I missed midnight by 27 minutes!!! Damn!!! Not that it matters!
I'm wrestling with this horn piece. It would have been done by now if I hadn't been a little fool and written a stupidly difficult horn part in spite of writing this with students in mind.
So now I'm in that hell-space of "transpose or rewrite"?
Here are the chords I'm working with. Tomorrow I hope to post a finished version!! Even if I have to switch instruments!!! Agh!!
Hi folks - something different today. I'm orchestrating right now, for the forces you can see in the score, from a choir part I wrote some weeks ago. This is a rewrite of a part of the Messiah, although it's secular and sounds nothing like Handel. I'm half way through, and the rest is basically a pop song, so stay tuned
Composed when I was on my way back to hotel. This is for the friend whose secret nickname is sexy beast. Basically I just make fun of the rhythm and and sound, so I cut them into se-xy "beat"-st. Beats for the sound of slap lab.
Hope you all enjoy (Also how do I the soundcloud link just show up without having people have to copy and paste it?)(thanks in advance, huggs and kisses0) (I messed up and uploaded it incorrectly the first time)
The middle peek part of the piece for electronic, voice and saxophone. Still editing the sound part in Logic. Text referent from the Lucifer, 2015's drama television series.
In the wee hours of the morning today, I got started on a patch that records into a buffer and then plays back. I have the playback and record functions automated with a counter. The result is still a pretty rough sound- lots of technical details to work out, to say nothing of the compositional work that still needs done, but I'm really excited about it!
Here's the patch, and the audio I recorded out of it when I was loopy at 4am!
Well I did some sketches for a trombone piece titled "Baubo" after our favorite Greek rascal. For some reason I assumed that trombone players read their music sideways so that's why I posted it like this. It has nothing to do with my image rotation ineptitude.
Hi everyone, This is Lydia from first day trip in London. I composed this when I was waiting my dinner. Belly is always my favorit part of human body, but only sometime would be mine haha. This piece is inspired from a conversation between a friend that we were trying to find a best sound of his hidden talent, slap mouth through one finger. So I just combine them. Also, Bello is minions Hello~
I really wanted to get a stronger result with risset rhythms, instead I've ended up with this god forsaken Franken-patch, but it is sort of doing what I want it to. In brief I did this:
- I dissected the glissando max for live patch from a few days ago away from ableton M4l in just standalone max.
- I broke up what was previously a poly~ object into multiple audio outs.
- Set each of the math operations controlling the poly~ object to receive audio input from multiple groove~ objects each playing the same buffer.
- Mapped the pitch math to control a sig~ object controlling play back speed of each groove.
I know that image doesn't really capture whats going on, but basically there are four copies of the maths operations each managing a seperate groove~. Their level is proportional to their tempo and pitch (the red patch lead) and they are all commencing at different tempi/pitch/loudness. The intent is to create an eternal accelerando.
I also used a drum break that was used in a demonstration of risset
rhythms from Dan Stowel's Paper, this worked HEAPS better than jongly.aif
Have a listen here:
On Monday I'll be going through and commenting on everyone's stuff. Grats to all of you, you amazing people. Have a brilliant weekend!
We did an amazing thing. I'm going to miss this. Part of me wants it to keep going... but I have some finals and doctoral apps to attend to! It's been nice ignoring those things and prioritizing creating!
I meant to make something nice and fun for my last post, here in Manhattan where it's the last hours of November, but instead I made a 3 hr long going out of phase thing, prompted by the ugly feelings I have when I look at photos of myself-- It's a state of mind, more than a piece, and it's not exactly a positive state of mind. It's called, "how i feel about my body," and I'm not quite satisfied with it, but it has some good moments, particularly the beginning, the minute starting at 2hrs:31min, and the long fade at the end.
I want to make a happier version of a long ambient-mood-tape!
It's getting close to midnight on the 30th of November, here in New York. I've enjoyed this process so much, there's a part of me that wants to do it again right away, but that part of me is drunk with power and needs to go to bed for a while. Thank you all for making this webpage a pleasure to visit, and for producing so much excellent music. March 2018, anyone?
Congratulations everyone! I'm really blown away by what you've squeezed out of your brains and your other body parts that music comes from. The standard of work has been so high from everyone, it's left me feeling like there is a lot of good art out there (more now) and a lot left to be made.
I am sad about bowing out for a week with my arm but happy to report it's feeling a lot better. I've been strengthening it and am getting pretty ripped tbh.
Love to you all and I look forward to doing a thorough comb through/reminisce in the next few days.
Here's a lil synth jam we cooked up this afternoon, while we were both really hungry and wanting to go eat dumplings. Tech by Andrew, Music by Christine
Greetings, it's Andrew (I left my computer at home, am spending the night at Christine's)
For my film scoring class, we had to 'compose' a piece, using virtual synths such as omnisphere, stylus rmx, absynth, and so on. He was pushing for a very generic sound, and I spent as little time as possible achieving it. (as you can see, I'm bitter - but I feel better after making a thing with Christine, to be uploaded shortly :) )
Ok so I haven't researched whether or not this has been done before (I'm sure it has heaps!) but today I created a phase of jongly, where the two voices differ by 0.01 bpm :o
So after about 2.5 minutes (55 bars or a one bar loop), the music is one 256th note stretched away from its starting point.
