Yes, my Dad was in tears at my senior composer's concert last week. It's been great actually, he's been, you know, engaging in conversation with me again for the first time since I got back from England. My Mom credits the change with a) his new sugar monitor, which gives him a blood sugar read-out all day, so he doesn't get low, and b) his nighttime breathing machine that's actually allowing him to sleep without asphyxiating. Tonight I was paying a visit to the house in SF and I played a Tenacious D song for him, and had him cracking up in a way he hasn't in, like, forever.
Personally, I want to think it's because he has found new respect for what I do. He wrote me an email saying as much. Since I dedicated a movement of the string quartet to him, without telling him, he was a little choked up during the concert, and my Dad doesn't get choked up over just anything.
So I'm repacking this thread so a few more of you can enjoy the wondrous healing mystical magical powers of music. My music. 24 hours a day, confined to this corner of the interwebs.
After my successful undergraduate concert, "WTF," I finished all my exams and essays, and am now done with school (except a summer school class... )
I have some recordings of the concert. This is not all there was, but all I will share at this moment, or have had time to edit in Logic and make presentable here, in rough form:
This piece was composed last of all my SQ music. I wrote it in the space of one hour, directly before a rehearsal with the ensemble, because I was dissatisfied with the tone of the rest of the piece and wanted something mournful and heavy in the middle. This seems to be good ground for expansion, and I've arranged to write an orchestral version for the University Orchestra next year. It was dedicated to my father, who cried at the concert. The influences are primarily Thomas Newman and Shostakovich.
This piano and voice piece I have mentioned before, but had no recording until this concert. I wrote it about 18 months ago for a friend to play as part of a music theory class. It is a setting of an Allan Ginsberg elegiac poem to Walt Whitman, with reference to Eliot and Pound.
I have posted Friction already, and that, with this new second movement were played along with "Forest Pavan" as a three part set with video from a TCS (Techno-culture Studies) friend of mine. This piece plays with the themes of the previous one, and allows the player a lot of expressive freedom, but is unpredictable and wilder than some of my other music. It was composed in only three sittings.
posted
Oh, and I apologize for the digital noise in the file, that was introduced by accident (in the conversion), and I'll try and post a cleaner version later on.
There are key parts, such as in the beginning, when localized digital noise (relative to the sounds, like the first cry) is intrinsic in the composition. Unfortunately this has been obscured.
The piece also uses a very wide bandwidth (down to 30 hertz) so a good set of headphones or speakers would be ideal for catching the low passes.
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Haunting. Nice job Orincoro! I particularly liked the use of reverb. I don't know much about the particular aesthetics of electronic music, so I can't speak in specifics, but I certainly liked it. It is evocative of plainchant, in my mind, both because of the reverb (cathedral like) and because of the mode.
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I liked it too. Some of the vocal parts reminded me of Hindi style chant, but I'm kinda with BandoCommando on the plainchant thing too. Very nice. Posts: 511 | Registered: Mar 2006
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I'll have you know maven, that scant 2 minutes took 15 hours of lab time to construct.
Icarus, I used Itunes- it's an mp4 encoded by Itunes- I don't know that wmp can play it.
Thanks for the compliments everyone!
I have a recording session in the works for two of my chamber pieces, a piano song, and a solo cello piece. If all those go well, I'll post.
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I'm contemplating the next project as we speak (due in two weeks). It has to include a fair bit of digital synthesis though, and that's scary!
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I don't have the right player installed for this. Is this the one with the attractive Asian woman playing the violin?
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Actually it's funny, the voice that comes in at the end is an attractive asian Viola player, and she is singing a viola part from Rite of spring... so go figure that out.
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I *loved* this piece, Lloyd. The timbres are just fascinating with the viola da gamba and the samples that make up the background/bass line. Nice clear voices too, which one is yours?
My favorite thing about this is the interplay with different modes in the notes you're singing--I hear it starting in something like a B phrygian with the B-D opening idea, but I love the little C#-C move at the 30 second mark to change into what sounds like Eflat minor (very cool key to change to.) I love the touch of C natural at the 1:07 mark giving it a dorian feel for a second--very cool. It's that interplay between the major 2nd/flat 2nd and the major 6th/flat 6th which really makes this piece stand out from your basic modal improvisation. Lastly, the Aflat major chord leading into the touch of the "picardy" third at the end is brilliant. I'd love to hear more of your stuff.
