Sound Pudding

I want to circuit-bend

2012-02-12T09:22:00.003-05:00

I picked up these toys at Goodwill for $10. I think they will be fun to bend (when I have time!). I need to make a large order for electronic parts - been skimming through Make: Electronics by Charles Platt and Handmade Electronic Music by Nicolas Collins - lots of cool ideas.

Working on a duo for marimba and cajón, which is coming along pretty quickly. Still editing my piano/fixed-media piece. Right now, just lots of ideas swimming around and not enough time to explore them!

As mentioned in my previous post, we had Jeri-Mae Astolfi (pianist) and James Mobberley (composer) as guests. Add Dan Asia to that list, as he was here last Monday. Later in the semester, Suk-Jun Kim, Zack Browning, and Paul Moravec. Not to mention 4 graduate recitals, 2 department concerts, and some other odds and ends. We are both lucky and crazy.

busy

2012-02-03T12:07:00.002-05:00

January at UF saw guest appearances by pianist Jeri-Mae Astolfi and composer James Mobberley. I enjoyed interacting with both, but as I was in charge of their visits, I have to say I'm glad they're over so I can relax!

Not that I'm relaxing overmuch. Terminus debuts in a month, and of course I have other projects to contend with. But hey, classes are good and I'm inching closer to figuring out my dissertation topic.

For anyone following my Twitter, you may have seen that I had a stray bat get into my apartment and I suffered a hard drive crash. The bat (who was cute but annoying) left without too much fuss (I just left a window open all night) and System76 swiftly replaced my hard drive.

That's about it for now. Certainly enjoying not doing tech work for UF for a little while. Maybe I'll write some music this weekend. There's a thought...

New Year / New Band / new stuff

2012-01-08T21:15:00.003-05:00

March 4, 2012 will see the debut of the new group I co-founded, Terminus Ensemble. The group, based in Atlanta, aims to perform and promote music by Atlanta natives and/or residents. We are all very excited about it!

A good friend of mine, Caleb Herron, started another contemporary ensemble in Atlanta called Chamber Cartel. They debuted on New Year's Day with a concert of Morton Feldman's Crippled Symmetry, which received a positive review in ArtsCriticATL.

So things are moving in the Atlanta "new music" / "contemporary classical" / "alt-classical" / "post-classical" scene. Hope the momentum keeps up!

On the Gainesville side of my life, lots going on there too. Check out this page on our department website - 13 events this semester! Going to be a whirlwind few months.

Although a changeover to a new year is pretty arbitrary, I have the sense of good things in the air. A lot of people are calling for this artistic momentum (as well as politically progressive momentum) and I won't be so naive to think that we'll see tremendous changes this year, but I'll be happy if people start to make new, positive habits.

To steal and repost a great quote from Kim Cascone that was going around facebook: "In 2012 we all need to turn the 'culture dial' to '11.' We need to support the arts more than ever right now - it's withering and folding back on itself like a plant without nutrients. So please do your part to put on concerts, go to concerts, check out new releases, buy releases, turn others onto interesting projects, go to museums, visit bookstores, go to see films, we need to start PAYING for culture instead of just letting the Internet provide it for free...and I'm NOT talking about *pop culture* (that already has lots of money thank you) but small, experimental, non-mainstream, independent, projects created by people who have imagination and vision and require funding in order to continue adding brain-stim into the world. Please remember that the arts require money and that artists need to eat just like you. Let's work to make 2012 a renaissance year. :)"

I also liked this article "A New Year's Resolution for 2012: Give Contemporary Classical Music a Chance."

fluid dynamics, video

2011-12-21T21:13:00.003-05:00

fluid dynamics is the final video project of the video theory/production course I took this semester. It is an expansion of a video sketch I posted previously.

This piece is very process-heavy in both the video and audio portions, but I think they are very unified because of it. The most interesting criticism I received was that it was a bit too repetitive visually. I found this interesting because musicians use repetition all the time. We love repetition. We live repetition. So the comment showed how different the media of video and music are from each other. I had to point out that there are only six chords in the whole piece...

Those chords, by the way, are stolen from my piano piece Late Frost. When I hear this piece I don't think about the other one at all, which I suppose means that I did some successful recycling.

Interiors, for flute and guitar

2011-12-12T11:39:00.002-05:00

As I kill time waiting to go to my composition jury, I figured I may as well post a blog about one of the pieces I'm presenting. It is called "Interiors" and is written for flute and guitar.

The notes are based on the frequencies of the harmonic series, based on E2 and D3, the 6th and 4th strings of the guitar. The guitar part is almost completely made of natural harmonics, played on different strings. This shows the out-of-tuneness of equal temperament, and makes for some interesting wobbly effects. The flute part is mostly "normal" though it gets a few harmonics as well.

My mode of composition this year has been fairly minimal, in the sense of economy of material. I have also been interested in spectral techniques, so this and the piano piece I'm currently writing are based on the harmonic series. Thus, I'm leaning ever more *gasp* tonal.

Score

mp3 reading

Tether 2.1 performance

2011-11-27T20:54:00.002-05:00

We went down to Florida International University last week for the FEASt (Florida Electroacoustic Student) Festival. It was a nice chance to perform a slightly improved version of Tether. Fixed the program on Josh's unit and improved our performance a little bit. Several people mentioned that version 2.0 was a bit "sterile," focusing too much on space and too little on interaction. We got a better balance this time.

Of course, one of Josh's speakers wasn't working in rehearsal so we had to suss that out, then one of mine stopped working just before the performance! But, overall it worked and we were happy with the progress.

Also: had some fun adventures going to a Spanish-only bar (what are the Irish guy and Asian guy doing here?) and nearly running out of gas in the Everglades.

Tether v.2 performance

2011-11-03T10:19:00.003-04:00

Last Friday Josh Cajinarobleto and I presented Tether on Unbalanced Connection 48 at UF. The week leading up to the performance, we spent about 30 some-odd hours constructing and tweaking the units.

We are happy with the look of the units and the performance overall, but a few things need more tweaking. For one, I couldn't upload the final version of the Arduino program onto Josh's Arduino. Something to do with "avrdude" - couldn't find a simple answer on that one so I'll need to work on it. Also, the gears inside the units weren't quite aligned, so the cables would get a little stuck every once in awhile. So we held onto the units to give them some extra force against the gears - but we were hoping to do this 'hands-free.'

We'll be performing this again in Miami in 2 weeks so hopefully we can get a few kinks worked out (I doubt all of them!).

Here's a video. I apologize for the sound quality (applause at beginning and end will be much louder than the performance). This is taken from the camera mic, at the back of the hall. Also, we have a large, loud AC system and no noise reduction seemed to help without adding major swishiness.

Improv with Tim Kaiser

2011-10-22T09:14:00.003-04:00

Had a good time at the Laboratory Music #4 Improv Fest last weekend. I was paired up with Tim Kaiser, who was touring from Minnesota. Tim's day job is making cool instruments - here's a link to a Make Magazine video profile of Tim.

I think we gelled pretty well. These improvisations were limited to 9 minutes, hence the buzzer at the very end.

Fourth video sketch

2011-10-14T08:28:00.001-04:00

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Grad Student Composer

2011-10-09T15:35:00.002-04:00

Here is my third video sketch:

I decided to be a little lighthearted and less abstract on this one. It is a glimpse into my workspace - i.e. my life. Grading some theory tests, taking notes on a dissertation about Adorno, writing a piece for flute and guitar, programming an Arduino and soldering components for Tether. Also, making copious amounts of coffee and trying to destress by jamming on the piano.

I recently solved a snag in Tether, so I'm happy about that, and we're starting to get things together. Still hoping to perform it at UF on Oct. 28, but if that fails I applied to a student festival in Miami in November we may be able to do.

Flute and guitar piece is done. I am Lilyponding - most of it was pretty quick but the hairpins and guitar fingerings keep interfering - I want the dynamics to consistently be below, but alas, I have not yet sussed that out. (then again, I only started yesterday!)

Current projects include a paper on Mr. Bungle's "Quote Unquote," a transcription of a Daniel Myer (Haujobb) interview for my prof, yet another video, and getting things set up for our guest performer and guest composer next semester.

Second Video Sketch

2011-09-21T20:46:00.001-04:00

first video sketch

2011-09-08T16:07:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, we screened our first "sketches" in video class. The directions for this project asked us to "concentrate on the materiality of color, composition, framing, texture..." rather than using characters and language. We were also to make this all in-camera, without edits (other than pausing the recording, re-recording, etc.).

For the semester, I have a Canon XH A1 checked out. The following video is one of several takes, no edits.

We will be using Final Cut Pro in class, but I was able to capture this video with dvgrab, then add some fades and render it as an Mpeg with Kdenlive (Kdenlive's capture function seems to be buggy - I could control the camera transport from the computer, but not import video. After searching around, I saw that I could just go into the terminal and use dvgrab - so easy. Go Linux!)

new school year

2011-09-01T16:38:00.002-04:00

Ok, I'm nearing the end of the second week of the new school year, and figured I should update a little.

My assistantship is a lot busier this time around. I am a TA for Music Theory 3 - teaching 3 lab sessions a week, plus grading lots of homework and quizzes for 55 students. I managed to work my schedule so that I have Thursdays "off" (aka - time to WORK). I also took over as SCI chapter president, so I'll be in charge of concerts, etc.

Taking a video production/film theory class + a seminar on "dissonance, cacophany, & noise." These are both VERY interesting so far! Finishing up Tether (decided to give up on the soldered board for now since I can't suss out the ground loops I keep getting), and starting to write my flute/guitar piece.

Some sad news: Carla Rees, for whom I wrote "Simoom," lost her flat, her cats, her custom flutes, and many other possessions in the London riots last month. Please consider donating to her recovery fund here.

we're talkin' 'bout (soldering) practice

2011-08-14T11:05:00.003-04:00

I made a quick trip up to Atlanta this week, but now I'm back in Gainesville. One more week until fall term begins. This year, my TA position will be assisting with Theory 3. I've heard it's a heavy workload, but I'm looking forward to gaining more teaching experience.

I have been working on soldering together Tether 2.0. The circuits on the last version were done on breadboards, so I wanted something more permanent. I bought some perfboards and started soldering components. This is a learning process to be sure!

I royally messed up the first board - got solder everywhere. A lot of this was due to workspace - I was soldering on some wood on the ground and couldn't really see that well I think. I moved everything to my desk and turned on all the lights (during the day as well!) and could do a lot better. However, the second board doesn't seem to function. I'm not sure why, so I think I'm going to need a voltage meter to diagnose it. Solder wick, clamp or "helping hands," and wire snippers are in my future as well.

Worst comes to worse, we can stick with breadboards, maybe with some hot glue for quality assurance, but I really want to say "I can solder" and not be kind-of lying.

If you want to learn how to solder, I recommend these videos: Perfboard Prototyping and How to Solder.

Tether 2.0

2011-08-01T07:05:00.002-04:00

Artist Josh Cajinarobleto and I are working on refining our "Tether" project, which you can read about in previous posts (March-April timeframe). It's been really nice to have the luxury of TIME. Each week we seem to have another mini-breakthrough.

In Tether 1.0, we measured distance by having our spools of tether line push a button repeatedly. This worked for moving apart, but we needed to push a switch and hand crank the spool when moving closer together. While the handcranking arguably adds an interesting element to the performance, we are attempting to do without it this time.

During our reseearch, we learned about Constant Force Springs, such as those used in tape measures and other retractable gadgets. Interestingly, it was cheaper to just hack some tape measures instead of buying just the springs. So that is the inner mechanism now. We will be attaching cable to the spring instead of the steel tape.

Later I learned about Rotary Encoders, which are perfect for our purposes, as they are made to count turns in both directions. Due to the mold of the plastic for the tape measure/cable spool, we won't be able to attach the encoders directly to the cable spool, so we will be cutting one side of the spool into a gear shape, and making a separate gear that will drive the encoder. Fortunately, someone made an interactive design program accessible online [here].

Once this hardware is done and I've revamped the program, we'll move on to the enclosure design. Since the contraption is much smaller this time, we're hoping to make the grotesque organs that encase the electronics a little better-fitting and less unwieldy (more wieldy?) We may be working with some dancers in the future, so all these improvements will be helpful - they should just be able to wear them, flip an "on" switch, do their thing, and the electronics will react. More info soon!

