Vastness of Pines - String Quartet No.4

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...

Score & Audio here

Because I owe him a debt, here's the Neruda:

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

telephones

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??

Fingers crossed, friends. Tomorrow, more fishes.

Circus Project

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.

24 Harmony on accel with steady tempo

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.

a fish sketch

Antarctic toothfish

I have a few idea cells that I'm playing with at the moment:

Midi here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IOKMRFkDpgbdZ0Svj-2Ix-qE2XqsQhtF

Onward fish!

Madrigal - Eggcetera

Eggs



 audio here

23 Accel Decel

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.

22 Max For Live-ing

Acquired a stash of new max for live plugins and just spent time working through them. I set up a short aleatoric piece with many randomly determined sonic aspects.

from the homestead....

Andrew and I are in New Jersey with my folks for Thanksgiving! We've both had recordings recently, so here they are.

Mine's from a recent concert with some badass string players.

Andrew says: Here's an excerpt from a workshop. Limited time, they couldn't get it up to speed, but here is the first section. (Gotta acknowledge the Taikoz debt)

link: http://christineelisechen.com/2017/11/22/recordings-mom2017/

password: Thanksgiving

21 Mo' shepard tones/risset rhythms

So in trying to get better max algorithms for risset rhythms (rithms?) I went through the Max for live database of objects searching for anything and found this INSNSSANNANNEEE one. I just had to share it here.

Shepard Tones are the "eternal glissando illusion" where the pitch and dynamic of different voices are precisely calculated so that they appear to rise forevs. Basically your ear tracks one voice rising thats fading out, and as a lower rising pitch fades in your ear thinks they are the same voice so you just hear one "rising" voice

Here's a little video that shows whats going on, using the piano part of my quintuplet groove thing I did a few days ago.



SO YOU CAN JUST DO THIS TO ANY AUDIO IN LIVE NOW HOLY CRAP!!!1!!
I think its pretty amazing that it works for any audio example, I tried a whole heap of different stuff and the results were excellent. Also it's an audio effect too (not an instrument or midi thing), so yeh, it can be applied in realtime to an instrument in performance, obviously the instrument would have to be amplified but yeh. That's really torn me a new one today.

My plan is to basically lift all the creator of this patch's maths and apply it to a sig~ controlling a groove~. The deal with risset rhythms is they create an eternal accelerando by mapping tempo to dynamics. Hopefully I can use some of this insane programming to make a similar patch for a risset rhythm.

device can be downloaded here: http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/477/fp-glissando

in-progress string quartet for violins

Amongst my deadlines this month is another quartet, following the one I finished a few days ago. This is the first five pages - this music seems to be flowing a lot better for me. I don't know if it's because it's more simple or, because it's for four violins, if it's because I have lower expectations for myself, but it's more fun this time... I'll check back in at the end to see if it stayed that way!

orchestral thesis second post

I said I'd make a post about the first movement!

It is noise, so no midi.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to notate this. I think I've found a good way. Maybe if I don't say what's supposed to happen and just show the score, you guys can tell me if it makes sense or no.

I couldn't get the images to upload to this site, so it's an external link again, I'm afraid.

Link: http://christineelisechen.com/2017/11/21/orchestral-thesis-second-post/

Password: MoM2017

20 Accelerations in nature

Edit: crazy, I thought this one went through when I was hanging with Alice today...hmm
Didn't get around to posting this yesterday, but finished putting something together today for it. I'm trying find some ways of getting video in jitter to respond to to movement. This one was a bit of a failed attempt at making video in jitter output data based motion to change Ableton's operator. I didn't really get the desired result...but neverthelesss it looks cool?!

Daggertooth

Technically in the US it's another day, so another post!

I made some time to work on my fish movement by working during class! Lol.

This fish is called daggertooth. I drew it:

He is both menacing and silly. The daggertooth fish will stab you with his daggerteeth. But still he is a flopsy-fish, a fish-friend.

Score and midi link: http://christineelisechen.com/2017/11/21/daggertooth/

password: MoMNovember2017

Elegiac Suite - for Flute

I've had the time to finish up the Elegiac Suite, which I was posting here as a piece for Cor Anglais. I redid it as a flute piece, basically because I know a lot more flute players than Cor players, but the music is so simple it really will work for any wind instrument (bring on your kazoos)

Elegiac Suite:

Score and Audio here: dropbox

Can ya catch all the quotations? The Schumann one is, in my opinion, the most shameless - but if you all don't find it, I'll feel better about its inclusion.

hi friends! orchestral thesis

My schedule has been pretty prohibitive of composition lately. :( It means that things are taking longer to write than usual, because I have less time to work on them. I really wanted to finish a short movement of my fish piece and share it with you guys here!!! Soon. Over Thanksgiving break I hope to post up a storm of fishes!!!

I've had to de-prioritize fishes to work on the MSM orchestral thesis.

I thought I would share the second movement with you guys, while I'm doing all of this editorial stuff! I'll share about the first movement on my next post-- it's a bit of a different animal, and takes some explaining.

Here's the link to midi mock up and score: https://christineelisechen.com/2017/11/20/orchestral-thesis-for-mom-november-2017/

The password: MoM2017

Much love to everybody!

Canons for String Quartet

Here is a piece that I needed MoM to finish. This piece was a commission from AYO, for use in their chamber music programs - such a cool project, as I have many many fond memories of playing chamber music at camp! That being said, I've accidentally (like always though, so is it accidental?) written something quite difficult, so good LUCK to whichever quartet gets this in the mail.

Canons for String Quartet

Score and Audio here

15 second harp

If you don't know what 15 second harp is, check it out! Olivia is a lovely person and a great harpist, and currently is soliciting 15-second-long duets for harp and tuba. Today's MoM is also my 15sH.

19 Simple Phaser

Hey! After reading Alice's post, I thought it might be useful to make something that you can quickly hear a phase with, so I threw this together on Max tonight. It's got one of the Max samples loaded into it, so it should just be good to go as soon as you hit the toggle and turn on the audio.

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Day 18: Idea

Hey guys,

Over the last two days my right arm's been really bad. Even with left-handed computer use, I can't really get to a point where it's not sympathetically tensing. Like a back-seat driver, used to being dominant, ya know. Anyway I am terrified of RSI and the damage it may do to my output in the long run. I think I just need to take the pressure off with a few things,  including MoM, for a few days and try and hardly use the computer/piano/phone/pen at all.

Heres an idea for a piece though. A simple chord progression played in hushed, sustained semi-quavers on piano (Vatche?), recorded three times, the player with a click thats a few bpm different to the last for each recording. And with eternal repeats, they would go more and more out of phase in the actual phase way. By no means an original idea, but I'm excited to experiment with the chords bleeding into each other.

Finally, Happy Birthday Christine, you aquatic burst of light.