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.

Finished

Finally the new piece has been performed and recorded.

The uploaded sample is a 3 minute excerpt, about 6 minutes into a 15 minute piece.

Instrumentation:
Bass Clarinet/double Bflat Clarinet
Baritone Sax
Flute/double Piccolo

Hammond Organ (Leslie Speaker)
Fender Rhodes (with Tremolo)

Violin I
Violin II
Bass

Male Voice
Female Voice

Percussion I - timpani, talking drum, shakers, bongo
Percussion II - drum kit, cymbals, shakers


I am fairly happy with the piece. The aesthetic is something I have had in mind for about a year now, but the opportunity to write didn't present itself until I committed to serious maneuvering. Best of all, it has inspired the creative urge to continue - - ideas are already brewing for the next one.

I've decided to include the piece in my upcoming grad school application. Time spent out of school has been great, but ultimately school is the most realistic method of living a lifestyle with the time to work on serious music again. I hope the application committee sympathizes with my work. The stressful part is feeling the pressure to contextualize this music in writing. I understand that distilling thoughts in writing is an essential aspect of academia, and I should hope to grow into it. But it has been an incredibly liberating experience not having to justify the sounds I want to listen to. Maybe it's time to come back around to the objectification side. We'll see how this plays out.

SU Sample - Troy

Beautiful Animation with Good Music Part 1

A nice day for some Russian animation. I just love the atmosphere of this piece - just soaked in fibers... sensual enough to elicit some dream memories. And once you hear it, the sound "crocodeele" will stick with you for all times.

David Lynch Elevator Music

I am nearly finished writing my newest composition. It's been something of a new direction - new orchestrations, new form... also the first composition to be demoed first with my own recording, then notated, then recorded with the studio's strengths in mind. Just bought the 2-inch tape. Anyway, there is a cutting room floor - which is basically about 25 minutes into the track where I cut away and drag pieces of music that didn't end up working. Eventually they line up based on their shape.

I happened to fall asleep listening to the demo, and sure enough the 25 minute mark rolled around. As the music played a dream came to me: David Lynch and I were in an elevator watching a documentary on his i-phone... some patriotic propaganda that tried to teach husbands to fix leaky faucets. May your dreams be so sweet.

Philadelphia Pride

As anyone who reads the small print of national newspapers would know, the Phillies have won the World Series! I had the enormously great fortune of being present in the stadium for Game 5 - and then walked an hour up Broad street from the stadiums to center city, where a spontaneous parade exploded as Philadelphians took to the streets and collectively went nuts. I heard there were some moments of vandalism somewhere, but of the thousands and thousands of people I saw, there was nothing but running, jumping, climbing, hugging, slapping five, and occasional disrobing. What a scene - glad to have been part of such a real spectacle.

thought and the joy of toil

What can I say? I like this stuff.

Thought which is only thought, the work of art which is only conceived, the poem which is no more than a dream, as yet cost nothing in toil; it is the material realization of the poem in words, of the artistic conception in statue or picture, which demands effort. The effort is toilsome, but also it is precious, more precious even than the work which it produces, because, thanks to it, one has drawn out from the self more than it had already, we are raised above ourselves. This effort was impossible without matter. By resistance matter offers and by the docility with which we endow it, is at one and the same time obstacle, instrument and stimulus. It experiences our force, keeps the imprint of it, calls for its intensification.

Philosophers who have speculated on the meaning of life and on the destiny of man have failed to take sufficient notice of an indication which nature itself has given us. Nature warns us by a clear sign that our destination is attained. That sign is joy. I mean joy, not pleasure. Pleasure is only a contrivance devised by nature to obtain for the creature the preservation of its life, it does not indicate the direction in which life is thrusting. But joy always announces that life has succeeded, gained ground, conquered. All great joy has a triumphant note. Now, if we take this indication into account and follow this new line of facts, we find that wherever there is joy, there is creation; the richer the creation, the deeper the joy. The mother beholding her child is joyous, because she is conscious of having created it, physically and morally.

...Take exceptional joys,-- the joy of the artist who has realized his thought, the joy of the thinker who has made a discovery or invention. You may hear it said that these men work for glory and get their highest joy from the admiration they win. Profound error! We cling to praise and honours in the exact degree in which we are not sure of having succeeded. There is a touch of modesty in vanity. It is to reassure ourselves that we seek approbation; and just as we wrap the prematurely born child in cotton wool, so we gather round our work the warm admiration of mankind in case there should be insufficient vitality. But he who is sure, absolutely sure, of having produced a work which will endure and live, cares no more for praise and feels above glory, because he is a creator, because he knows it, because the joy he feels it the joy of a god. If, then, in every domain the triumph of life is creation, must we not suppose that human life has its goal in a creation which, unlike that of the artist and philosopher, can be pursued always by all men -- creation of self by self, the growing of the personality by an effort which draws much from little, something from nothing, and adds unceasingly to whatever wealth the world contains?

