Music, Sound Design, Sound Art, and Video
Consonant Dissonance is an album of electroacoustic piano pieces released on Elektramusic Berlin. The compositions involve processing the piano through a modular synthesizer. The piano signals are handled in different ways. These include granular synthesis, looping, pitch shifting, reverse, analog filtering, delay, and reverberation, all modulated via a function generator, low frequency oscillators, and a sampling touch controller. Continue reading
I am delighted to announce a concert of work by David Means on September 27, 2024 at the brand new performance hall in the recently opened Schoenecker Center at the University of St Thomas. The upcoming concert and recording session was made possible by a grant for the UST College of Arts and Sciences with support from the Emerging Media and Music departments.
David Means was a professor, advisor, and mentor of mine while I was getting my undergrad in music technology. He also served on my masters thesis committee and over the years he has been a gracious reference helping me land a teaching position, performances, and grants, and been an amazing friend and collaborator. All the while David has tirelessly composed work of his own and performed it in a spectrum of countries and venues around the world.
The Tower Project is a sculptural, graphic score by David and the grant provides funding for the performance, an exhibition of the score, a recording session, and speaking engagements. I’m excited to perform David’s piece with him, Anthony Cox on cello, and George Cartwright on guitar. I’ll be playing the new Steinway in the performance hall and running it through my electroacoustic modular skiff.
Me, Anthony, and George will each do short solo pieces to start the event followed by a UST student ensemble performing the Tower Project and closing with a quartet of me, David, Anthony and George interpreting the piece. The concert is free and open to the public. Seating is limited. Doors open at 6:30pm. Please join us at the University of St Thomas, Schoenecker Center, Performance Hall SCC 106, 2210 Summit Ave, St Paul, MN 55105.
SYNTAX is an exercise in programming computers to program ourselves. The collaboration with Mike Hodnick AKA Kindohm includes four movements from me and four from Mike for a total of eight generative, animated, graphic scores. We follow the unpredictable yet familiar visuals making each performance similar, but distinct from the next.
The piece questions technological idealism in an age of ecological disruption and data-driven exploitation. By deliberately coding and submitting to an “inversion of control” we evoke the warnings of media theorists like Douglas Rushkoff, risking a future wherein our behavior might be irreversibly dictated by the algorithms in the software we use instead of by our own volition.
SYNTAX was performed at the Performing Media Festival on March 10, 2023 at LangLab in South Bend, Indiana and Tte next day in Kalamazoo, MI at the Dormouse Theatre. The video excerpt above was presented at NIME 2022, and we performed the piece in-person at the Internation Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022) in Limerick July 2022, and at iDMAa 2022 Weird Media, June 2022.
Aniccha Arts premieres a performance installation inside a seven-level parking garage. The project asks questions about transience, migration, and stability in a space that temporarily stores cars and is home to nothing. Performers pervade the parking structure with their bodies, working against the visible slant of the ramp to find their individual verticality. Questions we asked in creating the work: How do we find softness in a landscape of concrete? What anchors us on these alternating planes? How do we connect across such a complex landscape? video by: Cully Gallagher
This video by Cully Gallagher is 3 minutes and 30 seconds of fragments from the approximately 44 minute long Parking Ramp Project. Composing music for this performance installation showed me how far it is still possible to explore improvised music through experimental processes. Considering the acoustics of the parking ramp was a critical consideration within the musical scope. One approach to this was rests coded into the algorithms that allowed for the music to decay during long pauses while the ambient sound of the space inserted itself as an unintentional “performer”.
I am humbled by the willingness of Pramila Vasudevan and other collaborators to humor my scheme to compose the work using Javascript. This language allowed me to quickly produce animated, generative, graphic scores. It was also a privilege to perform the music with Peter Hennig (drums) and Cody McKinney (bass/electronics) who effortlessly interpreted the graphic scores. You can read and hear more about the project or continue for a gallery of screen grabs from the animated graphic scores. Continue reading
Soon I’ll be on my way to Ireland for my second appearance at the Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association (ISSTA) annual conference. This year ISSTA will be held at Ulster University’s Magee campus in Derry, Northern Ireland, November 9th and 10th, 2018. Tickets are still available.
This time around my work is entirely rooted in FM synthesis. Particularly around my explorations of the amazing PreenFM2. I have designed a Max for Live patch that allows me to degrade, morph, and/or scramble sets of parameters on the synth. This is similar to a device I designed for the Yamaha TX81Z. This process creates an algorithmic approach to the sound design. Continue reading