I’ve made so much music over the years and most of it is sitting on hard drives or gathering dust in neglected corners of the internet. Recently a listener reminded me of an album I made over 6 years ago hidden in one such dusty corner, so I moved it to another dusty corner. The album of electronic music was composed using a dogmatic approach that you can read more about in the liner notes. Bring a duster!
This video describes and demonstrates the device I designed to create most of the patches in the REV2 Experimental Sound Set available here on AudioCookbook.org:
https://audiocookbook.org/prophet-rev2-patch-set/
I am hoping to make it available sometime in the next few months if I can gage enough interest for a release. To hear five minutes of just the patches (no talking) please skip to 9:56. Also a complete playlist of all 128 patches is available on SoundCloud:
On Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017 Sound / Simulacra featured Bloodline at Jazz Central Studios. Bloodline is Peter Hennig (percussion), John C.S. Keston (Rhodes, synthesizers), and Cody McKinney (bass, vocals, electronics). During this concert, captured by Dave Kunath, we performed three pieces as a trio as well as solo pieces from each member of the group.
On Wednesday February 22nd, 2017 Sound / Simulacra featured Graham O’Brien at Jazz Central Studios. This was only the second event in the series and somehow these recordings captured by Dave Kunath slipped through the cracks. Fortunately I came across them recently so I can share them now. This concert was shortly before Graham and I performed for Merce Cunningham: Common Time at the Walker Art Center. During this period we were trying a lot of things with aleatoric techniques. This included graphic scores with chance elements, randomized digital sounds that Graham triggered from his acoustic drums, and randomized sound design I was triggering from the PreenFM2.
Aniccha Arts premieres a performance installation inside a seven-level parking garage. The project asks questions about transience, migration, and stability in a space that temporarily stores cars and is home to nothing. Performers pervade the parking structure with their bodies, working against the visible slant of the ramp to find their individual verticality. Questions we asked in creating the work: How do we find softness in a landscape of concrete? What anchors us on these alternating planes? How do we connect across such a complex landscape? video by: Cully Gallagher
This video by Cully Gallagher is 3 minutes and 30 seconds of fragments from the approximately 44 minute long Parking Ramp Project. Composing music for this performance installation showed me how far it is still possible to explore improvised music through experimental processes. Considering the acoustics of the parking ramp was a critical consideration within the musical scope. One approach to this was rests coded into the algorithms that allowed for the music to decay during long pauses while the ambient sound of the space inserted itself as an unintentional “performer”.
I am humbled by the willingness of the Pramila Vasudevan and other collaborators to humor my absurd scheme to compose the work using Javascript. This language allowed me to quickly produce animated, generative, graphic scores. It was also a privilege to perform the music with Peter Hennig (drums) and Cody McKinney (bass/electronics) who effortlessly interpreted the graphic scores. You can read and hear more about the project or continue for a gallery of screen grabs from the animated graphic scores. Continue reading