album Releases


You can do the math yourself: about 45 minutes of playing every two weeks makes for roughly 20 hours of recorded material per year (not counting in any special events). It makes sense to put that to use.

2009 saw the release of the The MoinSound Studio Sessions album, showing a good spectrum of 2009's sessions, and thus containing a wide area of different sounds and styles.

In 2010, Akustik Kies: Transitiv Sehen was released as the first part of the Akustik Kies double album, containing solo piano music exclusively.

In 2011, the second half, Akustik Kies: Reflexiv Hören followed suit.

Moinlabs likes to point out that both parts together form a double album, i.e. you should get both and enjoy both!

2014 saw the release of Surreal Spaces - the document of one especially charming session from October 2010.

Furthermore, there have been the following special releases:

ADVENTVS was distributed to the fanbase (meaning: people who attended the session on December 26th of 2009) - an EP with tracks recorded during 2009's advent season, focusing heavily on trombone material.

The last session of 2010 resulted in Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen, which was made available for download for a limited time until Epiphany 2011.

Special Events


Virtual Sound and Vision Festival

VSV was a seven-hour performance marathon, bringing together more than a dozen of performers from various parts of Europe and the Americas. Straschill did organize this event, as well as perform a special MSSS as part of it.

Nerdville

Celebrating the German soccer team's quarterfinal victory in 2010, MSSS took to the streets - transmitting from a car moving through the celebrating crowds, using a komische Elektronik setup to process crowd noises - and transmit that live via mobile internet.

 

 

An Ambient Manifold

Eight days of daily MSSS transmissions (sometimes, more than one per day). Using a huge setup of electronic instruments and gadgetry. Watch out for the possible album release!

Café Noodle Festival 2010

An event similar to VSV, this was hosted at Café Noodle. A summary/review can be found here.