notesdontmatter

Improvisation Workshop and Forum 31-08-06

What happens when two keyboard players are jamming in a room and the light blows?

The music gets darker….

Seriously though, this was our most productive week yet. Some pre patching was done before hand to speed up the preparation process. The session went through several developmental stages as we began making music before 2:00pm without the full quota of musicians. This led to an interesting hip-hop trio jam that could be developed in the future. As 2:00 hit and people started to arrive, the sonic wall became increasingly complex. The first couple of attempts at collective improv’ yielded some promising results.

As people got more absorbed in their own sound however, we tended to stop listening to the collective sound of the group. This caused the second half of the session to degenerate a little, as no one seemed to be settling on a specific sound or keyboard patch, and time was wasted while searches for different sonic timbres became the order of the moment. Unfortunately there was a particularly annoying five-minute period of this (when the Mac generating drums became corrupted as well), which just happened to be the same five minutes that Steven sat in to check our progress. It appears he left the room less than impressed, but what can I say – some people just have really bad timing….

When we had it together (3.7MB Mp3)




Tyrell Blackburn – video game music from the mystic past:

I was very impressed with the overall quality of orchestration and production on Tyrell’s tracks, and could easily imagine them as a workable background feature of the in-game images provided. The only thing I can think to offer from a critical perspective is that they may have sounded a little (if I may quote the annoying Lars Ulrich in ‘Some Kind of Monster’): ‘stock’. This is probably a pointless criticism to make – how do you write tonal music with conventional orchestration now-days without sounding similar to at least one genre. It is probably a reflection of the game designers pre-imposed specifications for accompanying music anyway.

Poppi Doser – various sound and video project snippets:

If I had half the creative inspiration of Poppi, I would probably have written three or four albums by now. I had never really thought of combining found sound and found visual media from a compositional approach like music concrete. It certainly seems like a clever way to increase the entertainment value of either venture – although one can detract from the intensity of the other if used unwisely. That being said, one can certainly enhance the experience of the other if they are merged thoughtfully. This is definitely the case with Poppi’s work, which is as diverse as it is thought provoking. The underlying theme shared by some pieces, focusing mainly on women in society today, was mostly presented in an interesting and understated fashion that I feel demonstrates a well-developed sense of artistic expression.

Josh Schultz – Music Concrete:

Everyone’s music concrete piece seems to sound much better than mine and Josh’s was no exception. It was a tasteful blend of purposefully metallic soundwaves, which overlapped and reinforced themselves beautifully. I wonder if the metallic approach was due to an interest in the audio program 'Spear', which was used for parts of the piece and has a habit of metallicising (is that even a word?) the original signal. If so, it seems a clever approach to allow what many would regard as a fault in Spears’ audio quality, to dictate the core sonic timbre of a composition.

Albert Webster – Jazz Trio Recording:

This was an impressive recording with huge dynamic range. The sax was full and sang clearly, the bass was suitably smooth and well rounded and the guitar was alive with just the right amount of reverb for colouration. I was disappointed that Albert stopped it a minute and a half before it finished (I’m sure we could have survived that). Only gripe; guitar solo could have been twice as long.....

References:

Stephen Whittington. “Improvisation Workshop”. (Workshop presented at EMU Space and Studio five, 5th floor Schulz building, University of Adelaide). 31-08-2006

Tyrell Blackburn. “Game Music”. (Student Presentation at EMU Space 5th floor Schulz building, University of Adelaide). 31-08-2006

Poppi Doser. “AV projects”. (Student Presentation at EMU Space 5th floor Schulz building, University of Adelaide). 31-08-2006

Josh Schultz. “Music Concrete”. (Student Presentation at EMU Space 5th floor Schulz building, University of Adelaide). 31-08-2006

Albert Webster. “Jazz Trio Recording”. (Student Presentation at EMU Space 5th floor Schulz building, University of Adelaide). 31-08-2006

posted by David J Dowling @ 3:00 PM