Birds and Beats

I was recently honored with a position to mentor some college theater students, and contribute music, to their production of "The Tempest" this semester. I was chosen based on my previous work, and during interviews it was clear that since they enjoyed my theatrical compositions, that's exactly what they were asking me to contribute. Only problem is, they also hired a director who doesn't share my musical vision. I missed a rehearsal due to illness and read in the rehearsal notes that they had choreographed the masque scene to Britney Spears. Confused, I wrote and asked why? Especially since I had offered to compose music, etc. etc. Answer: Daily Double. It has a good beat.

My original idea was to craft sounds of nature with some musical instruments on stage and make something a bit more mystical. I realized that it just wasn't gonna fly - so if beats were what they wanted, best thing was to make some beats.... son.

Grabbed my birdsong collection, some drum machine software, a few African and Indonesian CDs, and went to work. Here are the first few ideas/rough mixes. Damn those plovers are funkay.

Doves.wav - T. Herion

Geese.wav - T. Herion

Plovers.wav - T. Herion

Tarkovsky on Art

So according to Tarkovsky, art does not equate with knowledge. Yet the artistic experience enriches one spiritually. So some sort of artistic residue remains, and accumulates, and he calls this spirit. What is the direction of this accumulation? What does it tend towards? A rising above oneself - an expression of "what we call 'free will.'"

I can say that Tarkovsky films play over in my mind for days after watching. Those long, disorienting shots, scrolling over some landscape close or far, have made me lose time more easily than any music. But that's not entirely true, since music and sound are indistinguishable elements from the whole of these scenes. And I am completely haunted by the way he lingers on inanimate objects, moments after all humans have left the scene. The thought of all the world happening at once, independent of any conscious perception, is one to behold. Surely the tree falls in the forest and makes a sound...?

Improvisation

I haven't really seen a film take on this subject to this degree... ever? Yeah, this is the only one, for sure. Part 2 looks particularly interesting.

PART 1 AND 3
http://www.ubu.com/film/bailey.html

PART 2
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1195a_on-the-edge-improvisation-2_music

PART 4?

The Xenakis Complex

But other paths also led to the same stochastic crossroads - first of all, natural events such as the collision of hail or rain with hard surfaces, or the song of cicadas in a summer field. These sonic events are made out of thousands of isolated sounds; this multitude of sounds, seen as a totality, is a new sonic event. This mass event is articulated and forms a plastic mold of time, which itself follows aleatory and stochastic laws. If one then wishes to form a large mass of point-notes, such as string pizzicati, one must know these mathematical laws, which, in any case, are no more than a tight and concise expression of chain of logical reasoning. Everyone has observed the sonic phenomena of a political crowd of dozens or hundreds of thousands of people. The human river shouts a slogan in a uniform rhythm. Then another slogan springs from the head of the demonstration; it spreads towards the tail, replacing the first. A wave of transition thus passes from the head to the tail. The clamor fills the city, and the inhibiting force of voice and rhythm reaches a climax. It is an event of great power and beauty in its ferocity. Then the impact between the demonstrators and the enemy occurs. The perfect rhythm of the last slogan breaks up in a huge cluster of chaotic shouts, which also spreads to the tail. Imagine, in addition, the reports of dozens of machine guns and the whistle of bullets adding their punctuations to this total disorder. The crowd is then rapidly dispersed, and after sonic and visual hell follows a detonating calm, full of despair, dust, and death. The statistical laws of these events, separated from their political or moral context, are the same as those of the cicadas or the rain. They are the laws of passage from complete order to total disorder in a continuous or explosive manner. They are stochastic laws.

= Iannis Xenakis - Thought and Mathematics in Composition

Sometimes I wonder to what extent the Trust of Man has disappeared following the 20th century carnage that was Europe. Perhaps a pointless question, but has this period determined a lasting fear of the "irrational" Forces of Man to the point of striving to always divorce patterns of their moral context? And if there are benefits to the irrational parts of human mind, will this fear destroy those too? Such basic wonder - yet it sometimes feels to be the most fundamental issue...

This tea is good - loose tea makes all the difference - especially when the morning is so cold.

The Great Ziegfeld

Ah, Depression era entertainment. What lush single-shot sequences will we have to look forward to during this recession?

And what is more far out than three "neverending story" ladies-in-waiting playing Puccini on 5 foot-long moon-banjos?

Anamorphosis

Anamorphosis
Uploaded by confidencial

Anamorphosis is one of those tricks of perspective that has excited me ever since I was a kid. Brothers Quay contribute this short film to the educational world - with their usual brittle and dusty characters. The wooden sound of the harpsichord is such a great combination. And I have to say, I am a sucker for all the soft--->hard focus depth of field.