Tonight I had the good fortune to check out the premiere of the new Lukas Pearse and Vocalypse electropera Vonda De Ville. Two thumbs up for an amazing show and I recommend everyone check it out. It's running the next three nights at the Bus Stop Theatre.
Here's what the producers have to say about the show:
"In an effort to kick start her career in the late 19th century, a vaudeville singer decides that “new technology” is her key to stardom – she seizes an opportunity to become one of the early recording artists. Her colleagues mock her interest in this new-fangled machinery which steals her voice away only to be replayed later, without her presence, at a penny arcade. She thinks they’re silly and superstitious, so she takes the gig. But something strange and unexpected happens. Her voice actually separates from her body and spirit, and thus begins a century-long journey through space and time, where the voice and the spirit of the long-dead singer wrestle for reconciliation. Her spirit desperately seeks closure, an exit from the stage. More than anything, she wants the final curtain to fall."
The opera is performed by Janice Jackson as Vonda and Lukas Pearse performing his score on laptop. The musical element of the show was amazing with songs, lush soundscapes, prerecorded announcements and audience sounds, and an awesome spin on Mozart; Medias Irae. Janice's vocal performance was awesome as usual and her execution of the choreography made for a really captivating show. In addition to the actual performance, the sets and costumes were very well done and communicated the time travel aspect of the show as well as the musical numbers.
If you want to see a great surreal stage show, my favourite was when Vonda emerged with a giant gramophone for a head, and also contemplate the evolution and impact of recording and media then I really recommend the show.
Oh, and expect a great sense of humour, especially in the historical and musical references scattered throughout.
Check out the Vocalypse site for some audio samples.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Artifacts of Nature
One of the things I love about having time off is spending a lot of time outside the city. Whether I'm at my parents house in Fall River or out on the Eastern Shore, I'm far enough from the city to get out and enjoy the woods and nature.
I was going for a walk in the woods last weekend and came across some awesome ice sculptures. They were formed on the side of a large cliff and varied from giant ten foot icicles to large mounds that looked like a waterfall spilling over the cliff that had suddenly frozen in place.
This icicle was the most impressive. It looked to be at least twelve feet long and probably weighed hundreds of pounds. I wouldn't want to be under it if it fell. There was also some very cool ice on the ground that I have never seen before. The water had frozen in sheaths over small blades of grass and undergrowth and made these awesome formations that reminded me of crystals growing up from the floor of a cave.
I was going for a walk in the woods last weekend and came across some awesome ice sculptures. They were formed on the side of a large cliff and varied from giant ten foot icicles to large mounds that looked like a waterfall spilling over the cliff that had suddenly frozen in place.
This icicle was the most impressive. It looked to be at least twelve feet long and probably weighed hundreds of pounds. I wouldn't want to be under it if it fell. There was also some very cool ice on the ground that I have never seen before. The water had frozen in sheaths over small blades of grass and undergrowth and made these awesome formations that reminded me of crystals growing up from the floor of a cave.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Wiklatmu'j Reveries
Matthew Duffy and I have finished recording our first album together and here it is, for anyone who dug the live set that I posted awhile back this should be up your alley. There are a few of the same pieces we performed live as well as all kinds of original material. The album is all over the place and pretty experimental there are soundscapes, walls of noise, folksongs, and everything in between. Expect field recordings, just intonation, black metal, free jazz, and more. Artwork by Ryan Kirk and Matthew Duffy.
Next up, a country album.
Get it for free here.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Zachary Devereux Fairbrother's Buddha Box
I first met Zachary a few years ago when I began studying music. He was a year ahead of me and pursuing composition, the same road I wanted to go down. I remember one of the first times we got together; I had become aware of some workshops going on in the city that involved free improvisation and was interested in attending, I only knew Zach as an acquaintance but was aware that he frequented those workshops. I started asking him for information and about attending myself and he answered that it wasn't for the faint of heart. We ended up attending several of the workshops together and after I overcame that initially intimidating introduction it had a major positive impact on my growing interest in the wide world of strange music. By the end of the year we had solidified plans to become roommates and the rest is history. Over the last two years heady explorations of drone, improvisation, psychedelia, and metal all took place while laying the foundations of a friendship that I hope will last well into the future.
