On November 27, 2012 I made a binaural recording of David Byrne’s installation, Playing the Building (2012), at Aria in Minneapolis. During my session in the space I recorded a solo performance of myself, a duet with me and Jon Davis on bass clarinet, and a trio (DKO) with me, Graham O’Brien on drums and Jon Davis. I used a binaural head to record each performance. I have been interested in building a binaural head for some time, and finally got the parts together including a mannequin head, silicone ears, and overhead microphones capsules. I’ll share more about “Vincent” (the head’s name), and the rest of the recordings soon. For now here’s a video of my solo performance. Remember to listen using headphones in order to hear the binaural spatial effects. You’ll hear the installation surrounding you, a visitor bouncing a tennis ball off to the right, and occasional interjections of people in conversation.
Tag Archives: Music
Time-lapse of In Habit: Living Patterns
This video created by Caleb Coppock illustrates the time scope (from dusk until dawn) of the In Habit: Living Patterns performance at Northern Spark, June 2012. I composed the music for the sixteenth and final vignette in the sequence titled, Energy and then adapted it for the time-lapse sequence.
Keep an eye/ear out for upcoming documentation that will display the dance movements in real-time. I also have some video with binaural audio recorded at one of the performances that I will be sharing as well.
Chromatic Textures Shown at 6X6 #5: Mystery
On Wednesday, July 7, 2010 my piece Chromatic Textures was shown at 6X6 #5: Mystery, an exhibition at Ciné Lab in Athens, Georgia. My work was accepted along with five other artists, “…including Denton Crawford’s eyeballs, Aaron Oldenburg’s plunge into asphyxia, and a performance streamed live over the Internet from California.” Here’s my abstract for Chromatic Textures.
Chromatic Textures is a study on the synesthetic nature of our senses of sound and sight. Video input is used to produce generative musical phrases. The visual media is analyzed by the GMS (Gestural Music Sequencer) to create the musical forms in real-time. The software includes adjustable probability distribution maps for the scale and rhythm. Adjusting these settings allows familiar structures to emerge. The settings chosen for this piece cause notes within a particular scale to play more frequently, however, it is still possible for any note within the twelve-tone chromatic system to occur. As a result, dissonant or blue notes can be heard at rare instances throughout the piece.
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Forgotten Complex
This piece, titled Forgotten Complex, was originally exhibited on audiocookbook.org and came about as a side effect of my contributions to the One Sound Every Day project. Rather than a percussion driven piece, Forgotten Complex relies on ambient Rhodes and other processed sound effects to create the lonely atmosphere of an abandoned warehouse. The piece is included on my solo album, Precambrian Resonance by Ostraka (Unearthed Music, 2009).
Forgotten Complex:
Travel Glide
Using a variety of processing techniques I was able to turn several percussion samples into haunting melodic phrases. A few of these phrases are the main themes in this piece from my solo album, Precambrian Resonance by Ostraka (Unearthed Music, 2009). I’m also using Rhodes electric piano that I ran through time expansion and other effects in order to create a slightly warped and distorted tone quality.