music notation

Pretty good notation eh?

a Sound vactation

The picture is from an installatino at the Stanford Art museum where I was yesterday, I find it compliments the sound well.

I have a great deal of field recordings that I have not sorted out yet, but I did mine this little bit of sound. It is of a sculpture in downtown Chicago, located behind the stage for Millennium park and across the street. You can go on a Sound vacation to Chicago (for a moment).

Bells

reckin the stars

The poor Horta is assaulted by Kirk.

I saw this and just had to link it!

concert report

If that doesn't say California Concert, I don't know what does.

I was thrilled with the concert last night, I felt that each performer and composer was able to articulate an aspect of who they are through the pieces and the pieces sounded good. I was also happy to observe that the way in which I put the concert together was successful. I have noticed over the years that concerts are a great opportunity to put together a composition on a larger scale, the concert organizer has to think about contrast and congruence (along with mundane and practical details) in arranging the concert order and I was pleasantly surprised with my choices.
The set up.

The set up crew. Yes Tim did wear that hat! He won extra points for it. Although he did need to remove it for sound check.

Katie with her vocal ensemble. I did not get a picture of the food and beverage table that she and her mother put together, but I assure you it was fabulously over the top.

Luke preparing the computer to run his player piano piece. He won the greatest bow award.

Justin put on a a great performance of his piano piece and was the representative of the undergrad community, an honor that he performed with distinction.

Brian's piece for the inside of the piano created quite a controversy and was forbidden on this past Friday by the piano technician. Brain was able to overcome this adversity and put on a great performance along with Jordan


Performing the work of James, I really like this picture of Shannon.

The performance of my composition titled "Webern and Feldman had a strange love child who wrote this piece."

An interesting Feldman Link

Happy Thanksgiving.

Concert Today

poster


program

ideas

I have a folder on my computer where I keep ideas and thoughts that occur to me.














Sound that extends into a space and then inhabits that space.

This could be a way to think about concerts, or any space.

With a limited time in a world of infinite possibilities how should one proceed?

That is how to proceed through life.

GrainConvMix

Yeah! A completed task. For my cSound class I just completed a little study piece that explores convolution and granular synthesis. It does not use enough silence, but I like the morphology of the sound mass. What I did was to take the same granular texture and produce 5 reverb versions for each of the 2 channels. Then I mixed it all.
Listen

Piece Making

I have been making pieces of pieces this weekend. Nathan came to visit and we spent the entirety of Saturday night in the studio creating and editing sounds. Sadly we ran out of steam before a final mix could emerge, but it is pretty close. Tonight I have been working on granular synthesis again in Csound. I think the last of the experiments makes a nice little piece, or maybe a piece of a piece. It reminded me of Christine pointing out today how wonderful the milk being steamed sounds. This reminds me in an abstract sense of that sound.
Listen here...
stereoGRAINsweep
statisitcalSWELZ
OPc3.2
OPcafe3.3

WOWcsound

I just finished doing some convolution of granular material that I created in cSound and I must say that I am impressed. It actually sounds pretty good. This will not come across with computer speakers!http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
Take a Listen

Not fabulously profound, it is not a bad little sketch.
Title = GrainVolves

I should be clear. I created the grains from 2 portions of a recording that I made in Haines Alaska. (you only hear about 2 seconds total). The original Granular Track sounds like this (I like the texture bit at the end - more to explore). Then I convolved it with various Impulse Responses found online, here. If you like the material make something with it, if you want more let me know I have 15 odd versions.



As if that wasn't enough I clicked on the link at the top of my blog and this is what came up.

"Let me explain…"

Jack Fur
Medical Researcher

My name is Jack Fur for the last 18 years; I have worked as Medical Researcher, Writer, and Speaker.

I have been involved in the development of over 100 pharmaceutical drugs, dietary supplements, and medical foods for companies I am sure you have heard of, and they have made millions from my research.

I’ve read over 300 books, medical journal articles, and reports about Tinnitus. I’ve interviewed 16 experts, doctors, researchers, and severely affected Tinnitus patients.

PLUS, I have attended countless seminars, conferences, and conventions, all to become America's #1 Tinnitus Expert.

Wow, he has read over 300 books! Wow.

suggestions

The Corrosive World

Here is a great Ted Talk by Larry Lessig. It is available along with many other at www.ted.com

The worlds corrosivity is something he references in the talk. Enjoy!

Curtis-isms

This year I have the honor of acting as a teaching assistant for Curtis Roads and yesterday was a lecture on microphones. (Here is Sonal Atoms by Curtis) He pointed to the fact that in recent times microphones are becoming fetish items, which I found to be an interesting observation, one that I tend to agree with. The lecture about micophones was given while speaking through a microphone (hardly neccesary in a small room, so it was ironicly humorous). But the best part of the lecture are the following quotes


"you hear all this, that is handeling noise"
as the microphone crackles away

and

"That was when in order to use a synthesizer you had to wear a suit and tie, those were the good ol'days."
speaking about this picture, while playing this in the background (make sure to listen to a bit! this is fabulous)

THe entirity of this album and more about it are here

When I met Brad Garton at Columbia we sat in his office where the synth that you see in this picture is still bolted to the floor.

authenticity

It is interesting to consider the public life and what it means to be authentic in that context. It is maybe very obvious, but Fred certainly did that. I like this video a lot because e points to honesty and the necessity and reality that we are honest about who we are. And if I dare extrapolate, if one is not honest, it is apparent.



AND... he was a composition major!

duration 00:00:0188

The picture is of Philip Jeck performing inside a mountain in Austria, it was very loud, to loud for my sensitive ears.

I made a new sound, it lasts for one second and 88 hundredths of a second and it took 2 hours to make.