David Harris at the Music technology forum
My thoughts on the Music Technology Forum 23/03/2006
Elder Conservatorium of Music
Adelaide University
Guest Speaker: David Harris
For more specific info on David Harris check out:
www.darwinguitar.com/2005/index.php?content=artprof_harrisI don’t know if David Harris himself remembers but I have experienced him as a lecturer in the past, way back in the 90’s. Well, 1999 at Flinders St School of Music to be exact. David was lecturing and running workshop type scenarios for a subject called Music Language Studies. The content of this subject was similar to that which we are experiencing in the music technology forums in the sense that it was generally non conventional music or composition that we were exposed to.
I was a little resistant to much of what I heard in the early stages as a lot of the material tended to challenge my long held assumptions of what music is and its place in society etc, etc. Although I maintain some of my adversity to some specific works which are revered by many people, I do believe that through studying with people like David Harris I have gained a certain degree of understanding regarding the necessity of non conventional approaches to music making for the purpose of breaking new ground. This is also essential for keeping the intellectual composing culture moving forward. As is necessary in any art form I whole heartedly support the need for artists involved to engage in the highest degree of self indulgence possible to generate real results from their work.
David Harris certainly seems to have spent a lot of his time as a musician composing given that the first piece he played for us at the forum was written fifteen years ago. This piece, which was played with only a handful of notes in the lower octave range of the piano (I think somewhere around C-1) produced some interesting harmonic results as it was played entirely with the sustain pedal pressed down (as far as I could tell anyway). Unfortunately with this type of approach to gaining complex harmonic results the new harmonics acquired are usually of low amplitude, which makes it difficult for them to compete with the very loud volume of the fundamental notes being played. This means that one has to listen very carefully to comprehend even some of what is going on at a higher level than what is immediately obvious about the piece of music.
I felt that Jack Vees piece (Surf Music 2) (
www.leisureplanetmusic.com/composer/vees/bio.htm) achieved a more desirable harmonic result. This was due I believe to the bowed bass guitar producing long sustained fundamental notes that did not require a hard fast attack to produce volume. This is in stark contrast to David’s Piano piece in which he attacked the Steinway in the EMU recording space with intense ferocity (I was surprised at how long he could keep it up for). Some of the resulting chords in Surf Music 2 were very sweet sounding. There were even moments when I could hear an almost perfectly intonated dominant seventh chord (don’t ask me in which key) and was expecting the piece to resolve to the relevant tonic. Another interesting effect I suspect was coming from the scratching in particular areas of the bass strings by the violin bow. This started about halfway through the piece and sounded strikingly similar to Jimi Hendrixs’ Foxy Lady intro where Hendrix simply holds down the B and G strings of his Stratocaster at the 7th fret and applies savage vibrato without actually plucking the strings while slowly swelling the volume knob from zero to ten (or did his go up to eleven). Well apparently you can achieve the same effect by playing a bass guitar with a violin bow, who would have thought?
I could appreciate the effect that David was going for with his glissando obsession influenced compossible (I’m sure that’s what he called it, the dictionary meaning is: ‘Able to exist with another thing; consistent’ someone correct me if I’m wrong) but once again I did find it difficult to hear the full extent of the microtonal interplay from the two violinists duelling with their respective glissando techniques as lots of it is drowned out by the fundamentals involved.
I think it would be fair to end my comments by saying that I have not listened to a great deal of this kind of music as yet so I’m sure the sensitivity and interpretation by my own ears of these aural challenges at this stage will definitely have room for improvement. I look forward to hearing more of this diverse music and sound in the future and I’m sure my twentieth century hearing will get with the times eventually.
References:
David Harris. "Music Technology Workshop / Artist Talk – David Harris." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 23 March 2006.
Noah Porter. Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=Compossible
Gordon Monro @ the music tech forum
16/03/2006
This post is for my thoughts regarding:
Music Technology Forum 16/03/2006 at
Elder School of Music, Adelaide SA.
Guest speaker: Gordon Monro
Gordon Monro:
Gordon Monro is a Music Composer whose interest is primarily in the field of technology and its use in creating new and original sound and music.
He also happens to be a mathematician and readily applies his numerical skills to his sound design. Check out
www.gommog.com for a detailed profile on the man himself.