Summer Reading List

2011-07-20T20:17:00.003-04:00

To stay true to my six credits worth of research this summer, I have been trying to read a fair amount. Here's what I have read so far:

Selected essays from Audio Culture

I have already read many of these, so I read some I had not yet explored. I think this is a great reference to have on hand, so I plan to buy it eventually.

Miller - Sound Unbound

This was another collection of essays, and I essentially read it cover-to-cover. One of my colleagues requires it for his undergrad Music Tech class, so I wanted to see how it was. I liked it a lot, but I would not require this for that particular class. Most of the essays, while great for those interested in the history of media, are very specialized, and not particularly relevant to a class that attempts to bring undergrads up to speed on Finale and Reason.

Chanan - From Handel to Hendrix

This was a great read. Since G.F. Handel and Jimi Hendrix rented houses next to each other in London (centuries apart of course), Chanan uses that as a jumping off point to examine evolution of composers' role in society, from court servants to businessmen to academics, etc. Many of the anecdotes I had read elsewhere but Chanan has a pleasant writing style and ties together a lot of interesting ideas about economics and politics as well as art.

Tarasti - A Theory of Musical Semiotics

Since we touched on Semiotics in my Analysis class this semester, I wanted to get a better grasp of the subject. I've made it through the first half (and I'll probably need to read it again!). The second half gives thorough analyses of some well-known works, such as the Waldenstein sonata and Pictures at an Exhibition.

Tamm - Brian Eno

This is a pretty short (175 pages) summary of Eno's ideas and processes. It was published in '89 but it covers the music by Eno that people care about! Tamm divides his attention between Eno's rock music, his ambient music, and his collaborations in general. A decent read for Eno fans or fans of process music.

Adams - The Place Where You Go To Listen

This book is primarily a journal of John Luther Adams's creation of his work of the same name. I enjoy his work quite a bit and admire his combination of often simple-sounding music with more complex ideas about nature and sound. This work is an installation that gives sound to various phenomena found in his home state of Alaska, such as the position of the sun, seismic activity, and the Aurora Borealis. Interesting read, just wish I could experience the actual work!

Feldman - Give My Regards to Eighth Street

A collection of essays by another favorite composer, Morton Feldman. Really fun. Not done yet but will eventually purchase - can sit next to my copy of Silence.

Kim-Cohen - In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art

This title (and subtitle) were just too good not to check out. Kim-Cohen has a breezy writing style that made this a joy to read. There are a lot of ideas here so I will need to revisit it. Essentially, Kim-Cohen compares sonic art with visual art - particularly conceptual art from the second half of the twentieth century. He claims that sonic artists have retained an essentialist, phenomenological approach while visual artists have gone beyond this - and he wants sonic artists to do the same. Again, much to absorb and think about.

Chanan - Repeated Takes

Another book by Chanan, a taut and exciting history of the recording industry, from Edison, Bell, et. al to the proliferation of the CD and so-called "world" music. It was published in 1998, so I'd be very curious what Chanan makes of CD burners, mp3s, and all that has happened in the last 13 years. From reading this book it seems that the music industry has always had the same complaints regarding piracy and their inability to keep up with new technologies.

Next up include:

Kahn - Noise, Water, Meat (been wanting to read this for awhile)

Attali - Noise: The Political Economy of Music (not too long, but still looks intimidating)

Time Out

2011-07-14T06:38:00.002-04:00

I am at the computer too much. Every summer during grad school I get excited about working and work all day, developing RSI. I haven't let it get as bad as I have before, but it's time for a break. It's really hard to force myself NOT to work, but here we are.

FLIP is going to perform The Tiger's Mind by Cornelius Cardew tomorrow, which will be a good change of pace for me. Hopefully we'll be able to get some video of it.

Ouchy.

more Lilypond fun

2011-07-08T15:14:00.004-04:00

I've been working on a short piece for piano 8 hands (2 players on keys, 2 inside). This gave me another opportunity to learn more about Lilypond. As Nympholepsy is just a solo, I had a lot more layout issues to deal with on this one. Also, arpeggios, cross and diamond noteheads, clefs, and how to override just about anything.

(click to enlarge)

Six albums now on Bandcamp

2011-07-03T10:17:00.011-04:00

The past two days I spent uploading my albums to Bandcamp.com (quite time consuming, but I got some reading and other stuff done). I think Bandcamp is well run - artist interface is very intuitive, and the "fan" interface is very clean. Although I have some of my music in other places such as CDBaby, I think it's nice to put everything on a site where it can be streamed for free.

I even uploaded albums by my old bands!

Lust for Love by Adam Scott Neal

Firehazard by Adam Scott Neal

Main link: adamscottneal.bandcamp.com

Solo Improv (Blueprint No. 1)

2011-06-16T14:48:00.005-04:00

Last Saturday, I performed this set as part of Hal McGee's "Apartment Music" series at his...apartment.

I am using my Max patch for Blueprint No. 1, though I am ignoring the score. I guess that kind of makes it the premiere...

learning Lilypond

2011-06-07T10:46:00.004-04:00

In hopes of going all open source, as well as producing better scores, I am starting to learn Lilypond. I had thought about learning it for years but was always too lazy. Now I'm finding it's fairly easy. The Lilypond website has great reference and tutorial pages, which helps.

After doing some initial tutorials, I figured the best way to really learn it was to force my way through notating a piece. I am reaching back to 2004, the beginning of my composing career, to (re)notate my flute solo "Nympholepsy." I'm pretty happy with a lot of my scores (notated in Sibelius), but for some reason this one always bothered me. Can't say why.

Below are images of the beginning of the score. The first is the Sibelius version, and the second is the new one I'm working on in Lilypond. As I'm notating, I'm reading off a version of th Sibelius score I printed out, where I had spread out the notes better than what you see here (the line breaks match those of the Lilypond score).

(click to enlarge)

Edit: here, also, is the first page of my final pencil draft:

research credits

2011-05-28T15:29:00.003-04:00

Interview with me on the Atlanta Composers Blog: here.

To keep my fellowship money from UF rolling in over the summer, I have to teach as well as take courses. Graduate summer courses are few and far between, so I'm taking "research credits." While this is basically the most lax independent study ever conceived, I am indeed researching/working.

First, I transcribed/revised two older pieces, writing for more, shall we say, plausible ensembles. Promenade de minuit for alto sax and harp now has an alternate version with piano instead of harp. Gallery was originally for flute, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, trombone, percussion, violin, viola, and double bass - a strange expanded version of Stravinsky's L'histoire ensemble. There are now 3 versions of Gallery, this latest being for small (12 member) wind ensemble: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, alto sax, tenor sax, baritone sax, horn, trumpet, trombone, and two percussionists.

Next project was revising Ghazal, a piece for quarter tone alto flute and stereo playback [mp3 mockup of old version]. I was never really satisfied with the flute part, so I pulled out the few ideas I found interesting and started over. The old version was like many bad pieces you hear, where the composer tries to fit in as many "effects" as possible, while giving the player some flowing, lyrical lines that aren't as interesting as he/she thinks. The ideas that excited me were the juxtaposition of pitch bends and discrete scales and the differences between quarter-tone, and semitone, and whole tone scales and trills. So the new version is much simpler, using far less types of ideas, and cramming less in during the 6-minute duration.

A big background project is learning about Linux and Linux-based audio tools. My ca. 2005 Dell laptop died last year, so with extremely limited funds I got an ASUS EeePC 1005HAB netbook. I love that thing, but I really needed something more powerful. I had been exploring Ubuntu on the netbook (dual boot with XP) for most of this school year, so after a lot of research and pacing I decided to invest in a System76 Gazelle. Other than an issue with the proprietary Nvidia driver (I did a fresh install of Natty Narwhal and am using the open source Nouveau driver to good results), it has been great.

Most programs install and work with ease. The only one that doesn't is SuperCollider, which I'm also working on learning. Windows and Mac have IDEs for SuperCollider, but Linux just has plugins for text editors. No problem, just different. I'll probably be posting things I've found out as we go along. Here are a few things, for anyone stumbling upon this trying to get SC to work in Ubuntu:

This page is very helpful for setting up SC in Ubuntu. On the "sources.list" part, change "hardy" to whatever version you're using, e.g. natty

I found SCVim and Emacs very confusing, personally, so I am sticking with the Gedit plugin.

Using SuperCollider in Gedit is fairly straightforward. I never tried recording with it until today, and I got an error basically saying that it couldn't write to /share/SuperCollider/Recordings. You will need to make a Recordings directory, then set the permissions (i did chmod 777 just to make sure). After that, it should work like a charm.

FLIP

2011-05-16T07:38:00.004-04:00

Here is a video of my group FLIP performing at The Laboratory in Gainesville, FL on 4/30/11.

This was our second performance ever

evolution of "Etude in Metal"

2011-05-12T11:34:00.000-04:00

In earlier entries I mentioned that I was working on a percussion solo featuring extended-range glockenspiel. I finally finished it.

It went through a few very different incarnations. The only idea that remained throughout was that the glock part would be based on the harmonics of the other instruments. So the process of writing this was boiling the piece down to that idea, essentially.

It took me awhile to get started on it this semester, but during spring break (first week of march) I had time to get out the first draft [pdf here]. I started this one by imagining a lot of different sounds using my chosen instruments, sketching these out on small pieces of paper, then categorizing them and laying them out in orders that seemed to make some kind of logical flow. After several different orders of ideas (I think I did four), I sketched out the draft seen above.

After bringing it to my teacher, we agreed that it was a bit plodding rhythmically and that it explored "linear" gestures rather than the glock-vs-gongs ideas that were what I really wanted to highlight. I then started on a second draft that featured only "chords" and spiced up the rhythm a bit. I used a rhythmic scheme based on Babbitt/Wuorinen's timepoint system, crossed with Ferneyhough's subdivisions. There are a series of 2/4 measures divided into various tuplets; the "row" if you will was 7 8 4 9 5 3 6. I used derivations of the same "row" of tuplets for the timepoints/attacks. Whereas Babbitt and Wuorinen would count just even sixteenths, I would count the same number of subdivisions and the next attack would fall on that timepoint number, regardless of its actual duration. [pdf here]

This take looks a little cooler by modernist-composer standards, but it still wasn't highlighting the idea behind the piece. The rhythm was actually distracting. So I started yet another version, doing away with traditional rhythm altogether, focusing solely on the sounds of the instruments and their combinations. The final result is very introspective, and, dare I say, pretty (I made a mockup recording for my jury, but it does not reflect all the articulation called for in the score - I'll post something when Trevor plays it for real). The final score is here [pdf].

Full Circle project on SoundCloud

2011-05-08T13:29:00.001-04:00

I am trying out SoundCloud, and have uploaded two tracks from A Sharp and Friends: Full Circle. Below is "Possibility":

Possibility by adamscottneal

Tether

2011-04-27T16:41:00.005-04:00

Here is a video of "Tether," a collaboration with artist Josh Cajinarobleto (first half of video):

My previous blog entries described it, but for those who dislike scrolling...we are both wearing boxes covered by these latex "organs." Each box has a spindle, with the cord connecting the two organs. We can crank the spindle, and that pushes a button. Also in the box is an Arduino, which counts the button pushes and maps that onto a tempo for the beeps. We each have an accelerometer as well - one axis controls frequency, the other controls duration. The sound is PWM output from the Arduinos (Arduini?), amplified and sent to two small speakers (which were also decorated with latex to resemble some kind of biomechanical growth).

It was a very hectic few days leading up to this performance, so this is actually the first time we ever performed, besides simple "yay! the accelerometer works!" tests. So we basically chose four actions and decided to perform them very slowly. First, we start close together and pull apart. Next, I pull Josh toward me. Then he wraps the cable around me. I escape, we pull apart, and he ends up on the floor. During the performance I decided to eventually hit the floor as well. We both like improvising so it ended up working fairly well.

Arduino/performance project

2011-04-01T15:52:00.002-04:00

I am taking a transdisciplinary seminar with students from the digital media and sculpture departments. The class is hit or miss - there are a few people doing interesting work and thoughts, and a few people who don't seem to know much and like everything uncritically.

Anyway, our final projects are looming. I am doing a performance with another guy in the class. We are building some wearable contraptions and will be hooked together by a cable. We're still figuring out exactly how this will take shape.

I am handling most of the programming side, getting reacquainted with the Arduino microcontroller and language. The photo above is my almost-finished circuit. The potentiometer at the bottom currently controls the "tempo," but this is going to be replaced by two buttons. As we move closer and apart from each other, we are going to unspool and rewind the cable connecting our little "proton packs" (actually they are going to be some kind of Cronenbergian "growth"). The spool will hit a momentary switch to act as a counter, while a locking button will tell the processor what direction to count.