= Henri Bergson, Mind Energy - Life and Consciousness

Vita vita

Reading up on all the vitalist theories of the early 20th century doesn't leave much time for blogging. That and I'm finally COMPOSING again.

A few friends have asked me why I bother with the Bergson, the "intuition" and "duration" and all of that non-quantifiable gibby gabby. "Well," i say, i say, "well, first and foremost, I find that in order to maintain a creative outlook in the world today, I needs me some inspiration. Best kinds'a inspiration comes from the kinds that just makes sense - ya know?"

What's all of this missing the forest for the trees? I like 'em both. So here's whatcha do. When I see a tree, I think of a forest. When I see a forest, I think of a tree. That simple.

So this brings me to the music. I've decided to take on an ambitious task: Write and record (with an excellent engineer using excellent equipment from both the analog and digital worlds) a piece that dips me into the undulating river of time, and then pulls me out slowly, without hardly enough trouble to notice it. In the meanwhile, a moment or two of full out recognition, recollection, and head nodding.

This little post comes on the heels of a comment about joining the ranks of qualitative charlatans of the next generation. Yeah, that's me too.

I've been writing for a month now. Scheduled to be recorded right before thanksgiving (crazy deadline). Whenever I think of the instruments I've chosen, I just wanna get right back to it. It's kinda secret, but here's a bit:

2 organs
voices
bass clarinet
bari sax
lots of percussion (including custom made awesomeness)
and more...

what a seed to blossom. can't wait can't wait can't wait.

Bergson for Fun Part 2

I decided a while back to re-read Creative Evolution with absolute concentration, pencil and notebook in hand, so that each sentence and long form logic was understood to the best of my ability. The process has been nearly transcendental. A friend of mine made a good point - reading philosophy is an experience like listening to music - in other words, the journey is the point. Getting the "gist" or reading second hand analysis is certainly no substitute.

So the process has been slow, but I enjoy it tremendously. I need to type out a passage that has hovered over my brain for the past week.

It must not be forgotten that the force which is evolving throughout the organized world is a limited force, which is always seeking to transcend itself and always remains inadequate to the work it would fain produce. The errors and puerilities of radical finalism are due to the misapprehension of this point. It has represented the whole of the living world as a construction, and a construction analogous to a human work. All the pieces have been arranged with a view to the best possible functioning of the machine. Each species has its reason for existence, its part to play, its allotted place; and all join together, as it were, in a musical concert, wherein the seeming discords are really meant to bring out a fundamental harmony. In short, all goes on in nature as in the works of human genius, where, though the result may be trifling, there is at least perfect adequacy between the object made and the work of making it.

Nothing of the kind in the evolution of life. There, the disproportion is striking between the work and the result. From the bottom to the top of the organized world we do indeed find one great effort; but most often this effort turns short, sometimes paralyzed by contrary forces, sometimes diverted from what it should do by what it does, absorbed b the form it is engaged in taking, hypnotized by it as by a mirror. Even in its most perfect works, though it seems to have triumphed over external resistances and also over its own, it is at the mercy of the materiality which it has had to assume. It is what each of us may experience in himself. Our freedom, in the very movements by which it is affirmed, creates the growing habits that will stifle it if it fails to renew itself by a constant effort: it is dogged by automatism. The most living thought becomes frigid in the formula that expresses it. The word turns against the idea.

The letter kills the spirit. And our most ardent enthusiasm, as soon as it is externalized into action, is so naturally congealed into the cold calculation of interest or vanity, the one takes so easily the shape of the other, that we might confuse them together, doubt our own sincerity, deny goodness and love, if we did not know that the dead retain for a time the features of the living.

The profound cause of this discordance lies in an irremediable difference of rhythm. Life in general is mobility itself; particular manifestations of life accept this mobility reluctantly, and constantly lag behind. It is always going ahead; they want to mark time. Evolution in general would fain go on in a straight line; each special evolution is a kind of circle. Like eddies of dust raised by the wind as it passes, the living turn upon themselves, borne up by the great blast of life. They are therefore relatively stable, and counterfeit immobility so well that we treat each of them as a thing rather than as a progress, forgetting that the very permanence of their form is only the outline of a movement. At times, however, in a fleeting vision, the invisible breath that bears them is materialized before our eyes. We have the sudden illumination before certain forms of maternal love, so striking, and in most animals so touching, observable even in the solicitude of the plant for its seed. This love, in which some have seen the great mystery of life, may possibly deliver us life's secret. It shows us each generation leaning over the generation that shall follow. It allows us a glimpse of the fact that the living being is above all a thoroughfare, and that the essence of life is in the movement by which life is transmitted.

=Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, pp. 126-128

Maybe it was my own state of mind, but this passage seemed to jump out at me as a fairly clear change of style and prose, particularly that bit about the "deny goodness and love if we did not know that the dead retain for a time the features of the living." Once he follows up with his ditty on the essence of what love is: life recognizing life - the whole thing starts to feel pretty good. I almost imagine Bergson sipping his scotch and really getting into these few pages (actually I get the impression that he didn't drink, especially when he talks about the effects of alcohol on the reproductive system, but I don't know for sure). It is really such a remarkable book, swirling together the mysteries and certainties of science, logic, and the ineffable.

Images to Save Mankind Part 1

I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs.
=Werner Herzog

I think the same thing is true of sounds. But the Herzog quote is pretty intense - and I tend to agree on the extreme side of it, that the symbolic arts should be considered an essential offering to humankind.

But on the subject of images, I post one of my favorite all-time movie images via YouTube - the great leveler of digital compression and quality.

Scene from Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky

There's a Hole in my Bucket

In the spirit of good fun, I present a clip of "sound design" from my most recent theater collaboration. The show "Kid Simple" made use of foley sounds and called for comedic sound collages based on some brief descriptions. I used some samples here and there, wrote some of my own sounds, and had friends use their favorite made-up character voices to finish the job.

Instructions in the play:

5 seconds each of:
1. News report during a New York City blackout
2. New England matron explaining how to dismember a lobster
3. Commercial promo for Extreeeeme sports
4. Rousing rendition of "There's a Hole in my Bucket Dear Liza"
5. A line from Dante's Inferno
6. The echo of the echo of someone saying echo



I think there is an r&b album of folk songs in the works...

Alfred's last words

It was a mistake, as the Hebrews tried, to conceive of God as creating the world from the outside, at one go. An all-foreseeing Creator, who could have made the world as we find it now -- what could we think of such a being? Foreseeing everything and yet putting into it all sorts of imperfections to redeem which it was necessary to send his only son into the world to suffer torture and hideous death; outrageous ideas. The Hellenic religion was a better approach ; the Greeks conceived of creation as going on everywhere all the time within the universe; and I also think that they were happier in their conception of supernatural beings impersonating . . . various forces, some good, others bad; for both sorts of forces are present, whether we assign personality to them or not. There is a general tendency in the universe to produce worth-while things, and moments come when we can work with it and it can work through us. But that tendency in the universe to produce worth-while things is by no means omnipotent. Other forces work against it. God is in the world, or nowhere, creating continually in us and around us. This creative principle is everywhere, in animate and so-called inanimate matter, in the ether, water, earth, human hearts. But this creation is a continuing process, and 'the process is itself the actuality', since no sooner do you arrive than you start on a fresh journey. In so far as man partakes of this creative process does he partake of the divine, of God, and that participation is his immortality, reducing the question of whether his individuality survives death of the body to an estate of irrelevancy. His true destiny as co-creator in the universe is his dignity and his grandeur.

= Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, recorded by Lucien Price, 1954, pp. 296-7.

Stage Directions

For a theatrical music piece that is yet to be:

...and the sun literally drying up to become a piled circle of mud crusted gray rocks floating in air - along with the beautiful sounds of a slippery, creaking transition from life-giving radiance to a pale, pulsing luminosity.

Higher Ground

Holy crap, they did it - inspiration has truly entered politics during my lifetime.

While searching for some feel-good videos on google video, one search culminated in the combination of Stevie Wonder and Barack Obama...


Feel gooooood....



Then.... feel great.

Les Espaces Acoustiques

This music makes me so happy.

Gérard Grisey - Partiels from La Espaces Acoustiques



Only an excerpt, and the YouTube fidelity leaves something to be desired. But it stimulates the imagination. I heard a (maybe false) story that Stravinsky kept a muted and out-of-tune piano in his studio where he composed. It was kept in this condition so as not to impede on his own imagined sounds.

I have to admit that I love the "tree of knowledge" image at the beginning of this fractal music video. Add in some imagined vibrancy to the colors and it is pretty beautiful.

Frenchy Froggy Froggy Frenchy Frenchy Frog

OK, I admit it. My two favorite sets of Chansons are Ravel's Chansons Madécasse and Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé.




That's it, I'm learning French.




I might change my mind to include Messiaen's Poèmes pour Mi or Debussy's Trois poèmes de Mallarmé.

écrivez l'automne