Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 18. While technological developments can replace some aspects of live performance, they have also opened a new dimension of musical structure: that of liveness and mediation, which requires live performance in order to be meaningful. Liveness itself can be used and manipulated as a distinct musical element. The author describes these concepts at work in his compositions that explore mediatization as a device of intermedial imitative counterpoint and formal structure.
A New Building for PerfTech!
A new home for the Department of Performance Studies. I was fortunate to have been brought in on the planing stages since 2007, and we were able to arrange for several features laying the ground for efficient and innovative performance experiences for posterity. Features include: Continue reading
Live Sampling with Jazz Saxophone
At this year’s TAMU Music Faculty Recital, I performed a live sampling improvisation with tenor saxophonist Jayson Beaster-Jones using the Motet and Elektrodynamik environments.
Fresh Minds Festival
Texas A&M University invites fixed media works of visual music or other non-narrative fine art animation, video, or film in which the sound/music and visuals play equally important roles in the work, for a presentation on the Texas A&M University campus called the Fresh Minds Festival. The event will be mass curated by hundreds of TAMU students learning the elements of visual and musical design with the goal of presenting a program of works that are engaging and rewarding to curious newcomer audiences. This is an event filling the gap between “for experts only” and “people’s choice” type events. Each year, several hundred students co-curate the festival. Each year’s evaluation cycle is launched with the screening of the previous year’s finalists.
A faculty panel will use the students’ evaluations of submitted works to shape a program. Creators of selected works are encouraged but not required to attend the event. Multiple entries will be accepted. There is no entry fee.
Due to the large number of students participating in the selection process, works will reviewed in stereo on student-owned equipment, delivered via internet links for evaluation. Works selected for the event will be presented in full quality in surround sound, spatialized live by TAMU students.
Deck performed at Big Range Austin Dance Festival 2012
6/28–6/29/2012 at the Salvage Vanguard Theater, Austin , TX (ticketed)
Choreographers Christine Bergeron and Carisa Armstrong worked with me to create a set of four brief pieces, each one minute long, on the central theme “Deck:” Deck of Cards, Decked Out, Hit the Deck, and Wooden Deck. Continue reading
Deck for Dance and Electronically Processed Found Sounds
As part of our respective research programs, TAMU Dance professors Bergeron and Armstrong and I won a Collaboration Grant from the IDHMC in support of developing feasible approaches to incorporating live media in contemporary dance performance.
While dance is an art form that is typically viewed live more than other disciplines, logistical challenges commonly leave dancers to adapt prerecorded music to their performances. TAMU’s PerfTech (Performance Technology) initiative develops methods to use technology in-and-as live performance without simply replacing traditional instruments with synthesized copies. With modern live technology techniques, we plan to merge the early twentieth century technique of Foley art for live radio broadcasts with the techniques of musique concrète (fixed media art music) developed since the late 1940s to develop approaches to building meaningful connections between dance and sound through common semiotic ground. Similarly, we explored incorporating digital imagery into this intermedia performance.
We developed this in a collaborative performance called Deck in four brief movements, each exploring a different sense of the word: “Hit the Deck,” “Wooden (Backyard) Deck,” “Decked Out,” and “Deck of Cards.” This work was accepted for performance at the Big Range Dance Festival 2012 in Houston as a juried submission. The equipment funded with the grant will be used to support future collaborations of this type among faculty and TAMU students.
Brazos Valley Makerspace workshop: A Fresh Look at Audio
Hands on?
You’ll need:
- My hands-on files
- Audacity (Linux, Mac, or Windows)
- Max (free Runtime version)
Microtonal Étude for Horn at the International Horn Society
This work explores the technology of the horn. Since it is a mature acoustic instrument, we tend to overlook the artificial structures it imposes on the way we think about making music with it. Also, musical conventions lead horn players to struggle against the natural tendencies of the instrument, e.g., to force notes to be what we consider to be “in tune.” In its earlier forms, the horn had no valves Continue reading
Sound Design for Prelude to a Kiss
We had some fun with the sound design for the TAMU mainstage production of Prelude to a Kiss directed by Anne Quackenbush. In addition to using music from TAMU alumni band The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (some of which was recorded in our own studio), the music for the new age wedding ceremony is an algorithmic composition featuring Theatre Arts and Music student J.J. Ceniceros. We called the project Pomegranate Aspiration. Continue reading
A Treatise on the Æsthetic of Efforte
This composition was invited for a compilation CD on the theme of steampunk, an art movement celebrating the ingenuity, effort, and danger of technology of the industrial revolution. In “A Treatise on the Æsthetic of Efforte,” I perform what is called live coding, creating music by Continue reading