The controls are mainly drawn from the Arduino site's great tutorials, with some modifications. Much of what you see at the bottom of the breadboard is an amp circuit that I built from the schematic and photos on this site. I had been hoping to get back into Arduino, so this has been fun, and a good review of programming and schematic reading.

Had a gig last night...

2011-03-20T21:33:00.003-04:00

CD is now available (mp3 downloads too)
Soon it will be on iTunes, Amazon, etc. as well...

The live performances were great, and quite eclectic - first was some percussion/electronics improv (Stuart Gerber and Craig Dongoski), then a reed trio (Morningside Chamber Musicians), then a prog/fusion/rock band (Gravity Machine). Then we played my CD and hung out. A good number of Atlanta composers were in attendance, and I think that the setting (Kavarna) was great for music-making and for chatting (we see each other at concerts, but there was more time to hang last night).

Major recurring topics: we need to do more artsy-eclectic shows like this one, we need to bring more people into the composerly alt-classical circle, and we need to get the audience that we know is around town to actually come to gigs (especially free ones!) Another ongoing project...

Spring Break = Update

2011-03-07T15:22:00.006-05:00

In the past month since I last posted, I've been busy with school. The biggest event was February 19-21, when my friends Cerberus Percussion Group came down to Gainesville to play two shows. The first took place at a local bar called The Laboratory; my new group FLIP opened with a set of laptop improv. I do have a recording of FLIP, which I'll take an excerpt and post at some point. Cerberus of course played Pachamama - the fourth time they performed it. Cerberus is going to put it aside for the time being, but the GSU Percussion Ensemble, led by Stuart Gerber, will be performing it on April 5.

On February 21, Cerberus performed at UF for the portrait concert of our guest composer Mark Applebaum. I was in charge of curating the concert, which included a dozen of Mark's pieces. Cerberus played his percussion duo Go, Dog. Go! and his trio Catfish. Mark played some jazz piano, we presented a few of his tape pieces (including the hilarious Pre-Composition. UF students performed a piece for carillon, piano six-hands, 3 conductors (and no players), and some improv pieces such as 48 Objects and The Metaphysics of Notation. Below is a cool video documentary about the latter:

There's No Sound In My Head from lateral on Vimeo.

As for my own music, I am working on a multi-percussion solo (with an emphasis on glockenspiel) for Trevor Saint. It was originally conceived as a piece for glock and tape, but I just keep finding that I have no ideas for "tape," nor do I have a real desire to write for tape right now. Someday, perhaps.

My work is definitely in experimental mode right now; not much "finished product" that I'm extremely pleased with, but exercises that I'm confident will lead somewhere, eventually!

Saxophone Solo masterclass

2011-01-25T08:34:00.003-05:00

Susan Fancher, an excellent saxophonist based in North Carolina, visited UF and gave a composition masterclass. Three other students and I wrote etudes for her to play, and she worked them up and talked through them with us.

My piece, Blueprint No. 2, was originally indeterminate. I wanted to explore multiphonics, and base melodies on these multiphonics. Unfortunately, multiphonics on woodwind instruments are notoriously difficult to predict - the same fingerings can produce drastically different results on each instrument. So, in my score, I ask performers to pick their three favorite multiphonics, write them down, then improvise with melodic contours and rhythms I provide, centering around the pitches within the multiphonics. The score is here.

Susan picked three multiphonics but suggested that I write out the piece based around these, rather than having her improvise. She felt that to do the piece justice, she would need to write it out herself. She didn't have much time, but she agreed that some saxophonist in the future might have a lot of fun doing so.

I took her multiphonics and made a second version for her to practice. The score is here, and you can listen below:

Laptop Improv

2011-01-25T08:31:00.004-05:00

On Saturday, January 15th, I participated in an improv festival at a bar called The Laboratory in Gainesville, FL. This event featured 36 solo improvisers, each playing a set of 9 minutes or less. Here is mine:

SuperCollider Project

2010-12-14T11:18:00.002-05:00

I have been learning SuperCollider this semester, and just finished up my final project. It is an algorithmic piece and uses some basic additive and subtractive synthesis to make bell and percussive sounds.

The main idea is that some large bells will play notes chosen randomly from a set, and when certain notes are played, other sounds will be triggered and play short segments.

The pitch material is all based on ratios for synth bells that I found in a SuperCollider tutorial: 0.5, 1, 1.19, 1.56, 2, 2.51, 2.66, 3.01, 4.1. In other words, if your bell plays 100Hz, the harmonics will be 50, 100, 119, 156, 200, 251, 266, 301, and 410 Hz.

I made a set of frequencies - a scale if you will - based on these ratios, starting at 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, and 3200 Hz. The harmonics of each overlap, so when the bells play, their harmonics won't have these exact ratios anymore, but they still sound very bell-like. Each time through the algorithm, the bells will be chosen from a subset of this main scale, so there are slight modulations. Also, since the notes are chosen randomly, they will trigger the other sounds differently each time.

For those interested, I have uploaded the code (in HTML).

I recorded a few versions of the piece. This is the one I liked best:

You can listen to some alternate takes here, here, and here.

Jury Pieces

2010-12-09T19:21:00.002-05:00

Next Monday I will have my first composition jury at UF. I am not sweating it, having done composition juries at GSU for several years. These are apparently more low-key - one-on-one (one-on-three?) with the faculty, as opposed to a public reading of the new works.

Sounds fine, except one thing: everyone keeps using the term "jury piece." Surely I'm not the only one who wrote pieces for the sake of writing pieces. Surely people aren't composing just to get a grade.

Anyway, I will present Ghazal and Wedge Issue. You can peruse them below:

Ghazal score
Ghazal mp3 - tape part with MIDI flute

Wedge Issue score
Wedge Issue mp3 - MIDI rendition

still alive!

2010-12-03T17:22:00.003-05:00

I made a promise to myself to keep up with this blog when I started back to school, but it looks like I've been up to my usual rarely-updating tricks.

Major projects of late:

Saxophone quartet - now officially titled "Wedge Issue." I am hoping to get some saxophonists here at UF to read through it before the end of term. Will post if that happens!

"Full Circle" hip-hop-ish project. I got pretty close to done, then decided I would never be really happy with it if I didn't go back and redo the backing tracks. So I denoised and quantized a little. Really hoping to get this done by the new year, which essentially means by the end of this semester. Hmmm....

SuperCollider etude. Originally I was calling this "Phony Morricone" and using instrument samples to evoke a Leone western. Due to various factors (processing speed, not-too-great samples from freesound.org, etc.), I decided to go an all-synth route.

So now I have some bell, organ, and percussion sounds. It's pretty "moody" and "dark." I'm still very much a SuperCollider novice, but I'm getting better with programming and general knowledge of its capabilities. Will post this when I'm done, as well - even the code, because I'm sure you're very interested in that part!

ok, back to it...

Unbalanced Connection concert - thoughts on diffusion

2010-11-06T13:20:00.003-04:00

Last night at the University of Florida, we presented Unbalanced Connection 46 - yes, the 46th concert in a series dating back 14 years. You can see all of the old programs here.

We decided that this concert would focus on diffusing fixed media works (though it also included two live-electronics works). For those who may not know, sound diffusion is a performance practice in electroacoustic music, where a "sound projectionist" (usually, but not always the composer) will move a stereo piece to different speakers in the concert hall. This is different than works mixed in the studio for surround presentation (5.1, octophonic, etc.). Diffusion and "multi-channel" works both have their advantages. I prefer diffusion myself because I enjoy the performance aspect and the fact that I can more readily adapt a piece to fit a given space.

Last night I presented my 2008 piece Obedience School. This is a stereo fixed-media piece, which I have diffused twice before - once at SARC and once for the Electronic Music Midwest festival. Each place had a completely different speaker configuration, so it is always a new challenge to determine where sounds should go at what times.

Last night, the GATOR system (Great And Thunderous Octophonic Resonator) was expanded to 16 channels, plus subwoofers. We had two pairs of speakers ("narrow" and "wide") on stands on the stage, plus a pair of wedges on the floor. Additionally, we had a pair of speakers backstage. We had pairs of subwoofers and a stereo pair on the sides, and two pairs ("narrow" and "wide" again) in the back.

My diffusion was largely improvised, though I did have some ideas from my previous performances. For instance, at EMM I played one part about 3/4 through the piece where the original dog sample is most apparent through the single speaker in front. Last night I played this through the front-narrow only. Much of the rest of the piece has some sound going through most of the speakers, so hopefully the change was dramatic. Due to the stadium seating of the room, the rears were very high compared to the stage speakers. However, this was very effective for some of the high-frequency clicking and "bird sounds" in the piece. I also liked the "distance" provided by the backstage speakers and used them in several points, using them exclusively for the very end. I used the wedges (nearly) alone for a portion of the piece where I had low buzzing noises, attempting to emphasize the vertical aspects of the room again.

Being so focused in the performance, I don't know if all of the strategies worked as well as I hoped, but I felt happy with them. If only I had a binaural microphone so I could listen back!

sax quartet beginnings

2010-11-02T17:47:00.004-04:00

As mentioned previously, I had been toying with the idea of writing a sax quartet. Now I'm not just toying with it, I'm actually working on it.

Unfortunately, I keep "flip-flopping" on whether I like my ideas or not. This piece is basically a process piece, where short ideas wedge themselves in the middle of other short ideas, creating ever-longer, palendromic phrases. I like the idea in general, and I think "Wedge Issue" would be a great title.

Somehow, though, there just doesn't seem to be "enough to it." Now I'm thinking through what I've drafted so far (about 3 minutes of a 5-6 minute piece) and pondering what I can alter to keep the interest up. Pondering what I can do to subvert the process just enough that it is still perceptible but not so damned obvious.

As I brought up in my composition lesson today, there is kind of a pressure (98% internal) that I make each work "the greatest thing I've done so far." I mean, I'm a PhD student now. But in any field of research there has to be some trial, and with it, some error. As long as I don't parade this piece around like it really is "the greatest thing I've done so far," I guess it won't hurt anyone if I work on it and see what happens!

Mare Serenitatis at UF's Baughman Center

2010-10-29T10:36:00.002-04:00

Last night some of my colleagues (Sean Peuquet, Thomas Royal, and Jorge Variego) put on a concert at UF's Baughman Meditation Center. It is a beautiful building right on Lake Alice. They invited the other composers to compose pieces for the space, which is very interesting acoustically. It is very reverberant and has fairly pronounced standing waves at certain frequencies.

I adapted an old piece, Mare Serenitatis. I wrote this piece in 2008 for submission to Concordia University's Harvest Moon festival. One of the festival's categories was "Pianissimo Highs," which stipulated quiet pieces that never fall below 2kHz. I created this piece by using part of the Max/MSP interface for Baffin Bay, improvising with high frequencies in 8 channels. Pretty simple but I think it sounds neat. Listen here.

The Baughman center has resonances at 26.8 Hz and its multiples. For this version, I decided to play two tones at a time, targeting frequencies that would create difference tones that matched the resonances of the space. I made a little filtered pulse with delay to articulate the same frequency.

What I played was essentially an improv, though I did have a rough plan in mind. Since 26.8 Hz is close to a very low A (27.5 Hz), I thought of things that way. I started both of my pulsating sine notes (actually 4 pulsating sines for each note) on high (detuned) A's. I started moving one down little by little, down to a D, playing the delayed pulse on occasion. Then I started moving both of the notes down until I had roughly an E6 and an A5, which made a difference tone of ~A4. I played that pulse a few times and faded everything out.

I wasn't paying too much attention to time but I didn't want it to last too long (though it's fun for me to listen and play - I could have gone on for half an hour). I'm guessing it was about 3-4 minutes. No recording this time but hopefully I'll have a chance to adapt it to another venue sometime!

work, sonnet, concerts, and stuff

2010-10-23T16:55:00.003-04:00

I'm the type who never considers a composition "done" (I'm not at all a perfectionist though), but my flute piece is basically finished. This week I finally got back to work on the "Full Circle" hip-hop-ish project. It's been fun to hear stuff start to come together. I am also thinking up ideas for my final project in my DSP seminar, and toying with the idea of writing a saxophone quartet.