Last spring Zach graduated with a BMus in Composition and the most interesting graduation recital I've seen yet. One of the pieces performed that day was Buddha Box 1.0. Thanks to the great local label Divorce Records, run by Darcy Spidle, you can now enjoy that piece from the comfort of your own home and for free. I cannot recommend this enough, it is an awesome exploration of drone, spectrum, timbre, and psycho-acoustics, and as an added bonus you get to enjoy the beautifully rendered score that Zachary created for the amazing Halifax pianist/composer Tim Crofts.
Here are some quotations from Zachary and Divorce:
"I just released a solo EP on Divorce Records as a part of the FREEWAVE series; a series free downloadable EPs. You can donate to the label if you wish, all proceeds go the label and to the artists."
-Zachary Devereux Fairbrother
"Buddha Box was performed in a university concert hall last spring as part of Zachary Fairbrother’s thesis recital in modern composition. I am not sure what the usual crowd looks like for these events, but I saw a lot of cosmic kids tripping in the soft seaters, waiting for their man Fairbrother be born as a professional composer. A special day. This piece involves a grand piano, singing bowls, Buddha machines, various effects and piano treatments. It starts and ends in the most delicate ambient webs, but somewhere in the middle it’s like the piano is on fire and rocketing through space."
-Divorce Records
Download it HERE.
Last spring Zach graduated with a BMus in Composition and the most interesting graduation recital I've seen yet. One of the pieces performed that day was Buddha Box 1.0. Thanks to the great local label Divorce Records, run by Darcy Spidle, you can now enjoy that piece from the comfort of your own home and for free. I cannot recommend this enough, it is an awesome exploration of drone, spectrum, timbre, and psycho-acoustics, and as an added bonus you get to enjoy the beautifully rendered score that Zachary created for the amazing Halifax pianist/composer Tim Crofts.
Here are some quotations from Zachary and Divorce:
"I just released a solo EP on Divorce Records as a part of the FREEWAVE series; a series free downloadable EPs. You can donate to the label if you wish, all proceeds go the label and to the artists."
-Zachary Devereux Fairbrother
"Buddha Box was performed in a university concert hall last spring as part of Zachary Fairbrother’s thesis recital in modern composition. I am not sure what the usual crowd looks like for these events, but I saw a lot of cosmic kids tripping in the soft seaters, waiting for their man Fairbrother be born as a professional composer. A special day. This piece involves a grand piano, singing bowls, Buddha machines, various effects and piano treatments. It starts and ends in the most delicate ambient webs, but somewhere in the middle it’s like the piano is on fire and rocketing through space."
-Divorce Records
Download it HERE.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Games
"A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context." (Clark C. Abt)
I have always been fascinated by games. Whether board, video, role-playing, abstract, or sport, games have always managed to suck me in and in many cases to distract me from other more pressing matters. I’ve been thinking about them quite a bit lately and so I’ve decided to share some of my experiences, observations, and ideas relating to games.
Games can be based around three different methods; skill, strategy, and chance. Although in practice most games somehow blend two or more of the above. Even a game as simple as dice, though it may appear to be all chance involves some kind of strategizing and decision-making. And games that appear on the surface level to be all about skill, like hockey or football actually involve a fair amount of strategy and large scale planning.
My own history interacting with games, and most likely yours, goes back to the earliest days of my childhood. Beginning with simple games like catch, musical chairs, and tag, children learn to interact with one another in specific social contexts. In a way games become social rituals for children that determine appropriate behaviours and modes of interaction and establish hierarchies and pecking orders. They also often encourage conditioning and development of the body and motor skills as well as encouraging a healthy psychological state by facilitating play and learning.