There is something innocent and refreshing about grown, educated men who look for opportunities to incorporate Lego building into their serious day to day work. After all, as a child do you remember being less than satisfied with your creative efforts in the Lego construction department due to either your own lack of vision or your paltry collection of Lego blocks? In my case it was a combination of both. I swear I can recall a promise to myself that when I was all grown up, employed and educated that I would reignite my shattered Lego dreams with unlimited funding and brain power. It seems that Gordon Monro may have made a similar promise to himself at some point……and kept it.
I am referring of course to his experiment with two laser pointers being controlled to make random patterns by a motor and gear mechanism housed in a Lego construction. The laser pointers also send data to a voltage to midi converter which is relevant to the wanderings of each individual laser and the interaction of the two when they happen to cross paths. It makes for some interesting random sound creation. I felt there was a futuristic or ‘star wars’ type quality exuded from these sounds.
Interestingly enough, the majority of the material that Gordon played to us on the day conjured up various visual images for me that were synonymous with Star Trek / Star Wars type weaponry, vehicles and warfare. I’m curious to know if the practice of generating music and sound via predetermined mathematical calculations and programming often produces this type of end result. I don’t imagine it would be the case with ‘note generating’ algorithmic composition as this is usually associated with the algorithm determining which notes to play, but in its simplest form the notes already have a pre-determined pitch. So at its weirdest, if you were to use this method with even tempered western tuning, you may end up with a result similar to a piece of ‘serial music’ (www.sci.wsu.edu/math/Lessons/Music/). Or it could be legitimately serial depending on the algorithm controlling the note selection.
I think Gordon’s approach is more about not knowing exactly what the program or device in place is actually going to produce. Being an exponent of ‘generative composition’ (
www.gordonmonro.com/archive/McCormack_review.html) he craves the element of surprise existing to some degree in his finished product.
Music Tech Workshop and practical thoughts 16/03/2006:
Glen Brancas, Symphony no. 3:
A symphony of guitars? This is a concept I can identify with. I thought there were some interesting harmonies created here. My only issue with the concept of finding new sounds through complex harmonic layering is that specific sounds can turn up within the layer that you may consider more desirable than the entire layer itself. It can leave you in the frustrating position of wanting to use or just listen to such a specific sound but have no way of duplicating it without the interaction of all the other harmonics in play.
Oh well, I guess that’s why we have synthesisers, although they tend to always leave me wanting but that’s probably down to my low level of synthesis knowledge at this stage.
Some interesting discoveries made about studio 2 this week:
There may be 8 inputs from the dead room into studio 2 but the mixing desk only has 4 omni outputs. Therefore if anyone is planning on miking up a full drum kit then they will need to look at plugging the extra 4 mic’s directly into the pro tools hard disk system.
I also found it beyond my abilities to get a decent size wave form to record from the guitar amp to pro tools with out the mic’s producing an unacceptable amount of distortion. The amp was not up very loud and I was using four different mic’s at various locations in front of the amp. The amp also caused an unwanted buzzing sound from the skirting around the edge of the dead room when playing certain pitches on the guitar.
More on this and other exciting topics next week……………………
References:
Gordon Monro. "Artist Talk – Generative Synthesis / Algorithmic Composition." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 16 March 2006.
David Harris. "Music Technology Workshop / Objective listening - Glen Brancas, Symphony no. 3." Workshop presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 16 March 2006.
Christian Haines. "Audio Arts - Studio 2." Practical Class presented at Studio 2, EMU space, 5th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 14 March 2006.
09/03/2006
This post is for my thoughts regarding:
Music Technology Forum 09/03/2006 at
Elder School of Music, Adelaide SA.
Guest speaker: Warren Burt
Warren Burt:
Warren Burt is a music composer and experimental artist who specialises in experimentation and composing with various forms of technology, old and new. He has been exploring the endless applications of technology in music since his late teens and is active in the field to this day with no sign of slowing down. Check out
www.tropicapricorn.com/warren_burt.htm for some detailed personal history.
One thing I found interesting about Warren Burt in relation to last weeks forum with Robin Minard is that they have both attended university early in life to study music and composition and have both taken the not so lucrative path to creating eccentric ‘non conventional’ art with music and sound. Both have also been involved with sound installation art as well (although Robin Minard seems to have taken to this concept more specifically) which suggests they may have both left their studies at university with a similar mindset.