Also, if you missed my Twitter post, I do have a recording of my 48-hour piece: http://www.adamscottneal.com/instant_sonnet.mp3

This next week or so will be busy - a concert by the Sonic Computing Organization on Thursday in UF's Baughman Center. I am presenting a version of Mare Serenitatis, altered to match the resonances of the space... The following Friday will be the 46th Unbalanced Connection concert of electroacoustic music at UF. I will be diffusing Obedience School on the 16-channel GATOR system.

I am supposed to pick my cognate area (aka doctoral minor) and my dissertation committee by the end of this school year. Had a good meeting with a professor in Film and Media studies, and am going to sit in on his Film Theory course. I had been thinking variously of doing the cognate in philosophy or digital media, but I think that film & media studies is closer in line to what I want to research.

48, ubuntu, mac people, ghazal, mirror universes, free download

2010-10-17T09:47:00.004-04:00

Well, this week has flown by. The 48-Hour show went well. I liked my piece a lot better when I heard humans perform it. Waiting for a recording...

For my DSP class, we are using SuperCollider and my prof's own PVC. The second one posed a problem, as it was written for Mac and I am a rare creative-type who uses Windows primarily. Fortunately, this program is run in the Terminal, so with a little reconfiguring it can also be run in Linux.

I installed Ubuntu on my little netbook - I used Wubi, which I highly recommend if you want to see how Linux works. You install it within Windows, without making a partition. So I have been exploring a little bit. Some things are easier to install than others (It's going to take me awhile to get SuperCollider running), but overall I like it quite a bit.

An added bonus to using Linux is the "respect" factor. Now, I think that all operating systems are usable, but "Mac people" have this thing about making fun of Windows. If I use Linux then "Mac people" will finally shut up (because Linux has this esoteric cache - "wow, you must be realllly good with computers!"). I really can't stand "Mac people." Please note that I am differentiating between Mac users and "Mac people."

Moving on...

Ghazal for alto flute is almost finished. I had my first session in the Florida Electroacoustic Music Studio the other day. I need to hang out there more. We have good speakers (Genelec). And a Mac. :P

I have essentially finished writing the Mirror Universes series, and now Caleb Herron and I are making plans to record all the pieces for a CD. I am really looking forward to that - I enjoyed his and Ariana's rendition (of No. 2), but I think that the pieces will work better listening at home than in a coffeeshop.

Speaking of CDs, I decided to put Late Frost and Parallel Lives up for free download on my site. I had broken even on them, and it's not like I'll be losing millions of dollars in revenue. They are still available for purchase on various sites, just in case someone stumbles upon me elsewhere.

I'm sure more happened this week, and I'll post it if it seems important. Cheers!

48-Hour Show

2010-10-10T23:05:00.003-04:00

I'll write a real blog later. I am going to upload screen shots of my work-in-progress to this entry.

Third section. It has unison melodies, and may be - dare I say - "pretty":

Second section now looks more like this: (finished around 2:00am, posting at 9:55 am)

Second section - too march-like, to overtly renaissance for my taste. Getting scrapped but here you go. (12:17am)

First section, done for now. 11:06pm

48-Hour Show preview

2010-10-07T08:49:00.003-04:00

This Sunday-Tuesday at UF we are embarking on a project known as the 48-Hour Show. Composers will randomly draw an ensemble and have 24 hours to compose. The ensembles will then have 24 hours to rehearse. I am very excited about participating, being a veteran of this type of show (I started Georgia State's Instant Music Series - which to my delight is still going - back in '06). 48 hours is too much time, if you ask me, but I'm the new guy here so no one did.

I will blog about the experience afterward, but I will be tweeting about it starting Sunday night.

In celebration and preparation, I would like to share my two "Instant" pieces from '06 and '07. I am happy with both of them:

April 1, 2006

For the first Instant Music, I randomly drew as my quartet 2 percussionists, classical guitar, and trumpet. Somehow, this made me imagine something Takemitsu-esque. I wrote a 12-tone piece, since I was using that technique a lot at the time and since I knew it would be helpful to churn out notes.

This piece later became the first movement of Three Haiku. Here are links and recordings of both for comparison's sake.

Score, Haiku for 4 Players

Score, Three Haiku

March 30, 2007

Compared to the second year, I had a luxurious amount of time to write Haiku. Due to my teaching schedule and a desire for a few hours of sleep, I have about 4 hours to compose my Instant piece.

This time I drew trumpet and baritone singer. We made an option that you could add yourself as a performer to your own piece, so I added piano. For the text, I chose a poem by Charles Bukowski. Note: not safe for work.

Score of You

Enjoy!

flute piece draft

2010-10-01T14:03:00.003-04:00

This week I continued knocking the flute part into shape, and I made a mockup with the MIDI rendition plus some of the electronic textures I've been making.

Next big task is to make the real electronic part, which will be based on these textures, but be more elaborate. At the same time, I am planning to make the changes in textures gradual enough that the soloist has room to play with the tempo and not worry too much about lining up exactly with the electronic part.

flute melodies taking shape

2010-09-26T10:49:00.002-04:00

This week I focused on writing the flute part. I am about halfway done with the draft. My initial sketch is just some rhythms and basic contours on blank paper, and I have been trying out different pitches and writing them in. After this I started putting the melodies in Sibelius to see how they sound (mainly for the microtonal stuff).

After trying to come up with some kind of quarter-tone pitch scheme, I decided that this piece will mainly focus on the usual 12 semitones, with quarter tone inflections. I am basing my pitches on a 2-octave 12-tone set, the same as what I used in my piano piece Through the Canopy.

Canopy's row begins on C#, and I transposed it up a fifth to G# for this piece. Despite being based on a row, the work is very centered around E, due to my drone idea. I chose E because the Kingma alto flute can easily do any kind of trill there (written A). B (written E) has the same ease-of-trilling property, but I wanted to be able to play some notes below the drone pitch, yet still have the drone pitch be low in the flute's range.

Here is an mp3 of the MIDI mockup I am making as I compose. It is about 3 minutes, so we're about halfway through. There are a lot of pitch-bends that you won't hear, and the trills are all semitone, but you can get a sense of what I'm going for.

flute piece - electronic beginnings

2010-09-20T10:03:00.002-04:00

This week I spent most of my composition time working on materials for the 'tape'/'computer' part of my flute piece. Below is an mp3 of the best parts.

(Times approximate)
0:00-0:30 Flute and tambura samples, chopped up and shuffled around, then reverberated.
0:30-0:55 same thing, pitch-shifted down one octave
0:55-1:10 first attempt at editing, it was too sparse - not planning to use this but i kinda like the idea. maybe in another piece - to "funky" for this one.
1:10-1:35 chopping up a scale with a lot of air sounds. could maybe be something, especially when reverberated, but not sure at this point.
1:35-1:55 chopped up air sound, then reverberated. i like this texture a good bit - this and the pitch-shifted drone idea will probably be the main 'backdrops'.
1:55-2:30 convolved a flute chromatic scale with a recording of pigeons. works pretty nicely, I think.

ghazal

2010-09-13T08:32:00.002-04:00

Since I have been exploring Arabic music for my quarter-tone alto flute piece, I began thinking about other aspects of the piece - the form and the electronic accompaniment.

For the form, I am going back to an idea I have worked with in the past: using poetic forms as the basis for musical structure. I did this first with Three Haiku, then with Tanka, and with a couple abandoned pieces based on the cinquain, sonnet, and pantoum. Since I was looking to the Middle East, I found a few forms and chose the ghazal.

The ghazal form is a series of rhyming couplets. These couplets are generally only loosely related, but the second line always rhymes. Since I have been asked to write a 6-7 minute piece, I decided to create twelve roughly 30-second "couplets," where the final five-or-so seconds will be variations on the same motive.

I sketched out eight flute ideas I wanted to explore; each couplet will focus on one of these, though some of the ideas will crop up in other couplets. One idea explores trills - moving from timbral (one note, but played with different fingerings so there is a fluctuation in the timbre), to quarter tone, to semitone, to whole tone (probably not further, though I could...). Another explores the difference between pitch bends and discrete quarter-tone scales (i.e. play a pitch bend, then play a slurred scale between the same notes). Another involves very short, fast whole-tone, three-quarter-tone, and semitone scales.

I decided on an order for all these sections, but as I started conceiving the electronic accompaniment, I shuffled them around. Going against the unrelatedness of the ghazal couplets, mine will display overall gradual changes. There will be an opening melodic section, which I called "normal" even though it will have quarter-tones and other weirdness. After this comes the bend-scale section, followed by trills, then scales, then noisy sweeps, then slap tonguing. So there will be a general change from continuous "normal" melodies to more sparse and noise-based material.

The accompaniment (as I conceive it now, anyway) will also gradually progress. It will start with a low drone of some sort, then introduce some noisy sounds (I'm thinking something like a flock of birds taking off), then move to continuous, high, airy sounds, finally working back to the low drone.

mirror universes - pencil to computer

2010-09-09T10:43:00.003-04:00

I have sketched out the last four entries in my Mirror Universes series. The process for each one is basically the same.

First, I write out the 'parallel techniques' I can think of for the instruments I am using in the piece. For example, MU3 involves vibraphone and trombone. Both can do pitch bends (the vibraphone is obviously more limited there). Both can have brighter timbres if played at the node or with a mute. Once I have a list of these type of ideas, I determine how many of each there will be (generally 3-4 per effect and 4-6 for "normal" melodic figures).

Then comes the pencil sketch. These are very rough and I write them quickly. It's almost an improvisation.

Once I have the pencil sketch, I sit on it for a few days, then start putting it in Sibelius, with corrections and additions.

Once they are all in Sibelius, I plan to send Caleb the scores as .pdfs for suggestions and revisions. Tentative plan is to record these sometime around the winter holidays.

drone ditty

2010-09-06T11:28:00.004-04:00

For this alto flute piece I'm writing, I'm considering making a drone through the majority of the tape part. I made a quick test thing with triangle waves, and I made a quick quarter-tone tester thing (both are Max/MSP patches).

Below is an improv I did - will give you a sense of some of the ideas I'm playing with for this piece. I found some information about Arabic maqamat (scales), and am planning to use tetrachords from this system as a basis for my melodic figures (it won't be straight up scales, but I will be using some of the interval patterns.

The first part you will hear is a little passage on the Rast tetrachord - a whole step and two 3/4-steps. After this I played some scales to hear how they sound with the drone - quarter tone, chromatic, whole tone, then a 3/4-tone scale. Good times.

more hip-hop project fun

2010-09-04T09:06:00.003-04:00

I have been playing around with one of the tracks from my hip-hop project, working title "Octagon." For most of the tracks, I had 2 people record solos, but this track only had one. I tried recording some Hammond-ish organ solos, but since the backing track uses similar timbres, it tended to get lost.

Then I came up with an idea to go for the electronica cliché of sticking in some (public domain) movie quotes. I looked around and found some great dialogue from the Vincent Price film The Last Man on Earth, which is based on the novel I Am Legend. I am doing some processing on the quotes for word-painting purposes. Kinda rough, but here is what I have so far:

I really love Darren Nelsen's guitar contribution to this piece. I thought it would be fun to dissect and scramble the solo later in the track. Below is the original, then the reconstituted version:

Mirror Universes series

2010-09-02T07:46:00.005-04:00

Mirror Universes is a series of duets I am composing. Each piece features vibraphone or multipercussion with a melodic instrument. I composed the first one, for viola and vibraphone, for a now-defunct duo named String Gone Deaf. The second one, for clarinet and multipercussion, was written for the Devil May Care duo. They performed it in Boston, New York, and Duluth, GA.

These are open-score pieces. Both players read the same score, which consists of 30-40 disconnected cells of music. The players each choose their own path through the music. Some cells are straight-forward (consisting of short melodic gestures), while some have special effects. In the cells with special effects, I tried to find similar effects in both instruments. For example, in MU1, the cells in which the viola plays pizzicato direct the vibraphone to play without pedal in order to get a very staccato sound. In MU2, clarinet trills are reflected by bongo rolls and gongs, with their inharmonic partials, are reflected by multiphonics in the clarinet.

Listen to DMC's performance below and you will get a better idea. You can also look at [the score] and try to deduce their paths.

(Performance in Duluth, GA).

The next entries in the series will be for trombone and vibraphone; saxophone and multipercussion; classical guitar and multipercussion; and finally vibraphone and multipercussion. DMC percussionist Caleb Herron and I are planning to record the whole series for release sometime next year. While I'm not sure that playing the entire set in concert would be particularly compelling (they all have a similar character - mezzo-piano throughout with brief bursts of activity), I think they will work as a home listening experience.