The top voice is the original, and I've dragged bottom one to take about 12 miliseconds longer all together. I chose this difference as you are able hear the phase descend from a pitch into a rhythmic difference by the end of the recording.
I love Brontë, not just because she wrote a poem that resonates with me so much she could've written it after a conversation with me, but for many other things too.
First up, apologies for not commenting for a little while, I plan on sitting down and go through the past couple of days of posts from everyone after this week is done. Everyone that I've skimmed through in the past week looks great, but I just haven't had the time to sit down and comment properly on something.
So today I did some maxing. From yesterday's pattern searching I needed a bit of chaos to balance things out. Playing a large amount of video games has always given me an interest in random number generation, so today I did a bit of reading a learning about how that works. This was a particularly useful video, and also an amazing maths related channel.
I had a go at making the middle square random number generator spoken about in this video. This is an interesting one because it "ends" depending on a seed. As you watch the numbers appear, they certainly look random, and the sequence of numbers can go on for a long time, but it is always finite. I set up the following numbers to output pitch, in a comparison to the ordinary max random object. Turns out they both sound pretty random :/
Check it out:
It gets deeper but. Everyone understands the idea of randomness...but if randomness is traceable to a seed, is there anything in the universe truly random? Is the "seed" of the universe just the big bang? And which combination of random objects really does sound most like R2D2?
Tonight I experimented a bit with Alice's phase/loop situation! I don't know if this is in its final form. I sort of think it's the kind of audio that would be good in a museum setting, just a running loop while people are looking at visual art. I'll have to try doing this loop thing with the youtube vids also, rather than doing it myself. The benefit of doing it myself is that I can put one voice in one ear and the other in the other. ALSO I definitely should have used a nice mic and all that instead of just using my built-in. If one day I become famous and then die I hope they have a museum retrospective with my writing desk, my fish drawings, selected poems/diaries/letters, my collection of analog telephones, some eccentric outfits I was known for, some handwritten manuscripts, etc. in it, and I hope they'll put this audio in it.
I thought it would eventually line up like at the beginning again, but I think I was mistaken because an hour's worth of loops later and it gets so close! But isn't quite lined up. Which is kind of beautiful in a way.
Here's the text I wrote for this:
"It’s not
that I miss it exactly, but that I miss the time then, the old paths I walked,
the dry leaves underfoot, the cutting of the wind. I miss the wind-tears on my
cheeks, I miss the cold smell of Northern winter. The smell of wet pine by the
lake. The library in February. Maybe I noticed the sun more then. I never notice
it now. The way I was, the way I wore my hair, the way I dressed, the way I gestured
with my hands. The timbre of my voice, a timbre that’s lost to me now. The
utterances I reached for, which were different from the ones I reach for now. The
thoughts I thought. The inhalations, exhalations, excitations of then, so
different from now. So distant from now. Becoming distant, and distant, and
distant again with every day."
Another little song, this time with noodley free-chosen vowels
There is no Frigate like a book, to take us Lands away. Nor any Coursers, like a Page of Prancing Poetry. This Traverse, may the poorest take without Oppress or Toll. How frugal is the Chariot, that bears the Human Soul.
Today's project was to start conceptualising how I could develop a piece out of the idea of polyrhythmic sliding that I was playing around with in the second or first week of MoM. This is just going to be a post discussing some of the ideas I explored today.
Conception:
The idea is two voices begin in a polyrhythmic relationship such as 3:2. Expressed in terms of tempo, such as 120bpm:80bpm, one of the voices accelerates to a tempo to create a new polyrhtyhm relationship. A blurred metric modulation. For example, the 120bpm voice might accelerate 200bpm from the previous scenario to make a new polyrhythm of 5:2 (200bpm:80bpm).
Process determining form:
I'm attracted to a sort of Reich/minimal approach for composing this. I aim to determine patterns of moving between tempo ratios from integers 1-5 that lets the piece unfold logically. It's quite easy to make and compare polyrhythms on ableton. I just set
up two midi tracks with different subdivision of a quarter note in each.
The logical unfolding I'm hoping will emerge through experimenting with
different polyrhtyhms by triggering them in Ableton's clip view. This set up will also allow me to experiment and compare different pitch ideas. For now I'm keeping pitch to arbitrary scalic patterns in opposite directions to help distinguish the voices.
Slide time:
What's not so easy is determining the length of time for an accelerando between tempi. I prefer slow accelerandi that are similar sonically to Reich's acoustic phases. Making these resolve perfectly to a specific second tempo is tricky in itself, but the process gets messy when you have pitch.
