The dull edge, the slow night, the stoical tones, the long breath. In the middle of winter a new composition for computer-controlled sine waves and field recordings.
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Category Archives: new composition
108: Public
This week the program pairs a composition I wrote while sitting in the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center with field recordings of riding public transportation in Los Angles.
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103: Unknown Movement Underground
breaking apart concrete blocks, a bit of feedback, a slow sine wave melody, erosion, moving rocks into a bucket, turning a burner on to boil water, a model railroad train zipping around the track, sitting at a suburban restaurant owned by an astronaut.
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100: Spring #3
This week on the podcast the third of three new compositions for midi instruments and field recordings.
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098: Spring #1
This week on the podcast the first of three new compositions for spring.
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095: Trusting wholly to the loadstone
Episode 95 takes the speech and rhythmic patterns of episode 94, Arcadia, and uses it as data points, as signal to create voltage envelopes, as a way to create patterns and tones. The title is extracted from Thomas Moore’s Utopia, I have pasted a longer passage below.
They sailed before with great caution, and only in summer time; but now they count all seasons alike, trusting wholly to the loadstone, in which they are, perhaps, more secure than safe; so that there is reason to fear that this discovery, which was thought would prove so much to their advantage, may, by their imprudence, become an occasion of much mischief to them. But it were too long to dwell on all that he told us he had observed in every place, it would be too great a digression from our present purpose: whatever is necessary to be told concerning those wise and prudent institutions which he observed among civilised nations, may perhaps be related by us on a more proper occasion. We asked him many questions concerning all these things, to which he answered very willingly; we made no inquiries after monsters, than which nothing is more common; for everywhere one may hear of ravenous dogs and wolves, and cruel men-eaters, but it is not so easy to find states that are well and wisely governed.
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093: Field Notes
A collage of binaural and stereo field recordings: a walk near my house in Mount Vernon, NY; a recording from my backyard as I trim a few trees; a recording alongside the a man-made lake near Highway 44 in suburban St. Louis; a recording of a walk back to work after lunch; among others. The tones are made through using a tone gate on the recordings, so when the wind creates a bit of mic noise, it is joined by tones and cords.
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087: Rosco White with a Half-Wax Blend
Rosco White with a Half-Wax Blend is a slow plotting quintet of sine wave-based software instruments. It concludes a trilogy of compositions that have thought about work and labor within a musical context. Each was scored for traditional instruments and then manipulated, collaged, and recombined. This score was for a brass ensemble, but its final instrumentation features resonant pure tones, with hits of the piano, base, or trombone folded into the waveform. In my mind, the resonance, and complexity of the tones equate to the perceived aftermath of work left in a room, both the immediate and long-lasting. For example, the odor of paint, hint of cleanser in the air, along with how a fresh coat of paint can change the very nature of a room.
If you haven’t already, make sure you check out….
Part 1: 085: A Durable Object
Part 2: 086: T.M.O.
stopGOstop is produced by John Wanzel.
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