Straphanger/Petrichor

2010-08-31T08:13:00.003-04:00

As mentioned in yesterday's post, one of my current projects is a CD of experimental ambient music. I call it ambient because the music is slow-paced, quiet, and expansive. It is not necessarily soothing, though!

Straphanger and Petrichor are both old pieces. Hard to believe that I made Straphanger four years ago!

Clip of Straphanger (full track available through iTunes, Amazon, etc.)
Recording of Petrichor, with Tadej Kenig, clarinet

Inspired by reading about the Atrium Sound Space at the College of Santa Fe, I began expanding some of the materials for these pieces for use in an installation. I made about thirty to forty tracks of materials that could either be played on shuffle by multiple CD players, or played on shuffle in a little Max/MSP program I made.

Excerpt of Straphanger installation
Excerpt of Petrichor installation

Although these pieces have not been 'installed' anywhere yet, I did use them as backdrops for an improv concert in Belfast. I called it "Rainy Commute." Here is an excerpt.

This summer I decided that I would like to release these installation versions, but I needed to put them in a form suitable for most listeners. The multiple-CD/Max version would not work, but a CD would. To create the new 'Ambient' versions, I used two different approaches.

For Straphanger, I used the proportions from the original piece to determine the lengths of sections (these were based on various Golden Section proportions to begin with). I simply multiplied the lengths by five to get a thirty minute piece instead of a six minute piece. From there, I started arranging tracks from the installation within these sections. In the original Straphanger, each section emphasizes a different sound - train door beeps, conductor announcements, track noises, etc. I did the same in this new version, except that I let other sounds emerge here and there for interest.

For Petrichor, I started with the same approach, but I felt that some of the sections were too long and too similar. Instead, I ran and recorded my Max/MSP patch four times, then stitched together the best moments from each "take."

I am still polishing these but hoping to release the disc sometime in September.

Getting back in gear

2010-08-30T08:09:00.002-04:00

If you haven't been reading my Twitter updates, I have made it to Gainesville, Florida (and have been here three weeks tomorrow). I have settled into my apartment, though I have only had one week of school and one of my classes hasn't even met yet. So in that regard, I'm still settling in.

I have several projects in the works, which I will write more about soon:

1. Straphanger/Petrichor - these titles may be familiar to some, as I wrote them in '06 and '07. I also created extended installation version of the pieces. What I am working on now is a CD of ambient-ish versions, based on the files used in the installations, but on the formal structures of the originals. Both pieces are around 30 minutes. More details in a later post.

2. Mirror Universes series - two of these have been written so far, and the Devil May Care duo played No. 2 on their East Coast tour this year [video]. Each will feature Caleb Herron on percussion and a guest on various instruments (so far viola and clarinet, with pieces for trombone and sax sketched out). We are hoping to release a CD of the pieces sometime next year.

3. Full Circle project - my hip-hop hybrid project. For those new to this blog, I was documenting my progress in the spring, but then my laptop died and I lost a lot of my data. Finally I have time to recreate stuff and am stitching things together for a winter release.

4. Quarter-tone flute piece - this will be a 6-7 minute piece for quarter-tone flute and electronics of some sort. I have barely begun this but I promised to do it a long time ago, so I will do my best to finish it this semester. Writing it for Carla Rees in London.

preparation

2010-06-10T08:28:00.002-04:00

Hello everyone -

My musical activities will basically be on hold the next two months as I prepare for my move to Florida. It's sad, but there's just no time! A big proportion of my 'free' time will be spent reviewing for my music theory and history placement exams. I have already found an apartment but obviously there are many little tasks that must be done when one moves to a new place.

Have a great summer and look for updates here in August!

selling out?

2010-05-06T10:52:00.004-04:00

Back in March, there was a discussion on Sequenza21 about copyright, self-publishing, giving away scores, etc. I've been thinking about this kind of thing a lot. I give away tons of free media on my site, but I also released two albums for sale last year. I had no grand delusions of making millions of dollars off of those recordings, but of course was looking for a little pocket change for my efforts. After an extremely difficult year financially, I have started thinking more about trying to turn my music-making into a profitable business (again, no grand delusions here).

Two of the more active posters in this discussion were Jonathan Newman and John Mackey, two composers who have found great success composing for wind band and who compose full-time. Mackey notes on his great blog that he received at least 72 performances of his piece Asphalt Cocktail last year. With the score for sale at $60 a pop and parts for rent at $350, he made about $29,520 from that piece alone.

I played trombone in wind bands for a long time, but I never had much inspiration to write for it. I like to write (and listen to) chamber music and electroacoustic music. The money and performances are obviously in the band arena, though.

A few years ago, I made wind band arrangements of two old pieces of mine: Aggressor (originally trombone quartet) and Redwoods (originally bass guitar and piano). I think they are about a grade 2.5 (if you know wind band grades well, please take a look and let me know where they would fall). [Aggressor score] [MIDI rendition] [Redwoods score] [MIDI rendition]. I made these with the intent of marketing them to high school bands, which obviously I have yet to do.

Last year I thought about digging out my infamous Three Experiments for Brass and MC and arranging them for wind ensemble. Haven't gotten around to that, either. More recently I came up with an idea of doing an album of compositions for vintage keyboards (Hammond, Rhodes, Minimoog, etc.) and being the musical recycler I am, thought about taking elements of that piece, as well as some other half-finished works.

Now I am torn. Part of me says "arrange them for band - I could get a lot of performances, plus high schoolers would probably have a blast playing these pieces." Another part of me says "I could have fun playing this myself, and putting all of my work within an electronic/chamber context would be closer to my aesthetic taste."

I guess the overall question is "what kind of composer will I be?" Will I be one with a niche, or one who is eclectic? Can I maintain an experimental side and a more commercial side? What if my band music somehow becomes popular and that's what I am known for, even if I don't take it as seriously as my other work? I welcome your thoughts...

Update

2010-04-23T10:42:00.003-04:00

Hello readers - hopefully you check the Twitter feed on the lower right and keep up to date. Since my last post I did buy a new laptop - an EeePC netbook. Sure, an iPad would have been more hip, but I am perfectly happy to run WindowsXP at a much faster speed than my old laptop. Plus I'm actually loving the small size. In other words, perfect for my purposes.

Big news is that I finally accepted a great fellowship to study for my PhD at the University of Florida. Will be moving there at the end of summer.

Otherwise, no musical work has been going on as I have been dealing with a ton of "life issues" that I won't bother you with here. Quite stressful right now and I can't wait for August! I think that things will cool down sooner than that and hopefully I can post some more things for your listening pleasure next month.

Dead Laptop

2010-03-07T10:26:00.002-05:00

My loyal Dell of nearly 6 years is finally dead. Corrupt hard drive. CD drive has been dead for sometime now, so I feel like it's time to upgrade.

I lost some of my most recent data, so hopefully I can recreate it while it is fresh on my mind. Stay tuned!

Full Circle: More assembly tests

2010-02-28T10:32:00.002-05:00

In this episode I have two assembly jobs that you can listen to. The process right now is to take all the solos and put them in order, change things around in the backing track, etc.

ATL Funk (fka Bass Funk 1)

Here I have solos from Jason Passmore (sax), Margie Deeb (flute), and Darren Nelsen (guitar). Darren also played some rhythm guitar parts, adding some nice spice to the proceedings. This is not really a mix, just a test to hear how parts sound together and in succession.

Listen

Crunkdafunkdafied

Here I combined my primary track with Nicole Randall Chamberlain's flute solo and my fast version (electric piano solo to come!). To make the transition, I also sped up and repeated the opening wah sound, and made versions of the main drum loop at 2x, 1.75x, 1.5x, 1.25x, and 1.13x speeds. This way we have a nice deceleration back into the original beat.

Listen

Full Circle: First 'Possibility' edit

2010-02-23T21:49:00.002-05:00

This is a quick update, but a longer sample. I have been stitching together various parts of various tracks. Below is what I have so far for 'Possibility.' It is a deliberately poor quality mp3, by the way.

Listen

The opening guitar theme, played by Darren Nelsen, is the part I wrote. He and Margie Deeb (flute) came up with the other solos. You can hear elements from earlier episodes, such as the brassage-flutes after the flute solo, and the breakbeatish drums after the guitar solo.

I feel that the succession of solos makes the piece too fast-paced compared to the laid-back groove it presents. Still, I don't want interest to wane...will have to think on it!

Full Circle: Slowly taking shape

2010-02-20T11:24:00.003-05:00

This week, I mainly worked on assembling solos with the tracks. Not as much experimentation, though I have some ideas.

In the clip below, you will here the following:

0:00-0:30
80s Action - the end of Jason Pellett's solo, followed by the main theme/chorus/hook, played by Jason Passmore. I thought it might sound cool to have a sax section instead of just a solo sax, so I did some studio trickery to see how it sounded. There are 4 tracks of saxophones - 2 at pitch, 2 an octave lower. I also detuned and delayed one track from each octave to make a thicker sound. Still a little tweaking to be done but I like the idea so far.

0:30-1:00
Crunkdafunkdafied - I had changed the tempo (preserving pitch) in an earlier example, and I liked the sound - sort of acid-jazzy. Here I pitch shifted the uptempo track by a semitone and a whole tone in each direction, giving me several more chords. Some sound very obviously pitch-shifted, but I kinda like that...I improvised an electric piano solo and I think it will work. I have really bad latency issues today, so I will look into that and do another solo later.

Enjoy! - Listen

More experiments for Full Circle

2010-02-15T18:37:00.002-05:00

Hi readers and listeners!

I have done a little more thinking and experimenting, and have some new examples for you:

Listen

In the first part, you will hear a new wave-ish beat, with some pitch-shifted and distorted flutes. This may be part of "Crunkdafunkdafied" - I'm thinking of having a double-time section in the middle. I was hoping for the drums to be more punkish, but I'm using the same samples from the current track and they aren't quite right. Of course, this is the first try...

The drums were sequenced in Primate, a little drum machine I made in Max/MSP. I pitch shifted and distorted the flutes in CoolEdit.

In the second part, you will hear me messing around with the backing track from "Octagon." I opened it in the user interface for my laptop piece Morty's Mood. Just skipping around and changing speed/direction. I think a turntablish solo would be cool for this one, I'll just need to practice and revise the interface a bit.

Codename: Full Circle continues

2010-02-13T10:58:00.003-05:00

The last few days haven't been as productive, but I have some new clips to share.

The first track has the working title "80s Action" because it originally sounded to me like something out of an 80s Action movie - the part where the two buddies are driving around the city at night, building tension before the final shootout...

So I have sax (Jason Passmore) and trumpet (Jason Pellett) for this one. After playing Pellett's trumpet theme, it reminded me of Ennio Morricone's western music. So I took a few notes from Passmore, stretched them a ton with the Csound phase vocoder (pvoc), and made a pretty effective "string" section. Coupled with Pellett's trumpet and a church bell I nabbed from the Freesound Project, it may make a fun intro. Listen below (Yes, I am aware I will need to fix some intonation issues):

80s Action tests

The second track I was working with is called "Possibility." Here I have guitar by Darren Nelsen and flute by his wife Margie Deeb. Darren sent me versions of the theme I wrote, played with different effects. I liked this one with overdrive the best. After this is a little experiment, taking Margie's version of the theme and granulating it.

Possibility tests

Codename: Full Circle begins

2010-02-10T22:39:00.003-05:00

So far this week, I have been listening to my soloists' tracks and formulating ideas about how to put these pieces together. As a brief appetizer, listen to this mp3 below:

Experiments1

As I wrote in the previous post, for this project I will take existing 'beats,' add solos and other goodies and make hopefully interesting tracks. So this mp3 contains excerpts from some of the processing I've been trying out. The processes are nothing new in and of themselves, but I should have an interesting stew when all is said and done.

0:00-0:12
Working Title: You - main beat, filtered to a g-minor triad. Wide spacing, based on the harmonic series, but with a B-flat instead of B-natural. Compiled in Csound - butterbp filters, 5Hz bands.

0:15-0:30
ATL Funk - main beat convolved with a flute playing E5 (played by Nicole Chamberlain from her solo for Crunkdafunkdafied!). Done in Csound with the convolve opcode.

0:30-0:35
Crunkdafunkdafied - sped up, with pitch preserved (in CoolEdit 96!). I repeated each bar so that the harmonic motion remains at the same rate.