As well as those simple children’s games, I was also exposed to traditional boardgames in my home. We always played the staples, snakes and ladders, parchisi, checkers, and then when I was a bit older some of the more complicated ones like chess, Scrabble, and Risk. Risk was always my favourite. I was a typical kid and loved playing with army men and G.I. Joes and watching old war movies that would play on television during the day. So I guess the idea of controlling whole armies over continents and ultimately the world really appealed to me. I played all kinds of boardgames and cardgames throughout my childhood and they have a special place in my memories. But then videogames came onto the scene.
I got my first Gameboy for Christmas when I was six or seven. It came with Kirby and I was hooked from the start. From there I got a few other classics like Mario and Zelda and then a year or two later my brother and I got a Super Nintendo and a little colour TV to play it on for Christmas. Super Mario World consumed my childhood. I played it incessantly and even today I will once and awhile hook up the old Nintendo and it instantly takes me back to the countless hours I spent as a kid trying to reach %100.
From that point on videogames mostly dominated my gaming experiences. I tried my hand a few sports, but never really took to any of them, and unfortunately my obsession with videogames stopped my board gaming short. Which brings me to the downside of some forms of gaming, specifically videogaming. At certain points in my preteens and early teen years I became so obsessed with games that I would relegate school work, physical activity, and socializing just to get further ahead in the games. It wasn’t all bad, and some of my friends played videogames, so there were social times of playing together. Overall though I would say there were far more hours spent playing them alone in my room. There was also the frustration they posed. There would be points where instead of having fun I would get so angry I would throw the controller at the floor. Fortunately I grew out of that pretty fast. By the time I finished high school I was only playing videogames sporadically. I had found other activities that interested me more and used my time in more productive ways. I still don’t feel that videogames are bad, but they can become addictive in ways that I never experienced with social games or boardgames.
These days I’m pretty busy and don’t have much time for games. But when I do I tend to prefer boardgames and cardgames. I find that videogames are too time consuming. A boardgame can start and end in an hours time and it allows you to game in a social way. Whereas my experience with videogames tends to be that an hour just wets your appetite and that generally it’s more difficult to videogame socially. My favourite games these days are mostly strategy and abstract. Games like chess, checkers, backgammon, Risk, and Diplomacy. Diplomacy takes the interactive element of gaming to the extreme, I’ve only played it once but would love to try it again. I also enjoy a few cardgames; poker, cribbage, and crazy eights.
These days I also see elements of gaming and play in other activities I enjoy. One that rings especially true to me is music making. Although in many cases music exists as more than just a pastime or fun activity, it still involves elements that are shared by games. There are often multiple independent agents involved, and there is usually a common goal of some kind as well as a limiting context and the same elements of chance, strategy, and skill figure in. Take for example a symphony orchestra; the members are all working towards the goal of realizing the piece being performed, the conductor and performers use strategies to ensure a successful performance, the players need skill to actually perform the parts when they come up, and as far as chance, well things can always go wrong. It’s even plainer to see in improvisation.
Artists like John Zorn even explicitly compose game pieces. Where players can compete and there is a conductor who establishes rules and divides players into sub-ensembles or teams. In some cases there are even point systems. Free improvisation also incorporates a large component of game and play. Within the performances there can be room for competition and subversion. Music like John Cage’s Book of Changes draws explicitly on chance through the use of dice, a tool common to many games.
I find games interesting because they seem like such a natural human activity. Boardgames date from the earliest known civilizations in Mesopotamia, and in many cases are not that far off from contemporary games like chess. They’re a productive pastime that encourage socializing and stimulate your mind. Games can offer you an escape from the everyday world, yet in familiar and comfortable ways, either through simulating a situation or encouraging roleplaying. After all, who doesn’t want to conquer the world, especially when the leaders you’re competing with are all your best friends?
I have always been fascinated by games. Whether board, video, role-playing, abstract, or sport, games have always managed to suck me in and in many cases to distract me from other more pressing matters. I’ve been thinking about them quite a bit lately and so I’ve decided to share some of my experiences, observations, and ideas relating to games.