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Orincoro, this is great for 15 hours! I wanted to hear more development from those instruments that come in at 1:56appx, those added a lot!
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Cool! Very moody and atmospheric. I liked the Native American sounding part about two-thirds of the way through. A lot of the music I like has strong Native American influences.
What's it say when you play it backward? Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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You know Andy, I didn't even consider that the ending gesture was a picardy. The way I constructed it, I was just layering a couple of the modal samples together. You end up with a picardy made up of two layered neopolitan flat IIs (I think?) going to V. If you listen closely to that part, you'll also hear the low voice singing Doh at the beginning and then morphing into the major third, while the re goes to doh. I liked the interaction so much, I think I'll use it in an acoustic piece.
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I was thinking it would be a picardy third if you were actually in Eflat minor--or having Eflat as the final of your chant, perhaps. I don't think it's picardy in the Baroque sense, but there's definitely an Eflat and a G natural sounding in the last seconds, which I just thought was particularly cool when you had a minor feel for the rest of the piece. Neopolitan chords rock, though. I like resolving them straight to "I" instead of going to "V".
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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This is my third project for Electronic composition, and by far the hardest to realize. I'm beginning to understand my own compositional process and how inefficient it is.
I have issues with this piece, and I didn't have enough studio time to make them all right. My flagrant use of both Palistrina and Crumb/Schubert (Death of a Maiden Pavana) bothers me and I don't know what to do about it.
The project was defined as an experiment in colliding multiple sound worlds. You'll notice I have close sounds: electronic and electrical interference sounds, faraway sounds: voices and strings, and ambiguous sounds: the breaths and Pavana.
The music and sound sources are:
a Viola Da Gamba My voice A cello and cellist Bartok's Solo Violin Sonata O Magnum Mysterium, by I think Palistrina... could be wrong The Rite of Spring- Muti (you'll never hear that part of it though, it's pretty different)
Good: The "soaring" string instrumentation was really stellar, very inventive. Lyrics are solid, if a bit loud at times. Even the "stuttering" effects fit well, breaking the song's norm while still finding a place.
Not as good: Not the biggest fan of the key changes you used. Just a matter of opinion I suppose. As you mentioned, the lack of fine-editing does show, but only slightly.
Keep it up. You're really good at this.
Posts: 1594 | Registered: Apr 2006
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I'll continue to post pieces in this thread as recordings and files become available.
You can look for 4 of my pieces in the future, some things i've been meaning to share for awhile, and some things brand new. They are:
"The Raven" A romantic Song from 2006 "A supermarket in Southern California" A spoken word and piano piece from 2006 "Rising Shadows" A piano trio (cello and clarinet) and spoken word piece from 2007 "Friction" A solo cello piece performed last week at a department concert
I am planning on having a concert of my own music in combination with a composer friend in Davis next year. As pieces become available I will post them for your perusal!
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Hi folks, I finally got the recording of "Friction" and had time to sit down and edit the thing before I leave for Europe. This is a somewhat rough cut (sorry it's still a .wav file) where I have normalized some of the problem spots and reverbed when appropriate.
If you ever do sound editing from a fairly flat source like one studio microphone, it's rather like trying to make a gourmet dinner out of a pile of TV dinners. It can only really be faked- reverb is like the re-animation of canned vegetables. They were good once, I swear!
I am using fileden, and with a 40mb file I could easily blow my monthly quota (5GB) if you refresh this too many times. Please click the link once and be patient. Thanks!
About the piece: This started a movement in a larger ensemble and poetry piece. I decided to turn it into a tone poem. There are quotation-like segments and repetitive textures that attempt to maintain a static narrative for the piece without traditional musical narratives. The phrases are intentionally "phrase-like" as in speech and dramatic speaking.
There is also, for the very acute listener, a direct quotation from Bartok somewhere in the middle. Who can name it??
The cellist is a good friend of mine: Lucas Chen presently of San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
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I didn't catch the reference, although there was a line near the middle that did stand out as familiar. For an early job, the mixing ain't half bad, but it still has an overall "flat" feeling to it. Unfortunately, this is most noticeable at the more "climactic" parts of the song.