0:36-0:50
Possibility - I wanted a jittery, grainy effect, so I did a little script in Mikel Keuhn's nGen to make a Csound score. It reads through the beat at about half-speed. Going to play with this idea a bit more.

0:50-1:20
Possibility - In this part I used the bbcut opcode in Csound to do some breakbeat stuff with the Possibility beat. I changed the parameters and generated 3 minutes of material; here is a taste. If I use this, it probably won't be as-is. I will take bits and pieces and put them in an order I prefer. A little too random at this point.

These experiments may show up in another piece instead, or not at all. Stay tuned!

New old project

2010-02-06T11:52:00.002-05:00

I am excited to resurrect a project that has been dormant for nearly three years!

I was originally asked to write a flute solo with hip-hop beats as accompaniment. I came up with eight different tracks, but the project stalled as the flutist and I became busy with many other things (and both moved away from Hotlanta). This project has been in the back of my mind for a long time, and finally around September last year I came up with an idea to revamp it.

I asked several of my Atlanta-based composer-performer pals to record themes that I wrote for each track, then compose and record two variations. Most tracks have contributions from two people, and I am now starting to stitch these together.

I also decided to 'remix' the tracks a little bit - make more sections, use more than two chords (!), etc. This will hopefully make the tracks into interesting compositions, instead of just a repetitive beat with two people soloing.

I am going to post little excerpts of the pieces as they progress. To start, here is part of Nicole Randall Chamberlain's recording, synced up to a track named 'Crunkdafunkdafied.' In another event of recycling/resurrecting old pieces, this track is based on a jam I wrote for my old band Chancellor Dugan.

Listen here.

a year ends, a new one begins

2009-12-31T13:06:00.002-05:00

Although I have not posted in a month and a half, I am not dead, nor have I abandoned this blog. Strangely, I have been very busy, but have little to tell!

PhD applications are practically done (just need to bug my recommenders...and I hate bugging people!). I had a seasonal job as well as my normal one, so lots of work.

2009 has been tough for many of us, but I have a very good feeling about 2010. I'll see you then!

Two new videos

2009-11-15T22:07:00.003-05:00

I uploaded two new videos today:

This is "Snow Drifts," a track from Late Frost. I used CamStudio to make a video capture of an improvised painting session in ArtRage.

This is an algorithmic music experiment made in Max/MSP. I used a 4x4 magic square to determine various aspects of the music.

Top line = number of "voices" in each section. There are a total of 16 notes in each chord, but most are turned off in the subsequent sections.

Line 2 = Number of chords in each section. Each lasts an equal amount of time within each section. In other words, section 1 lasts 90 seconds, and there are 5 chords, so 90/5 = 18 seconds each.

Line 3 determined the length of each section - I multiplied them by 10 to make the piece longer.

The bottom determines the tempo. Again, this used division - section 1 is 90 seconds, and there are 4 "bars" lasting 22.5 seconds. The notes are all related to this length. The top left happens 16 times within that 22.5 seconds (or every 1.4 seconds), etc. The last section is very slow; if you think about it, it is 2 "beats" per minute!

Applications continued

2009-10-28T19:56:00.003-04:00

Thanks to all for your comments. They helped reiterate some of my own opinions about my pieces. So, each school will get a slightly different portfolio (depending on if they focus on electronics, requested only 3 pieces, etc.). They will receive some combination of:

Gallery
Five Pieces for Laptop Quartet
Three Haiku
Obedience School
Five Movements on Mondrian

Looking over requirements once more, I see I had forgotten that UCSD and U of Chicago request two writing samples. Looks like I will be revising either the Schoenberg paper or Sonic Generator paper. You can read those on my site if you are having trouble falling asleep or something.

CD reviews / Portfolio

2009-10-06T10:42:00.004-04:00

Hi readers,

Sorry for the long delay between posts. A lot of non-music work happening around here lately. Anyway, a few updates:

1. My friend Brian Skutle was kind enough to review my CDs. Nice to see what people think of my stuff - as you'll read, it is a fair and relatively unbiased review.

2. I have to take the GRE in 11 days! AAAAH! I shouldn't worry too much - I got a decent score last time (12-something). But I really want to do well, and I keep getting tripped up when I go through my math review book.

3. I'm getting my portfolio together. I have narrowed it down to the following choices. If any of you want to take the time, I would be interested to hear feedback on which pieces seem the strongest or most interesting (even "non-musician" perspectives!).

Gallery (fl, cl, bsn, hn, tpt, tbn, perc, vln, vla, cb)

This is inspired by abstract expressionist paintings. 8 miniatures - I think the writing is pretty strong, although it is a collection of miniatures and therefore doesn't display much developmental skill. Still, it shows some skill with orchestration.

Score Recording

Obedience School (tape)

This is one of my favorite of my electroacoustic pieces, and I think the most technically accomplished. It uses a lot of algorithmic editing, as well as other processes like "improper noise reduction."

Listen

Petrichor (clarinet and tape)

This piece has a decent tape part and decent clarinet part. I still like listening to it, and it has become my most-performed piece (... 7 times ....)

Score Recording

Five Pieces for Laptop Quartet

This was a big project, and it displays technical skill with Max/MSP as well as my interest in improvisation. You can listen to all of the pieces at the link above. I also did a video for "Baffin Bay."

Three Haiku (fl, gtr, vla, perc)

This is a 3-movement, 15-minute chamber piece. Some parts need a little improvement, but overall I think it's an interesting piece. I'm really proud of my timbral development, and I think the haiku form works well.

Score Recordings: Mvt I Mvt II Mvt III

Five Movements on Mondrian (video)

This is a little older, and isn't my most technically accomplished piece, but I still think it's very creative.

More Money Than You Know What To Do With (video)

I may include this one to show more improvisation, as well as experience with live electronics. It's fun, too.

Promenade de minuit (sax and harp)

This was commissioned by Turdus Merula (France). They haven't had a chance to perform it live yet, but they made a great demo recording for me. This was written intuitively, unlike a lot of my pieces, but it's still in a similar style to my other chamber works. One of my favorites to listen to...

Score Recording

Searching for Coincidences (flute duet)

This was written for rarescale. It is written for two flutes (they played on altos, my preference). It is an indeterminate piece - they are given 5 choices to play at all times, and create their own paths. It is written in proportional notation as well. Turned out pretty well, although its certainly not the most impressive thing I've done, compositionally. Interesting experiment, though.

Also, I need to fix up the score a bit...

Score Recording

Pachamama (perc. trio)

This was commissioned by the Cerberus Trio. It shows a different side of me, as it is very rhythmic and repetitive. It is all based on 8th-notes, but has different simultaneous meters. The form is based on a magic square - each number corresponded with a number of bars in which a certain rhythm, dynamic, or instrument would occur. Haven't heard it yet, but I think it will be cool.

Score

Thanks for your input!

Theatre collaboration

2009-09-20T11:55:00.003-04:00

I have mentioned a theater collaboration I've been working on with a friend of mine. It is titled CoaX LoVe Indulge IllusIon, and is based on Shakespeare's 148th sonnet (CXLVIII).

O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,

Which have no correspondence with true sight!

Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,

That censures falsely what they see aright?

If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,

What means the world to say it is not so?

If it be not, then love doth well denote

Love's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'

How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,

That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?

No marvel then, though I mistake my view;

The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.

O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,

Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.

This is the text of the piece, and there is a lot of wordless acting and dancing. The music alternates between a waltz and a tango. I've gone through several versions of the tango specifically before I finally got it right. Sounds ok on MIDI so far, and this week I will make a better sounding version with my keyboards. We're hoping to mount a performance sometime this fall, although time is getting short at this point! I will post a sample for you to hear on the next episode.

I have also been revisiting my laptop quartets. Not only have I been occasionally rehearsing with a laptop trio here in NY, the Electric Monster Laptop Ensemble at Montana State has been working on the pieces. Very exciting! As I mentioned before, I am making a short-and-sweet version of my thesis for publication. I am also making some streamlined versions of Freq Out and Presets. The hardest thing to believe is that I turned in this project a year ago this week!

quick update

2009-09-17T18:55:00.002-04:00

I try to update this each week, generally on Sunday. I didn't this week, because this week has been busy. So here I am on Thursday.

Not much new to report. I have worked a little on my dance/play collabo, and have studied a bit for the dreaded GRE. I may be going to Atlanta for the holidays, and am trying to put together some performances. I'll have 2 performances up here in New Jersey this fall, too (playing Late Frost). I am working on a paper for eContact! I'm still working with Art+Culture, and wrote a post about one of my favorite bands, Morphine.

More news on Sunday, hopefully!

redirect

2009-09-07T12:31:00.003-04:00

This week, I have been thinking. My first grad school applications are due on December 15th. Last year I was still working on my personal statements during Christmas. I don't want to do that again. I want to have everything sent off by the 15th - which, to be safe, means I need to send everything around the 1st or 2nd of December.

If I could pull off the piano piece I outlined in the last post, that would be awesome. But let's be practical here - I have 3 months to do everything. It would take me 3 months of hard work just to do that piece. So I am going to put that aside for the time being.

I still want to work with Processing and video, so I think I'm going to do something simpler, and use an existing piece as the input. For example, my piano piece "Snow Drifts" from Late Frost (you can listen on my ReverbNation widget at the top right of this page). I have been wanting to do a promo video for at least one of the Late Frost pieces, to put on YouTube for some extra exposure. I'm thinking something very abstract, using the amplitude (volume) or pitches to control a Processing program. Not something I will be able to do in an afternoon, but I'm sure I can get a little something going by November.

piano/electronics/video piece outline

2009-08-30T10:35:00.003-04:00

I've got a good plan sketched out for the piano/electronics/video piece. It's a little complicated, so I'll try to explain it as best I can.

It will be four movements, performed attaca. Total length will be 18 minutes. The four movements are proportioned using Fibonacci numbers (2, 3, 5, 8), but shuffled around. I am loosely basing the piece on the classical sonata. Here are my approximate timings and notes:

Movement I: "Allegro" - 8 minutes

Intro: 30"
low piano notes, fade into synth notes, with static and "transmission" sounds

Exposition: 2'45"
theme A: 1'15" | transition: 15" | theme b: 1' | coda: 15"

theme A: assertive chords, martial (like Chopin's Polonaise in A), accompanied by noisy "transmission" sounds

theme B: homo- and polyphonic textures, more 'lyrical,' computer plays tone-based sounds

Development: 2'

Recapitulation: 2'45"
theme A: 1'15" | transition: 15" | theme b: 1' | coda: 15"

Movement II: "Adagio" - 3 minutes

Chaconne: 10 variations @ 18" each
1. "organ" ground bass
2. add disjunct & sparse piano melody
3. melody continues, computer adds "electric piano" chords
4. piano chords, mimicking computer part in #3
5. piano chords + melody
6. new chords + counter melody + computer 'synth' melody
7. ground bass + computer melody (piano tacet)
8. piano + electronics - dense chords (12+ tones)
9. smaller (3-4 note) and faster-moving chords
10. conjunct, faster piano melody

III. "Scherzo" - 2 minutes

A = 40", B (trio) = 40", A = 40"

Aa = piano - main role, computer adds sine-tone "R2D2" filigre
Ab = call & response piano and computer

Ba = percussive computer part, piano melodic
Bb = synth doubles piano melody

Aa & Ab repeat

IV. "Rondo" - 5 minutes

A = 45" B = 45" A = 45" C = 30" A = 45" B = 45" A = 45"

A - driving, insistent rhythm
B - fast, skittering around
C - chords and synth glissandi

(obviously I need to think more on this one!)

Video Component

I am brainstorming on this - it's all going to be fairly simple, so I'll actually be able to accomplish it! Mainly flashing dots, squares, and lines. The whole experience will be a little sci-fi. More details on my next post!

what will be consuming my life:

2009-08-23T12:14:00.003-04:00

My favorite posts to write are the ones exploring my compositional thought process. It helps me understand how I work, and I hope it can give people insight into my work, or give other composers/artists some ideas.

