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studio minds

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:13:19 -0600

The studio process uses the ‘best fit’ method in the bottom up tradition. The theory being that the non-grid sound art (Wishart) is too complex to use pitch based rules to help organize formal rules around. It has been said that the only system appropriate for the construction of concrete sound art is the auditory system which comes with it’s own rules. Laws of auditory perception are theorized and tested according to various disciplines’ experimental methods. Any experiments’ power to predict is a reflection of how well the rules in question conform to experimental needs.

This musical form is an experiment on the idea of form, The rules are derived from perceptual theories with phenominological biases. The most obvious so far is ecological psychology’s description of the organism as imbedded and embedded in it’s environment. As t how this works out as a way to plan the construction of the piece, details for each work are described in the PhD.

More Songs About Asphalt and Speed addressed this in a straightforward and sometimes programatic style. The agent/organism/composer/skater/climber/guitarist/runner et.al. moves from direct to abstracted representations of its auditory connection with the world. (Nance, 2007)

The ‘new art’ works, Parables, Analogies of Control, and K, are also constructed with that overview in mind but the focus of the experiment is more concerned with drawing together the auditory poiesis of the composer with that of the performer. Whereas written music has a long and involved evolution with the performer/reader, EA’s history is less evolved on a lexical basis, but the evolution of the hearable world and music’s are about equal. The method applied was the elimination of the visual mode (graphical and textual) from the process and build aural models from which the performer will derive his part. the rules are fairly simple if the act is not. The player is to mimic what he hears in the headphones unbiased by what his eyes might tell his ears (for an example of visual auditory influence see the McGurk Effect for one of the more obvious)

This method sidesteps the visual and cultural training concentrating on the musician’s aural acuity and technical expertise.

listening

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:12:00 -0500

“It could be said, and it would be more than a play on words, that
traditional musical listening is listening to the sounds of stereotyped musical objects, while musicianly listening is musical listening to new sound objects put forward for use in music”
(Pierre Schaeffer)

A digitally manipulted sonogram, hand colored, re-scanned,...

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:42:03 -0600

A digitally manipulted sonogram, hand colored, re-scanned, manipulated, printed and colored again.

Can a timeline be subject to distance and mass (volume?)

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:44:10 -0600

Can a timeline be subject to distance and mass (volume?)

The amplitude signal as timeline?

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:40:24 -0600

The amplitude signal as timeline?

more angles

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:06:34 -0600

more angles

For Wendy’s gig maybe. A set of these with their...

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:46:25 -0600

For Wendy’s gig maybe. A set of these with their respective sound chips as studies for the violin piece. Or not their respective ones. I can’t see that it has to be a one-to-one thing. In fact, a set of scatalogical studies almost requires a bit of mixing up and moving. The water closet exhibit should should be scatalogical, no?

How fast can Craig’s score reader flip through pages?...

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:02:04 -0600

How fast can Craig’s score reader flip through pages? Still looking over other peoples’ graphic scores. Truax and a few others have bought up some nice examples of using spectrographs’ displays to increase the resolution of the information to the performer.

But can you use depth of field and perspective to represent loudness and intensity?

What about the timeline? Can it weave through the soundscape, across that space of sound-as-light?

plastic persistence

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:47:06 -0600

I’m enjoying the prospect of reimagining the visual score while trying to take advantage of all that sight-reading ability that so many (good) instrumentalists spend so much time perfecting. And still it remains primarily and functionally aurally oriented. It is fully an ‘ear first’ piece. First of course is the work being finished before visual works start on it. Or at least parts are brought to some level of sonic ‘irreducability’ before mediating the crossover to visual interpretation.

I’d really love to get a painter or someone involved (to do it) work with. I really think he performance could benefit with a trained hand on the page.

Mixed Media Models

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:50:00 -0600

To look at the model in two modalities is closer to the way of thinking and reading in standard practice. The experiment with auditory-only performance models is successful, but now to work on reintegrating visual isnformation using what we’ve learned from the aurally ‘pure’ experiments as well as what we’ve discussed concerning visual auditory crossover and take advantage of both as well as socially mediated (affordance?) effectivities like common practice notation.

What is the best way to express frequency and time for readers and non-readers alike? I need to re-read Tufte’s book or get a copy of Envisioning Information.

The first step stays much the same. Then build a 2d version using spectral maps of the model. Assign pitch values to pitch dependent parts of the music. Pitch recognition software would be a great thing to have.