I did appreciate the variety of compositional approaches that Warren spoke of using throughout his career so far. The ‘five pound synthesiser’ (
www.emf.org/subscribers/burt/worklist.htm) was my personal favourite.
It’s interesting that Warren spoke of having a fascination with counterpoint as a compositional technique early in his career and has kept this traditional western composition practice in mind whilst working on the wiring and functionality of the various synthesisers he has worked on.
The only lecturer (John Polglase) who has mentioned counterpoint in these first few weeks of classes has stated that we will ‘hate’ it by the end of the year. I guess that he must receive mostly negative feedback from students when he is teaching the subject. Perhaps it takes a reasonable degree of eccentricity to become excited by such a concept (I did think Warren Burt seemed a little ‘out there’). But then again, I myself was a bona-fide maths nerd in my younger days at high school so maybe I’ll be counter pointing to my hearts content in the near future.
Another concept warren touched upon during his talk was microtonality. This is something I have wanted to explore for a long time but have not been made aware of software programs to help with the idea until now. I will definitely be looking into programs such as ‘Plogue Bidule’ and ‘V Sampler’ which Warren was showcasing at the forum as they seem to be geared toward offering extended functionality in this area. The Fibonacci harmonic series that Warren played as an example in Plogue Bidule sounded like a major scale that had been convoluted by a handful of notes and then slightly deformed. Very cool.
Practicals for week 3:
Is anyone else feeling a little lost with the programming jargon in the two PDF files we were asked to read? I did find myself having to switch between webopedia.com and the dictionary to develop some level of understanding. I guess we are here to learn though…………….
References:
Warren Burt. "Artist Talk – Composing with Technology." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 09 March 2006.
Christian Haines. "Creative Computing - Sound File Formats." Lecture presented at the Audio Lab, 4th floor, Schulz Building, University of Adelaide, 09 March 2006.
This post is for my thoughts regarding:
Music Technology Forum 02/03/2006 at
Elder School of Music, Adelaide SA.
Guest speaker: Robin Minard
On the subject of Robin Minard and 'sound installation art':
Who is Robin Minard? He is a one man war on muzak machine from Canada/Germany specialising in the field of sound installation art. See www.erratum.org/minard/minard.html for more specific information.
I was first exposed to Art-House and other alternative approaches to music making and theory about seven years ago now during a Music Technology course at TAFE in Adelaide. My first reaction to some of the ideas and recordings we were subjected to could be considered adverse. A good example is John Cages’ ‘4:33’ which is basically four minuets and thirty three minuets of silence in three short movements. A less than thrilling concept I still feel to this day.
However, I have since matured a little and having the last seven years to think about some of these ideas and what the real motivation was behind the artists has opened my mind to more than just conventional western tonality and rhythm. My only criticism now surfaces when I believe an artist is only interested in confronting people on the subject of art and their own perception of what art is instead of focusing on creating something worthwhile.
This is clearly not the case with Robin Minard. It’s the first real exposure I have had to ‘sound installation art’ as a concept and I was impressed with the tireless effort and enthusiasm Robin has for his craft. The fact that he has been persevering with this idea and developing its potential over the last two decades is proof enough that he truly believes in what he is doing and for all the right reasons.
I found the idea of ‘colouring a space’ appealing and was curious to see if anyone who has come into contact with Robin has commissioned him to create a sound installation for their own home. I have been unable to uncover any information on ‘domestic’ sound installations that Robin may have been involved in as most sources indicate his work in art galleries and other ‘public’ spaces but lots of the information on websites is in German, and as I gave up my study of the language at the age of thirteen I could be missing something.
Besides, even if it hasn’t happened yet, I think it is only a matter of time before some cashed up Hollywood actor type stumbles across the subtle beauty of one of Robins’ installations and imagines one in his/her not so subtle Beverly Hills mansion.
If I ever have the chance to experiment with sound installation myself in the future I will probably look at some different approaches to the actual sound itself. The speakers and presentation of Robins’ work are very aesthetically pleasing so I would probably look at presenting an installation in a similar way. Though I do think it would be interesting to add some personal touches to the concept and discover what feels right for a particular space……….
References:
Robin Minard. "Artist Talk – Sound Installation Art." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 2nd March 2006.
Sound Installations
I want more so bring it on....
My thoughts on the Music Technology Forum 23/03/2006
