Gian Pablo Villamil

I’ve started to turn this site into a better showcase for my work, by adding dedicated pages for my audio, video and photography. There will be plenty of changes, so please check it out every once in a while.

October 18th, 2008 | Category: Music, Photos, Portfolio, Video | Leave a comment

I recently visited KDDI’s Designing Studio in Harajuku, where they are showing off the results of a concept design project with Yamaha, exploring the possibilities of integrating true musical performance interfaces with mobile phones. While the concept models are interesting, I was struck by lack of emphasis on communication and collaboration possibilities. Most of the emphasis was on the individual device, a mobile phone that could be operated like a musical instrument. Not too much thought was given to the possibilities of a musical instrument that can communicate electronically over long distances!

This seems to be part of a trend to make genuinely musical, easy to use, and portable, electronic instruments, such as the Korg Kaossilator. I was particularly struck with how the designers tried to make devices that genuinely allow for musical expression. The device above, “Strings for Fingers”, is played (and dialled!) by plucking strings.

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August 2nd, 2008 | Category: Art, Music, Technology, Tokyo | Leave a comment

My friend Nancy Garcia played an outstanding duet with Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth fame) at the No Fun Festival, on May 16th. I enjoyed the show, and was especially pleased because Nancy played one of my musical instruments, the Rhythmic Synth!

You can hear the synth very clearly in this song…

The No Fun Festival had plenty of highlights: it was good to see Astro (Hiroshi Hasegawa), who played at the Watermelon Noise Feast in Tokyo last year.

May 19th, 2008 | Category: Events, Music, New York, Portfolio | Leave a comment

I had a chance to present, and play, my simple square-wave synth at the Handmade Digital Music event, a collaboration between Create Digital Music, Etsy Labs and Make magazine. Lots of interesting projects on show, and it was great to meet a community of like-minded individuals, all kinds of people coaxing the most unusual sounds out of a mixed bag of components.

It was great showing off my project: many people came up and played with it, getting new and interesting sounds out of it. I was really inspired, even more motivated to take it one step further. I learned two things from the experience: letting people play with your projects is always a valuable learning experience, and practicing how to use it gives much better results. I performed a short (<5 min) set, but would like to do something more ambitious.

The synth has been slightly modified in the past two weeks: I’m now using diodes for mixing in the output stage, instead of resistors. This leads to a choppier, more percussive (”crunchier”) sound. Listen for yourself here: sample of synth with diode mixing and compare it to the samples on the blog page.

Many thanks to Peter Kirn and everyone involved for putting together such a great event!

August 24th, 2007 | Category: Events, Music, Portfolio | Leave a comment