Unfortunately, I don't have one of those prepared today. Instead, so I don't leave everyone hanging, I wanted to update with a list of what will soon be consuming my life. In other words, major projects:

1. GRAD SCHOOL APPLICATIONS. This is the most important. I have wanted to pursue a PhD in music composition for 6 years now, and it is time. I was hoping to start this fall, but I only applied to hard schools, they didn't have enough money due to the economy, etc. This year, I'm applying to 12 schools so I know I'll get into at least 2 or 3!

subsections of this project:

a. Graduate Record Exam - I am taking this again. I took it in '04 and scores are only good for 5 years. Also, I know I can perform much better on the writing portion - I got a 4 out of 6 last time, and I don't think I'm that shabby a writer. I am starting to brush up on my math though - haven't done a lot of that stuff in a long time!

b. Statement(s) of Purpose - I got started late on these last year (I was writing them feverishly over Christmas). I'm going to start soon so I have plenty of time to revise and have people read them (volunteers welcome!).

c. Piano/Electronics/Video piece - This is going to be a big piece (18 minutes), but I feel I need a new piece to show off. Since I want to delve into multimedia the video part will be important. It will be fairly simple, but I need to show that I can do a little bit.

2. Art+Culture - I have a part-part-time position as music curator for this website, so I've been doing some blogging and research there. It's a very cool site, definitely worth exploring.

3. Dance/Theatre collaboration - I'm working on music for an abstract play/dance piece based on Shakespeare's 148th sonnet. It is half waltz and half tango... We're hoping to get it on a festival or something in late fall.

4. Promoting my CDs - I am gradually booking shows around NJ for playing pieces from Late Frost. I'm also putting together a laptop trio, and when we do shows I'll bring a few copies of Parallel Lives. I've put clips on several sites (now all tracks can be streamed on Last.FM), and I'm hoping to find time to make some YouTube videos for Late Frost.

5. The Piano/Electronics/Video piece. Yes, I put it down twice.

That's a lot of work, but it's all going to be fun and well worth the effort!

update

2009-08-20T00:31:00.002-04:00

Just in case someone is actually following this blog...

As you may gather from my Twitter updates, I've been busy traveling. I'm back home and starting to get to work. More info coming soon!

composing a piece in 60 minutes...

2009-08-02T18:07:00.003-04:00

Today I responded to a composition challenge presented by New Music Hartford. The challenge was to compose a piece in 60 minutes. Several choices for instrumentation (solo flute, solo cello, flute & cello, electric guitar, 2-channel tape, and a quartet I can't remember the instrumentation for. These options were revealed at 3pm EDT, and a finished composition had to be emailed off by 4pm EDT. In a few weeks, the performers will rehearse each work for 60 minutes, then present these pieces in concert.

I started a similar tradition at Georgia State University called "Instant Music." For that project, composer drew names of performers out of a hat, then wrote pieces for these ad hoc ensembles. We had a full 24 hours to write and rehearse our piece - of if only I had that luxury today!

I had a few ideas in mind before the contest began, just to help myself along. I decided to use a tone row, to help me make decisions more quickly. I also decided to base my form on a sonnet. I would have 14 short sections - 4-5 bars each - and would reflect the sonnet's rhyme scheme (ABAB CDCD EFEF GG) through repetition.

I went with flute and cello duo - it seemed the best combination of interest and manageability. I sketched out my form (again, each section was to last 4-5 bars):

A - florid flute line, cello drones
B - declamatory cello line, flute tremolo
A - repeat A
B - repeat B

C - contrapuntal, similar rhythms
D - passing off short phrases
C - repeat C
D - repeat D

E - melody in tight harmony (3rds, etc.)
F - tremolo, creating static chords
E - repeat E
F - repeat F

G - long tones, fading away
G - repeat G

Despite all this repetition, I only finished through D. In all, the piece is 36 bars, which means I actually only wrote 18 bars! I think what slowed me down was that I had my 12-tone matrix on the computer, so I had to keep going back and forth on the screen. I am wondering if I had taken 2 minutes to write it on paper, if that would have helped me in the long run. Possibly.

Perhaps my initial outline was too ambitious. In the end, I have a sort of binary form, which would somewhat work if I had made D feel more like an ending. As it is, it just kind of stops.

In the end, I feel that while this piece is kind of crap, I definitely have the outline for a decent piece. Maybe I'll spend another hour on it someday.

If you're that bored/curious:

Score
MIDI

another week goes by...

2009-07-25T15:09:00.004-04:00

Still not much new to report on the composition front, I am sad to say. I had a few months filled with activity so I suppose it's ok to have a month here with not much accomplished. I have been working a good bit for my non-music job, and looking around for other jobs, gigs, etc. So there's my excuse.

One project I have been working on recently was revamping my laptop quartets. I had an initial practice with two people who are interested in forming a trio, so I have been reprogramming some of the pieces for three people. One was far easier than I expected, so I wondered why I put it off so long! The other is taking more work but is still coming along much faster than expected. Maybe I'm just better at programming (in Max/MSP anyway) than I thought. At any rate, Freq Out has been needing some editing to streamline it and I have done that. Now just have to make it look prettier and create a trio version.

In other Max/MSP news, I have been making another Magic Square experiment, using the numbers to create rhythms (numbers are 1-16, treating each number as a tuplet within a 4-beat bar). The square also affects the form, chords, and tempo. More on this when it's done. More of an etude than an actual piece, but that's ok.

Slowly pulling together ideas for the piano/electronics solo. I think I will stick with Max/MSP for the Audio, and learn more about Processing to make visuals. I am proposing an 18-minute piece, in 4 connected movements loosely based on sonatas: a long, fast-ish movement in vaguely sonata form; a slow movement in ternary form; a short, fast "variations" movement; a fast "rondo." Extramusical ideas in my head keep pointing toward space, more specifically the moon (I may revisit the ideas of Mare Serenitatis here), so it should only seem like a sonata in a very general sense!

daydreaming

2009-07-19T11:30:00.003-04:00

Well, this week I did not get much done music-wise. It's been really hot and I work outside, so I've been pretty much exhausted every day - even though I only work about 3.5-4 hours a day. I've mainly been researching and daydreaming about future schools for the PhD, new jobs and passive income opportunities, etc. More news to come...

interview, etc.

2009-07-11T12:18:00.003-04:00

Evan Merz interviewed me earlier this week for his Computer Music Blog. It is a 12-minute audio interview about the CD Parallel Lives. Evan did a great job editing it, so I sound somewhat coherent!

Besides that I have worked on a few small music tasks - making parts and things like that - but no new stuff. I'll get cracking soon. Some decisions from last time:

I am going to concentrate my attentions on the piano-electronics piece. I have been thinking up different ideas, but I'm still not sure how I'm going to go about it. I started thinking that it would be interesting to incorporate visuals, which means I will probably need to learn Java/Processing. I think that will be very helpful in the long-run though.

The other projects:

Piezo flowers installation - middle burner. I really want to do this project, but it will entail 1) buying an Arduino, sensors, wire, soldering iron, etc. 2) learning more Arduino programming.

Dead Broad revisited - back burner. It's just going to take awhile to do, plus I doubt I could finish it, have Caleb practice it, and make a video recording of it in time for PhD application season.

Orchestral piece - extreme back burner. Since it will be based on an existing piece anyway, I think I could knock it out in a month if I reeeeealllly have to.

deciding on the next pieces

2009-06-30T09:22:00.003-04:00

I am working on incidental music for a play/ballet project, but that is coming along fairly well. The performance is tentatively set for November and I need to meet with the writer and choreographer before I can really proceed.

Other than that, since I finished Pachamama the other day, I'm coming off a round of requested pieces. This leaves me free to do whatever I want, although I must say that it's a little more exciting to write specifically for someone else.

I have a list of projects I want to start, and I am trying to prioritize them. I will be applying for PhDs this fall (for hopefully the last time - 3rd time is a charm, right?), and I feel like I need some things to beef up the portfolio. My past few pieces have all been very interesting to write, as I have been experimenting with a lot of different ideas, but I feel that I need a new piece with a little more weight. Also, I am interested in some multi-media type programs, specifically at Brown and Washington, so I feel that I need something a little more, well, multi-media.

So here are my ideas:

A big piano and electronics piece - 20 minutes in length. For digital piano, acutally, using MIDI information to trigger things. For the electronic part, I could do this in Max/MSP but I could also switch over to its free spinoff PureData. I'm actually leaning towards ChucK, because it would be a little more impressive if I learned a new programming language...

Percussion + electronics and video piece. This would actually be an aggressive revision of a previous piece, Dead Broad on Broad Street. Thinking around 15 minutes. Caleb Herron, who I wrote for in the first place, is excited about this, so I do have a performer lined up. Lot of logistical hurdles in putting it together, though.

An orchestra piece. Another revision here, of a brass quintet titled "Epiphanies." Something I've been interested in doing. Indiana University requires that one of your portfolio pieces be an orchestral piece. So I will need to do this if I want to go to IU. But maybe that's a sign that IU is too conservative for me!

Piezo flowers installation. I made piezo flowers for a previous installation, but they were the sensors. I really liked how they looked and would like to turn them into speakers, playing algorithmically generated ambient music. Ultimately I would want to program small chips so that I could make a bunch of these flower pots and have them throughout a room. That would take learning a lot more programming. However, I could at least to a prototype with an Arduino.

stamping my music's imaginary passport

2009-06-27T16:22:00.004-04:00

I just had a performance (of Searching for Coincidences), and I was 4000 miles away from it. While I find it very interesting that my music can travel further and more easily than I can, I do dream of an exciting life where I can follow it around a bit!

If and when I get my hands on a recording, I will post it on my site. I am very curious how it turned out, since it is indeterminate. I don't even have a MIDI file to give me some kind of sense for it.

In August, I hopefully WILL follow my music - actually, my music will not be heard if I am not there - to Toronto. A paper and a piece have been accepted to the Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium. I'm also excited to see more of Canada than the other side of Niagara Falls!

The percussion trio, now officially titled Pachamama, is nearly complete. My friends looked at a draft and they are very excited about it, which is always nice to hear. This one I am looking forward to hearing a recording, as well. I can listen to the rhythms in Sibelius, but percussion in particular is notoriously bad in notation programs.

titles

2009-06-21T08:26:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I have trouble coming up with titles. I generally favor programmatic titles ("Travels"), rather than genre titles ("String Quartet No. 1"), so I make this process hard for myself.

The rock band piece that I recently finished became Six Textures for Rock Quartet. This is primarily a genre title, but at least it tells you that there will be six movements, and the emphasis will be on texture. It was the best I could come up with for that one.

The flute duet became Searching for Coincidences. I named this after some debate (and opening it up to my Facebook friends). In the end, I felt that this title best reflected the effect of performing the piece - both players choose different paths, and they may or may not be playing notes from the same chord. On the (likely) rare occasions that they do play the same chord, it will seem like a coincidence. I don't know how it will work/sound until after the premiere!

I wrote a quick piece for viola and vibraphone titled Mirror Universes. This is another indeterminate piece, in which each musical "cell" can be read in treble or alto clef. The instruments try to emulate each other - vibraphone with no pedal emulates pizzicato, string harmonics emulate bowed vibraphone bars, etc. Each cell will be played by both players, a 7th apart due to reading in different clefs. I feel that they will be in their own little "world" or universe, but there will be many recognizeable reflections. Hence, the mirror. It also alludes to sci-fi, particularly Star Trek. I find that cheesy in general, but at least this reference is subtle!

Now I am trying to title my percussion trio. Due to the instrumentation (ocarina, conch shell, melodica, stones, shaker, log drum, drums, pebbles, paper/plastic bags, frog guiro), I am picturing primitive cultures in the Andes (pre-Inca). I don't know much about those cultures, and this is not directly inspired by any music, just alludes to something primitive and organic. Researching online, I learned about Inca beliefs, including their name for Mother Earth, "Pachamama." I love that word, but I fear that as a title, people may consider it humorous, which is not my intent. Any thoughts?

percussion trio update

2009-06-16T00:04:00.003-04:00

I've been working on the percussion trio a bit this week, committing the "sin" of composing directly in Sibelius. I think it's helpful for this piece, since I can't properly execute the simultaneous patterns myself. As I wrote last time, I have some simple rhythms that I am currently refining.

The refinements are as follows:

1. Creating space - rather than have the players start full-on and keep playing for 12.5 minutes, I wanted to thin out the texture. Otherwise, we get nearly constant eighth notes. So I began subtracting notes over the course of several bars, until the patterns consist of only 1 or 2 notes, with many rests. Then I build the patterns up again.

2. Emphasizing the meters - this is all written in 4/4 for purposes of ensemble, but I'm really conceiving of it as having 3 meters simultaneously. If you listen to the repeating patterns, you can pick up on some of these, but I wanted to make them more apparent. I began adding rolls on the up-beats, which has worked well so far. I'm trying to come up with other ideas.