As for the music, I really enjoyed it. The repitition was well-placed and not overdone, and it didn't jump all over the place, musically. Definitely something worth refining, rerecording and remixing, IMHO.
Posts: 1594 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Flaming Toad on a Stick: I didn't catch the reference, although there was a line near the middle that did stand out as familiar. For an early job, the mixing ain't half bad, but it still has an overall "flat" feeling to it. Unfortunately, this is most noticeable at the more "climactic" parts of the song.
One thing I learned in classes is that "flat" sound in "manager-speak" translates to "too much compression" in "recording-speak."
I don't know anything about fixing it. But for what it's worth, if someone says something sounds flat, apparently it means too much compression.
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Yes, pH (long time btw!) the recording suffers from overall "crapiness." It was a single mic in a music lecture hall full of people. The ambient sound is surprisingly low, but the reaction I had listening to the recording was "BLECH." It was dreary and dreadful.
I only spent about 30 minutes today cleaning it up to look at least presentable for you kind folks. The incredible power of reverb (when applied wisely) never ceases to amaze. You should consider reverb to be the equivelant of color versus black and white. It makes the sound come alive and seem real.
That said, as far as composition goes, I have joyous spots and cringe spots still. The harmonic tapping I tried to include was weak and unclear, although the cellist had one day to learn the piece (and probably only spent about an hour on it). The descending lines over sustained tones didn't work technically, and should be revised to avoid a narrative car crash.
The ending page- including the last 3 large gestures, was the most praised by my teachers, and took only an hour to write the night before my concert, as the Cellist literally sat waiting for me to finish so he could learn it. This is often (surprisingly often) the best moment in a composer's process. You have the piece down. and now your kind of "performing" the final draft and the final flourish. The most improvised and natural part is the last to come from your head, sans revision or second thought. It was a great feeling to have made the piece work in that last day, because without the ending it dies.
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Update: Based on the strength of these projects two of my composition professors have offered me independent study projects next year! I will do one in winter as an independent (or possibly small group) study, and one as an independent study and Senior project. Very few students at my school are offered these opportunites, and this will total 4 such projects for me (woohoo!) This also allows the department to waive my normal upper division composition seminars in favor of my projects, and gives me about ten times as much personal attention on each project. It also sets up a featured concert of my own works by department musicians.
The two proffs (they are married) saw me at the park yesterday on my break and called me over to sit with them. Sam, my teacher for winter suggested that I write a string quartet with him and make that my project. He assigned me to go and study 5 string quartets- 3 like I like and 2 that I do not like. Our first meeting with review my studies. yay! I am excited for the future.
I heart music teachers. They are the best.
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I've returned from my studies in England now and am preparing to return to music studies for two more quarters of mostly independent research and study/composition.
This is the beginning of the third (probably last) movement in my electronic cycle. It is being composed on Logic, so far from samplings of my cello piece of last june. I am going to add probably two more instruments, possibly a Soprano and a harp or Clarinet. I can't decide yet.
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I enjoyed it. (I wish I had listened to the one at the top - I seem to have missed this thread when it debuted.)
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Great stuff again. Sounds like you had fun in England--and good luck with finishing out your degrees. After a semester in Boston, I'm a competent piano tuner, with a few more months before I feel like a full-fledged piano technician.
You, however, are already a fantastic composer. Keep em coming.
Posts: 1314 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Wow hey I'm digging it, rock on with this. Listening to Breaths, though, I noticed a small patch of noise and two pops after that, a little halfway in the piece.
Looking forward to Outcry.
Posts: 299 | Registered: Jan 2007
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Cool. I wish there was a slightly longer sample of that movement, give me a slightly better idea of where it was going, but take your time. I'm looking forward to more.
Posts: 1594 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by The Flying Dracula Hair: Wow hey I'm digging it, rock on with this. Listening to Breaths, though, I noticed a small patch of noise and two pops after that, a little halfway in the piece.
Yes, there was an issue with the mixdown. Some of the regions obviously got clipped due to some mistake of my own. There is also an issue with the end of the piece, and I haven't been able to obtain a proper mixdown since I've been in England for 6 months. The piece should be several seconds longer, but gets cut off.