I like the idea of calligraphy for the note/frequency information. Staff paper and frequency information in ink, emphasising its role as a socially and technologically mediated lexicon, then collage with graphical illustrations of spectromorphological events. Coloring it by ear should help highlight the salient parts of the aural model. People that don’t read will still have the aural model to go on and an easily recognizable time-line for the piece. Keeping the visual information properly “in scale” (what scale?) won’t be lost on either group.

Photo

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:31:25 -0600

Metropolitan Youth Orchestras

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:39:05 -0600

As my new presidency limps ahead I can say that, in my own opinion, things are going more positively than they were. Things were a wreck and now some of the dents have been pounded out. There are still parts that don’t work, but in some cases they’re being replaced with better ideas and people that can carry those ideas forward.

some people are being driven by energies that are probably not in the best of motivations, BUT probaly not unjustified. Thankfully they have great results and really want to get this all fixed and in a better place than it was before.

excelsior

Kontakte in Atlanta

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 07:31:00 -0600

Went on another music road trip avec Louisiana/Alabama composer Brian Wilke. We heard a brilliant performance of Stockhausen’s Kontakte by Atlanta piano-percussion duo of Stuart Gerber and Michael Fowler.

Gerber also performed (but we were too late to hear) a work dedicated to him by Stockhausen. He’ll be here in Birmingham in February. Should be great.

Cover for This is Not a Model

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:27:45 -0500

Cover for This is Not a Model

compilation cd for Shea Goodwin

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:30:25 -0500

compilation cd for Shea Goodwin

60x60

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:52:00 -0500

Craig Hultgren’s rendition of Click Glut is now published and touring with the 3rd volume of Robert Voisey’s collection of one minute compositions by as many composers, 60x60.

Edge Detection: Where the cellist and the sound meet Front cover...

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:46:00 -0500

Edge Detection: Where the cellist and the sound meet

Front cover for Confluence and Effloresce

Ecological Psychology and Fodder for Formalisation

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:38:35 -0500

I’ve been working with three kinds of frogs (i think) and what may possibly be a sheen of crickets. there’s an occasional fish flop, but I didn’t get the overhead passenger jets.

I can only guess as to any deep stucture that’s going on here but the guesswork is really the point here I suppose.

The frogs themselves are mostly concerned with the landscape and each other. The calls are pretty much bounded by interspecies concerns.

However, the each group are also subject to many of the same environmental concerns as the others and respond somewhat similarly to those conditions. In fact, the cricket sheen is responsive to those same conditions in different ways but I would think would be unaware of the information in the frog calls.

The fish I think are distant enough to be considered ‘uncoupled’. For now we just consider the water alien. I think that in the time scales we’re hearing this in (20minutes of real-time) that’s a safe bet.

But each group (fish included) responds to the local environment in which they all reside. The frogs probably respond similarly to similar conditions, the crickets have their own responses, and the conditions that effect them have an aural signature too, so the soundscape is naturally coordinated.

These interactions afford fodder for formalisation

Autumn kicked in today. Nice.

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:41:00 -0500

Autumn kicked in today. Nice.

commisions anyone?

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:36:00 -0500

Performance Instructions: “Mimic” the model in the headphones.

That’s probably the most succint instructions I can give once the model is made. All the information needed for the performance is sought from the studio version and the effectivities of the instrument. The spectromorphology of the audio signal, coupled with the boundaries of the cello is the primary instruction. One reason I had originally thought to only give the cellist a signal schematic as the performance instructions was to avoid any further ‘contamination’ of the intended signal. I gave it to the concert techs and they understood it immediately, but it only sparked questions from the instrumentalists.

That level of ‘unmediated’ behavior in a social situation defined as ‘music’ is (still!) alien and off-putting, mostly to the performer. The audience is already outside, so it doesn’t really make much difference to them except in concept. In reality you have to say things tot he instrumentalists like “Integrate the idea of spectromorpholgy in the act of ‘ensemble’. and then ‘not just between the model and yourself, but also with the fixed sounds (and your fellow players)’ and it keeps going on. Maybe if i keep insisting that it is NOT improvisation. I’ve also referred to Ferneyhough as doing something similar with New Complexity” but then Stravinsky did that same thing a long time ago. (I’m rambling now).

Most of the finished commentary on this line of thought is in my PhD. It’s in the sections on Analogies of Control, K, and Parables.(use the Research link to the right—>)

I’ve got cello and trumpet peices, but I need to understand better the relationship of scale and mutually resonant behaviour in the acoustic realm. I’ve got a double bassist and maybe a violinist and violist interested in the models.

What I really need is money to pay them for rehearsals and recording.