Here’s another movement from my composition Vocalise Sintetica that I performed at Echofluxx in Prague and later during Northern Spark 2014. I named the movement Rheology after the study of the flow of matter in the liquid state. The audiovisual content was created with a Max patch I developed called AVGM (AV Grain Machine). The instruments that I used to create the accompaniment include: DSI Tempest, Bass Station II, Korg Volca Keys, and Memory Man Delay.
During Northern Spark 2014 I performed a version of Vocalise Sintetica at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery. The event, timed with Northern Spark 2014, also marked the opening of The Audible Edge (May 27 through July 26, 2014), a sound art exhibit of which I am also taking part. Since it was a local performance I decided to introduce the DSI Tempest into the setup (along with the Bass Station II, Korg Volca Keys, and Memory Man Delay).
This led me in a completely different direction than the performance in Prague. I was quite happy with the results so I produced a few studio versions of alternative movements. For these videos I made a screen capture of the AVGM (Audiovisual Grain Machine) and interspersed shots of the instrumentation. Here’s the the first alternative movement of I. Machines. I hope to post a couple more movements at a later date. View photos from the performance below.
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On May 7, 2014 I performed Vocalise Sintetica at the Echofluxx Festival in Prague. The piece is made up of four movements: I. Machines (00:00), II. Liquid (18:43), III. Vocalise (28:55), and, IV. Sintetica (38:41). Each movement is a playlist of five audiovisual objects that are instantly available to be projected and amplified while being granulated in real-time by a performer using a multitouch interface. The performer may loop their gestures applied to the audiovisual objects in order to bring in additional synthesized sound layers that contrast or mimic the audiovisual objects. My performance at Echofluxx was made possible by a grant from the American Composers Forum with funds provided by the Jerome Foundation.
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Tonight I am going to be improvising electronic music on live television in reaction to projects presented by past and present Northern Spark artists. The event is hosted by Twin Cities Public Television and is open to the public with tickets available for the in studio event. Read more about the TV Takeover event or watch it live at the YouTube stream above. [Edit: the event is over, but the video is available above.]
This was the second take on day one of my Duets recording project with the Singing Ringing Tree (SRT), a wind activated musical panopticon in Northern England. The sculpture was designed by architects Tonkin Liu and completed in December 2006. I performed accompaniment for the SRT binaural recording simultaneously using a Novation Bass Station II connected to a USB battery. I also ran the Bass Station II through a Moog Minifooger Delay. Eventually I will be producing videos of these compositions. For now I wanted to try a quick mix to get an idea of how things will sound.
NOTE: This is a binaural recording combined with a monophonic synthesizer track. Although it sounds great through speakers, circumaural headphones must be used to experience the binaural effect.