3. Expanding the timbres - I've only barely started with this today. All 3 players will have a small drum. I began introducing the rim to add another interesting sound. The rolls somewhat accomplish this goal as well. Again, still thinking about new ideas.

With these changes in place, a form is beginning to emerge. There are several moments when two or all three of the players seem to lock into a groove (although they are really in separate meters), and there are moments when the texture thins and we get a half-time feel. One longer groove also has all three players exchanging rolls, which should be an interesting effect, and comes in a little before the Golden Mean. The "melodic" tone-based instruments (conch shell, ocarina, melodica) seem to emerge rather naturally from the texture (at least from what I can tell on crap MIDI sounds!).

More soon...

percussion trio, etc.

2009-06-04T10:19:00.003-04:00

First, an update on previously mentioned pieces...

I did complete the alto flute duet awhile back (I am calling it Searching for Coincidences), and sent it off to the intended performers, rarescale, who will be premiering it in London on June 27. My London debut!

I finished the rock quartet piece as well. It is titled simply Six Textures for Rock Quartet. I will be going over it with the band leader, Darren Nelsen, this week for finishing touches, mistakes, etc.

Now for the percussion trio...

Like the piece Axe Grinder mentioned previously, this piece uses a Magic Square to create the form. This time, I used a 9x9 square. Again, the squares going horizontally determine the number of measures in a section. There are nine rows, so I divided these into sets of three, which determine the rhythmic pattern, instrument, and dynamic level for each player.

The numbers in each square had a hand in determining what happens. For example, I gave each player 4 instruments. If the number is 1-20, they play instrument A; 21-40 is instrument B, etc. Similarly, numbers 1-20 denote a mezzo-forte dynamic; 21-40 is mezzo-piano, and so on.

The rhythm patterns are in lengths of 3, 4, 5, and 7 beats. If the number of bars was divisible by one of these numbers, that became the rhythm pattern (e.g. a square with the number 39 would have a 3-beat rhythmic pattern and a square with the number 28 would have a 7-beat pattern). Even numbers and prime numbers were given a 4-beat pattern.

With these constraints in place, I wrote 4 very simple patterns and threw them in the appropriate spots. Some instruments are intended more for sustained "atmosphere" so they may not have a rhythm per se, but instead simply re-articulate every 3,4, 5, or 7 beats. With this overall structure set, I plan to go through and refine the surface - basically change things up here and there to add interest.

While I have this rhythmic structure in place, I am not intending for this to be a heavy, driving-rhythm type of piece. It will have rhythms throughout, but the overall dynamic will be soft (mezzo-forte is the loudest, and I gave it to squares with fewer bars). The overall sound-world I am trying to convey here is a forest. Here is the instrument list: Perc. I: ocarina, shaker, box of pebbles, small drum; Perc. II: conch shell, stones, plastic bags, small drum; Perc. III: toy saxophone/kazoo, log drum, frog guiro, small drum.

performing

2009-05-28T10:41:00.003-04:00

The past 2 nights, I performed selections from my CD Late Frost in friends' living rooms. It has been a lot of fun! I like bringing my compositions to people in a very intimate setting, and I had fun *trying* to explain what the pieces were all about! These will be good warm-ups to future gigs - I am currently looking into the NYC coffeeshop scene, but I am also thinking about performing more in homes. http://www.concertsinyourhome.com/ seems like a good resource for that.

site redesign

2009-05-20T16:27:00.003-04:00

I am revamping my website. Although I am proud to say that I learned HTML and CSS code and did the current version on my own (with some copying and pasting from "how-to" sites), I must admit that there are better designs out there. I found a template I liked on this site, and am adding my content to it. It's going to be a lot cleaner and more professional-looking. I'm very excited!

Look for the new version in June. If I recall correctly, I bought my domain back in June of 2006 (after I attended June in Buffalo). So this will be kind of a 3-year anniversary event!

upcoming concerts!

2009-05-14T18:01:00.003-04:00

I am happy to write here that I have 3 upcoming concerts! Two will be in Atlanta the last week of May, and one will be in Hoboken on June 14th. More details will be available on my site, which I will (finally) update this weekend.

Axe Grinder

2009-05-09T15:41:00.004-04:00

In keeping with my previous theme of resurrecting old pieces, here is a "new" old piece.

It was a school project in Nickitas Demos's Composition Seminar at Georgia State (I don't remember exactly when, but I'm going to guess Spring 2006). I was to write a piece 'in the style of Zack Browning." I tried to emulate his high-energy, rock-influenced style, and use some of his compositional ideas, notably the Golden Section and magic squares.

This piece has an ABA form, with the B section beginning at the negative Golden Mean (38.2% through the piece) and ending at the Golden Mean (61.8% through the piece). The piece is about 3 minutes, so the B section lasts from 1:09 to 1:51.

Magic Squares are tables in which each row, column, and diagonal have the same sum. I used a 4x4 square for the A section and a 3x3 for the B section. There are 4 "voices" in the original piece - trumpet, trombone, and 2 voices in the "tape." In the new version, the voices are guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums.

Each row in the square represents one voice. The numbers in each square told me how many bars each voice would play one of four patterns (one of which was silence). After that particular number of bars, the voice would switch to another pattern. Thus, there are repeating patterns, sometimes unique to each voice, sometimes in unison or in canon.

Listen (MIDI version)

Rock Quartet piece

2009-04-22T16:58:00.004-04:00

Working on a piece for rock quartet (electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, drumset). The idea is to treat them as a chamber ensemble.

I've had this sketched out for quite some time and am finally putting it together. It is going to employ a lot of box notation, as shown. For those who don't know this technique, it basically means to play those pitches in any order and repeat ad libitum.

Still kind of sketching things out, going between Sibelius and pencil/paper. The percussionist will be playing something here, just haven't figured out exactly what.

Busy!

2009-04-15T08:29:00.002-04:00

Things are coming together for the flute piece, which I am sending off today! My Facebook friends had a good time coming up with titles. Some of the best include "Density 43" and "Requiem for a Tuner."

I will post it on my website in the near future; of course, I want my prospective players to see it first. In the meantime, enjoy yet another "old/unofficial" piece:

Straphanger Premix

Most people have remixes, but this is the ORIGINAL version of Straphanger. I worked on this for about a month, then decided to scrap it. I wrote Straphanger in one week - over Thanksgiving break in 2006. I was trying to get it ready to send off as part of my doctoral application for Illinois (I was accepted there but ended up going to Belfast instead). Anyway, it still has its moments, so I thought I would share.

NYCEMF

2009-04-05T12:40:00.002-04:00

I had a good time this weekend at the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival. It was very well run and full of great music. I went to all but 2.5 of the concerts, and kinda feel exhausted now.

Petrichor was performed by a wonderful young clarinetist, Asuka Yamamato. I am happy with the performance, and I think that it fairly unique among the music at the festival, which is nice.

Some of my favorite pieces on the festival include: James Dashow's MATHEMATICS III from ARCHIMEDES (a planetarium opera), Paul Koonce's Clockwork, Irene Buckley and Mike Hannon's Evolution of close double stars, David A. Jaffe's Impossible Animals, and Anne LeBaron's The Left Side of Time.

Still working...

2009-04-01T00:53:00.003-04:00

Just a quick update. I'm still working on the alto flute duet, and it's coming along ok. The performers want it by April 15th, so I'm hoping to finish it very soon.

Hmm...that reminds me...I need to finish my taxes soon, too.

Also, NYCEMF this week! My piece Petrichor will be performed on Saturday at the 6:45 pm concert.

Despite the date, I attest that this is all true.

The Apple Chord

2009-03-25T23:37:00.002-04:00

Digging up more old stuff... I saw that Christopher Chong had posted this on his site. It was a quick project we did together last year, as part of Pedro Rebelo's composition module at SARC.

We recorded me eating an apple, typing on a keyboard, and convolved it with The Apple Chime. There is some algorithmic editing using nGEN. Realized with Csound, Max/MSP, and ProTools.

Listen here.

Making my CDs

2009-03-23T18:48:00.011-04:00

I make my CDs by hand, to order. They still look pretty decent. Maybe this will help/inspire people, I don't know.

Step 1: Burn the CD

Step 2: Print out the cover (not shown) and traycard. 2 can fit on each page of US Letter paper.

Step 3: Cut out the traycard and cover

Step 4: Once CD is done burning, print onto the CD.

Step 5: Put the traycard in the jewel case. Make sure the sides are creased really well.

Step 6: Put the CD holder on top of the tray, and the CD in the holder.

Step 7: Put the cover page in the case cover, and attach the case cover to the tray.

Step 8: Finished product!

Note: I can do this in less than 21 minutes, but I was taking pictures...

Vernal Equinox

2009-03-20T18:55:00.002-04:00

Visit my ReverbNation page, and you can hear "Vernal," the final track from my CD Late Frost. Today is the Vernal Equinox, so it's especially appropriate and I hope it gets you in a springtime mood. Cheers!

Hypertext poem experiment

2009-03-19T10:43:00.003-04:00

I made this sometime last spring or summer, while I was doing some side research on types of new media. One idea that I found quite interesting is "hypertext poetry."

This example is purely an experiment in interactivity. The form of each stanza is a Tanka (similar to Haiku, with a syllable pattern of 5-7-5-7-7). If you hover over lines, they will turn yellow, which means you can click on them and reveal more stanzas. Each stanza begins with a line or partial line from a previous stanza.

It is all stream-of-consciousness, and not intended to make sense altogether.

Here it is.

Alto Flute duet (in progress) - Part I

2009-03-18T09:42:00.001-04:00

I am working on an alto flute duet for a friend, who I'm hoping will be able to play it on some of her recitals in England this summer.

For the past year or so, I have been writing a lot of indeterminate music (my Master's dissertation focused on this). I have written some improv game pieces, but last year I began to write more detailed pieces that included some improv or indeterminate elements. It's been quite a change from my other work, which is far more determined and detailed.

This piece is primarily indeterminate in performance. Players can make a lot of decisions that determine how the piece will sound. Below is my sketch for the opening of player I's part:

I determined some chords that I wanted projected. In the first "bar" we have major-seventh chords. Player II will have the same chords, but different gestures. The first bar will be repeated 5 times, with each player choosing a different line for each repeat. There will be some extended chords and bitonal goodness when this happens.

I began just writing gestures, but I found they all had a similar contour. To break myself from this rut, I used an online random generator to help me determine the gestures. I generated 10 rows of 5 numbers (6 numbers in bar 2), using integers 1-8. The integers determined pitch and register. 1 = the root, 2 = the third, etc. (CMaj7: 1=C, 2=E, 3=G, 4=B, 5=C(octave up), etc...).

I entered the notes in Sibelius. Note: I am using the symbol tool to draw everything. I can't make a MIDI realization, but I can do proportional notation this way. It's hard to get notes to stay on the line or in a space, but it works reasonably well after fiddling (see this piece for a more finished example).

Blueprint No. 1

2009-03-17T17:47:00.001-04:00

I recently finished a graphic score piece with live electronics for bassoonist Michele Bowen. It is in Max/MSP. Here is a screenshot, and if you want to try it yourself, you can download the patch here.

I did a little mockup, improvising on the piano. I messed up the levels, so the piano is all distorted. Still gives you a taste. 10:30 in length.

Baffin Bay video

2009-03-15T21:45:00.000-04:00

I made a quick video of Baffin Bay:

This piece exists in this "fixed version" and also a version for laptop quartet. The version you hear is on my new CD! The visuals are a bunch of abstract paintings I made on the computer with ArtRage.

blog redux

2009-03-15T12:57:00.001-04:00

Dear reader(s):

After nearly 2 years, I've decided to start blogging again (irregularly). This won't be anything personal, just a kind of "work blog." On my website's news page, I generally just put big announcements, so I'm going to use this as a way to point you to new things I've added to the site.

Current big projects:
- an alto flute duet, that I'm hoping a friend will play in London later this year
- a percussion trio for some of my pals in Atlanta
- a piece for rock quartet (guitar, bass, keyboards, drums)

Some minor projects I'm working on/brainstorming:
- Promo videos for tracks from my new albums, featuring some paintings I've done in ArtRage.
- Some interactive piano and Max/MSP stuff (using MIDI!!!)
- a piece for narrator and tape
- a long-form ambient piece/CD

Stay tuned....