After a good couple of hours experimenting and developing a couple of accels between voices. I'm going to leave this project for today and think about something different I'll work on tomorrow.
Every MoM I always seem to have something about glass/clear things/tiny things/insects. Glass is such a constant source of inspiration to me. Or an obsession. Some might remember Electrical Glass Ants Put On A Concert from March, made from recordings of Hyung Suk's noble performance of the cruel original.
Well this month's instalment is an Infinity for Dinner version that you can almost taste. I'm really chuffed with how it turned out. If you go through the trek of ticking loop on every video, it's worth it I think.
Also quite nice to listen to at the same time as EGAPOAC, I just realised.
Sorry for lack of browsing your work, friends. I am planning a binge tomorrow.
I've had this music/words combo in my head since May. This is a little motet on a line from one of Sylvia Plath's early poems, found in a letter. I'd like to write some more secular motets like this on Sylvia Plath texts. She wrote some beautiful things in her diary and her letters.
Alice suggested earlier in the month I reharmonise her composition from Day 4, "Rainy Morning Melody". had a crack at that today. I'd accidently copied the B natural in bar 7 as an A natural...and well fuck I also ended the melody on the wrong note.... Urgh... Sorry Alice :( Hope you dig the different take on it!!
I was going to work on something a little closer related to my tempo/max/live stuff, but this was a little aside for me. I'm so into this high energy 140+bpm hyper pop madness from this artist in the US called Louis Cole.
It's like techno meets punk or something, especially from the solo at 2:40.
I just had a play around with some ideas and ran with some some pretty out melody/solo stuff towards the end. I just put a heap of stuff down, didn't really consolidate what I liked and didn't like from it.
Here's that fishy face again. I'll draw at some point also.
[Quick telephone update: my device arrived and works but my prettiest telephone doesn't! (only my weird jokey telephone works. I may start collecting telephones). Fingers crossed that serious non-jokey phone arriving on Tuesday from Amazon works!]
I had some friends over and served Comfort Music in my room and then this new one on two screens with two speakers, but I made this to show the two together.
I wish the images didn't end up so close together - I'm gonna reformat this
I've finished the legwork on my other string quartet, the one for four violins. It has a few structural issues I think... but I'll iron those out tomorrow morning. As ever, I'd love to hear what you all think - particularly about the transition into the less tonal material in the centre. I PARTIcularly hate the midi sound on this one, as I wish so dearly to hear those emotional violins...
Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking, slow play of lights, solitary bell, twilight falling in your eyes, toy doll, earth-shell, in whom the earth sings!
In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them as you desire, and you send it where you will. Aim my road on your bow of hope and in a frenzy I will flee my flock of arrows.
On all sides I see your waist of fog, and your silence hunts down my afflicted hours; my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests in your arms of transparent stone.
Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens in the resonant and dying evening! Thus in the deep hours I have seen, over the fields, the ears of wheat tolling in the mouth of the wind
so I'm a little obsessed with telephones. I built a very crapulous lo-fi extremely-breakable telephone installation in 2013-2014 and have wanted to do SOMETHING with telephones ever since.
and one of my pieces right now is a piece for an old telephone. I'm so happy and excited. I'm working with this amazing percussionist to use the telephone and its beautiful mechanical ringer as a percussion instrument.
So I maybe didn't compose much today in the traditional sense, HOWEVER!
I did research telephone options and eventually ordered a device that will hopefully enable the telephone piece of my dreams??
Hi MoMers -
I’m Katie, a viola player from Perth at school with Andrew and Christine in New
York. I love what you’ve got going on here. Andrew and I were chatting about a
project that I’ve got in the pipeline and he suggested I could reach out to see
if anyone is interested to jump on board…
I’m in the
early stages of collaborating with a NYC circus performer called Craig. We’re
going to put together a small crew to create a show – lots of aerials…
silks/rope/lyra plus handstands, etc.
I think we
have the potential to do something really powerful – the idea we’d like to
focus on is the synthesis between aural and visual. The process of organising
sound – from composition to the physical movements of playing – is at the
forefront of our discussions of narrative. Using evolution as the fundamental
theme we are considering ideas like shifting from black and white to colour
over the course of the entire performance (including projections on the walls?)
and dissolving the division between performers and audience.
As far as
music goes, I’d love make a soundtrack that leaves space for free improv and
deliberate silence between new and old compositions. I have viola and electric
5-string violin (with loop pedal and possibly effects if I can get my hands on
one). I have a percussionist in mind, and open to suggestions for other
instruments but I’d like to keep it to a small group.
You can
probably tell this is more a long-term project for us, but I’d love to hear if it sparks some interest.
Trying to go a bit further with hearing different tempi and assigning them harmony as they progress at different speeds...work in progress. Please excuse trap beat its 3:45am here in syd.
I've been thinking about how we perceive an accelerando whilst hearing a rit in another voice, maybe some kind of tempo counterpoint. Swapping pitches when the tempo changes direction seems to really helped outline the phrases and gives them a definite start and finish.
