Today I was finally ripped out of my warm cocoon of denial.
So I finally put in some work on a high-stress project instead of continuing to just dork around with cabaret. Here's the second movement of my telephone piece I'm working on with/for Jon Clancy.
The gimmick of this piece is that there's a wired telephone onstage that people can call. This would be hard to do with mobiles.
PLEASE if anybody has comments like "this game clearly doesn't work and here's why" PLEASE TELL ME because I'm not a composer of games normally, this is new for me.
Here's a couple of first pages of things I'm working on related to the same cabaret- the first is a cheesy orchestral intro, the second is the first page of a song!
The singer is a statue who has been wished into life by her creator and she's not too excited about the life the sculptor has imagined for her...
Need to tweak some of who's playing what when, and please be warned this music is cheesy, but not as cheesy as the MIDI MAKES IT. The midi is so cheesy.
This is a piece for performance at a rather nationalistic Australian event, related specifically to the soldiers who died in World War 1. I was asked to compose the piece as a sort-of elegy, and I felt that I should write miniatures based on sketches (and some finished pieces) that I made, related to birds and sky.
As relates to Month of Music, I finished the set today! So yay to that, but also, my piece today was the second movement, which was the only thing I wrote entirely today.
Even More Trombone Fun
Second Page of the piece "Baubo" for Solo Trombone
I am working on some cabaret songs with a chamber orchestra! Not finished yet, but hopefully soon! Here's a couple pages:
Baubo the II still for Solo Trombone
I took a sabbatical yesterday, but I've returned with a reworking of my trombone piece.
If you guys are lucking enough, you'll hear the final product on April 5th at the MSM Composition Forum. (Also that reminds me I really have to finish this and engrave it soon)
I wrote a lil miniature for sax quartet! Not sure yet how I feel about it... I may attempt a piece with a smaller number of saxophones, just to get more comfortable with saxophone
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Sibelius sounds? Honestly, that's a big part of why this piece has taken so long. The castanet sounds have been replaced by woodblocks, the baritone sounds like shit, but hey the piano's not too bad and the double bass has a nice grunt to it so who cares anyhow.
This is a setting of a poem, there are three more parts to this poem! Hoping to get them all done by the end of MoM...
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.