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Okay, here's the update. I'm finally graduating from my music program in june, and this is a set of electronic pieces that comprises about half of my senior portfolio. I think it's strong. Composition teacher thinks that, while it could stand tweaking and polishing, it's very strong, and he's been talking to me lately about my grad school options. So we'll see. My house mate just got into Brandeis for composition, and I thought I was the ambitious one...
Here are the movements thus far with my comments. Please, if you are interested, read and listen, post and comment. I am tentative on all the names, and names are very important.
My first electronic piece (fixed media). This was me finding my feet, and quite literally my voice in electronic music, and it garnered the best response from hatrackers so far. But then it was the first.
A second, and to my ears stronger foray into the same sonic world. At this point I was dealing entirely with fixed media, which means granular composition and editing, taking sources that I created in an analogue world, or found in an "analogue" environment in music, and altered in presentation and space within the medium. I loved this piece even more than the first, and it was a joy to write- during a series of all night sessions in the spring of last year, alone on campus in the studio.
This piece was the most deeply introspective of the lot. I composed it at odd times, visiting friends, between meals, in different programs, with different moods. It is suggestive of the serious side of a CPQ Bach- it is the most dark of the music I have here, but also contains the lightest moments. The ending is open, but I couldn't seem to leave the idea suggested in the last few minutes of the piece alone, and it comprised my idea for the 4th movement. More than space is at stake in this movement, it comes down to a kind of conversation between the different "me's" as a composer, a listener, a critic, happy and depressed.
Gasp! I wrote something rhythmically inclined. There was a kind of life force behind making this piece that brought the elements together more quickly than I was really willing to accept. The various parts were composed over the last few weeks, and I consider it a work in progress. It continually amazes me that music does things like this, that ideas work out in this medium so shockingly well, so much better than I could hope at times, that I think I must certainly be cheating. A composition teacher of mine last year complained that all of my music is always ending beautifully, always trailing off into solemn silence, but refusing to plug things out and stay in the moment for too long. I think that is what makes these pieces work, but I'd like to hear some criticism, and some comments.
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OK. I just listened to "Voices" and liked it, except for the clipped notes starting around 2:45.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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I'm working on that. It's a processing issue. As the reverb deals with the envelope differently, the clips come in unnexpectedly. It's just a matter of going in and smoothing them out, or setting up a better work around for snatching the tracks out of max than with wiretap. I haven't decided how to approach it, but it needs work.
But I must say Morbo, you have a really good ear.
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I thought it was an intentional effect you used.
I just listened to all 4, and I'm impressed. They're very professionally done.
As far as me having a good ear. . .I'm far more visually inclined. I just got G-Force, a visualization program for Windows Media Player (and other players) and I've been grooving on it's tasty visuals.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Well, when you say "clipped" voices, I assume you're talking about the effect of "clipping" which is when a sound is cut off abruptly, with no envelope, the speaker that is reproducing the wave form snaps back to create a "pop" or "click" or "clip" sensation. It's caused by a lack of data- it happens when a sound is not properly digitized or when it is effected by a change in bandwidth- so that information has actually been lost somewhere. One way to fix it is to go into the sound file and add envelopes to the clipped sounds manually, which is what I probably have to do.
If you just mean that you didn't like the quality of the sounds I was using, which have abrupt envelopes as well, but are not quite clipping, then that's something else.
And I will say, unfortunately, I have yet to see a sound editor program that can be trusted to edit clips for me. It's one of those things that humans still have to do.
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Interesting. I hadn't heard of that speaker effect. I guess I'm referring to the abrupt envelopes, not sure.
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I don't think these pieces were written with my musical tastes in mind. In all four, I felt vaguely like I was walking through a video game-- ala Myst. (Or Lighthouse, which is infinitely superior) I felt like a certain mood was being asked for by the music, but there was nothing, musically, for me to interpret what mood it wanted. By the time I'd started to figure out what I was feeling, another element was added and the process started over.
When I listen to instrumentals, I tend to write stories in my head that fit with the music. I couldn't do this with these because so many unexpected elements kept creeping in. I couldn't make a story that enveloped all the different pieces. I was left a bit disappointed and confused.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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So then, Scott, I'm assuming that "predictability" is not exactly what you have in mind, but that you would like ideas to be continued over longer periods so that you can come to terms with them?
Have you tried re-listening to the pieces? Given that I've listened to them hundreds of times, my perspective is pretty well shot.
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