saxophone quartet

In the previous week I recorded a saxophone quartet. The quartet includes:

Bianca Pittman - Baritone Saxophone
Hamish Buckley - Tenor Saxophone
Martin Cheney - Alto Saxophone
Kristy Williamson - Soprano Saxophone

a ragtime nightmare | a study in contrasts

extravehicular

9 ‘ 19

score | extravehicular.mp3

This piece is built over a thick ambience drone, which is composed from a drum sample being played extremely slowing – at a speed that oscillates back and forth, playing it in reverse too. The main instrumental accompaniment to this is a “probability” drum machine. This specifically written program uses programmed percentages to determine the likelihood of playing each drum. The resulting drum score is hazardous, lending itself to the industrial samples used. Together the drone and drum parts offer a very ‘digitally’ imbued version of electronica. Against this an acoustic piano is juxtaposed, to provide a small and distorted element of human melody – distorted in the way the piano is produced and cut up to add unnatural elements to the instruments distinctive sound. Aesthetically, the piece sits somewhere around the Industrial sound of Nine Inch Nails and the minimal glitch sound of the Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto collaboration. The piece is also greatly inspired by the “Odyssey” series by Arthur C. Clarke; this piece is too a snapshot of a human operating in space. The droning ambience part would here be emblematic of the machinery in such a scene, while the piano would be representative of the human.

snerf snerf

.cc - week twelve.

"I want this to go from this beat to that beat over this amount of time, with this curve, which is shaped according to this equation." (Booth, 2004)

This quote from Autechre was my primary inspiration for this semesters Max Patch. I have called it a 'probability drum machine', which basically uses user-defined percentages to determine whether a drum should be played on a certain beat. For example, a user can specify 100% chance of a kick on beat one, and 56% chance of a kick on beat 'two-and'. This creates an exciting deference to what is commonly found in dance music- instead of the common 'hit the crash every four bars', there could be a 25% chance of hitting the crash every bar. Another nice thing that the prototype produced was the ability control the bar between randomisation and specified input- it was easy set up a train of kick on one and snare on three, but over the top have somewhat more random, and realistically intuitive hi-hat hits. I also want to be able to morph from one beat to another over time (ala Autechre), create simple panning and volume automations and simply turn the thing on 'auto'.



The program itself will work best in collaboration with "real" instruments. So for the piece I make I intend to accompany the laptop with the piano. In the piece I am drawing inspiration from Autechre, some Nine Inch Nails industrialisation, as well as the electonica minimalism produced from the collaberation of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto.

.sources.

Haines, Christian 31.05.07, “Miscellaneuos Topic,” Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide.

sit on the spiral

.forum – week twelve.

It is an interesting polarity between improvised and composed music. Like all good polarities, I am interested in (for some strange reason) comparing it foremost to left and right wing politics. As such, improvised music I would compare straight away to communism, while composed music would be more indicative of dictatorial Fascism. Now, what the hell does that have to do with anything? Well…

Polarity. It is a scheme which seems to control everything; darkness versus light, good versus evil, classical versus jazz. No matter what your philosophical viewpoint is, surely it sits somewhere on a scale, a polarity which caters for all. Perhaps the most intriguing polarity to which I have thus far been introduced is the one that Professor Mark Carroll is oftentimes found spouting. That is, the polarity between Apollo and Dionysus, the head and the heart and between intellect and the senses.

So how does this sit in the war between improvisation and composition? Composed music requires a certain degree of intellectualism, while improvised music could be considered more impulsive and sensual. Stephen Whittington seemed to make mention of composition appearing to ‘win out’ in western culture. I feel that this is just one battle of polarities that continues to define the life of music, to this day. While certain entities can sit entirely on one side of the spectrum, the spectrum continues to exist with many wonderful exponents.

In the current day, post-modern as I later found out, I find it quite amazing that people can still cling so stringently to their particular position on the spectrum. It is obviously still accepted, I mean there are still people making money with dance music and even ‘old-school’ metal is making a return. But to be honest, at the moment I am listening to Gui Boratto’s new techno wonder “Chromophobia,” I have Stravinsky’s “PȨtrouchka” in my car’s CD player, am learning “Laid to Rest” by Lamb of God on guitar and one of Clementi’s Rondos’ on piano. I like dipping my toes into all aspects of argument, and am just genuinely interested in doing way too much. In other words, right now I am sitting a bit like white noise on the spectrum.

Although, it’s entirely possible that I am just a dirty commi.

.sources.

Whittington, Stephen and Harris, David 01.06.07, “Composition versus Improvisation,” Electronic Music Unit, Adelaide University.

mastering superman

.aa – week twelve.

This week we continued the mastering exercises, taking original (un-mastered) recordings to make our own using digital plug-ins. We also had the Edensound Mastered versions to compare our own efforts to. I used the filterbank EQ, Aphex Aural Exciter, MC2000M4 compression, Maxim Limiter and the power dither.


superman (un-mastered) | superman (my version) | superman (Edensound)

The main difference between my mastering and the Edensound, is the bass is stronger in my version and the Edensound sounds a little more ‘chimey’ and ‘verby’ around the vocals and acoustic. They are both loud, the Edensound is both a little louder and a little warmer (less crunchy) in pushing the gain. This is the difference between digital and analogue equipment. I noticed also that while I grew to prefer my EQ and compression settings, the only worked particularly well with the speakers I was monitoring with, but when I played the recordings through my laptop speakers the Edensound version was again better.

.sources.

Grice, David 29.05.07 "Mastering (2)." Electronic Music Unit, University of Adelaide.