Games can be based around three different methods; skill, strategy, and chance. Although in practice most games somehow blend two or more of the above. Even a game as simple as dice, though it may appear to be all chance involves some kind of strategizing and decision-making. And games that appear on the surface level to be all about skill, like hockey or football actually involve a fair amount of strategy and large scale planning.
My own history interacting with games, and most likely yours, goes back to the earliest days of my childhood. Beginning with simple games like catch, musical chairs, and tag, children learn to interact with one another in specific social contexts. In a way games become social rituals for children that determine appropriate behaviours and modes of interaction and establish hierarchies and pecking orders. They also often encourage conditioning and development of the body and motor skills as well as encouraging a healthy psychological state by facilitating play and learning.
As well as those simple children’s games, I was also exposed to traditional boardgames in my home. We always played the staples, snakes and ladders, parchisi, checkers, and then when I was a bit older some of the more complicated ones like chess, Scrabble, and Risk. Risk was always my favourite. I was a typical kid and loved playing with army men and G.I. Joes and watching old war movies that would play on television during the day. So I guess the idea of controlling whole armies over continents and ultimately the world really appealed to me. I played all kinds of boardgames and cardgames throughout my childhood and they have a special place in my memories. But then videogames came onto the scene.
I got my first Gameboy for Christmas when I was six or seven. It came with Kirby and I was hooked from the start. From there I got a few other classics like Mario and Zelda and then a year or two later my brother and I got a Super Nintendo and a little colour TV to play it on for Christmas. Super Mario World consumed my childhood. I played it incessantly and even today I will once and awhile hook up the old Nintendo and it instantly takes me back to the countless hours I spent as a kid trying to reach %100.
From that point on videogames mostly dominated my gaming experiences. I tried my hand a few sports, but never really took to any of them, and unfortunately my obsession with videogames stopped my board gaming short. Which brings me to the downside of some forms of gaming, specifically videogaming. At certain points in my preteens and early teen years I became so obsessed with games that I would relegate school work, physical activity, and socializing just to get further ahead in the games. It wasn’t all bad, and some of my friends played videogames, so there were social times of playing together. Overall though I would say there were far more hours spent playing them alone in my room. There was also the frustration they posed. There would be points where instead of having fun I would get so angry I would throw the controller at the floor. Fortunately I grew out of that pretty fast. By the time I finished high school I was only playing videogames sporadically. I had found other activities that interested me more and used my time in more productive ways. I still don’t feel that videogames are bad, but they can become addictive in ways that I never experienced with social games or boardgames.
These days I’m pretty busy and don’t have much time for games. But when I do I tend to prefer boardgames and cardgames. I find that videogames are too time consuming. A boardgame can start and end in an hours time and it allows you to game in a social way. Whereas my experience with videogames tends to be that an hour just wets your appetite and that generally it’s more difficult to videogame socially. My favourite games these days are mostly strategy and abstract. Games like chess, checkers, backgammon, Risk, and Diplomacy. Diplomacy takes the interactive element of gaming to the extreme, I’ve only played it once but would love to try it again. I also enjoy a few cardgames; poker, cribbage, and crazy eights.
These days I also see elements of gaming and play in other activities I enjoy. One that rings especially true to me is music making. Although in many cases music exists as more than just a pastime or fun activity, it still involves elements that are shared by games. There are often multiple independent agents involved, and there is usually a common goal of some kind as well as a limiting context and the same elements of chance, strategy, and skill figure in. Take for example a symphony orchestra; the members are all working towards the goal of realizing the piece being performed, the conductor and performers use strategies to ensure a successful performance, the players need skill to actually perform the parts when they come up, and as far as chance, well things can always go wrong. It’s even plainer to see in improvisation.
Artists like John Zorn even explicitly compose game pieces. Where players can compete and there is a conductor who establishes rules and divides players into sub-ensembles or teams. In some cases there are even point systems. Free improvisation also incorporates a large component of game and play. Within the performances there can be room for competition and subversion. Music like John Cage’s Book of Changes draws explicitly on chance through the use of dice, a tool common to many games.
I find games interesting because they seem like such a natural human activity. Boardgames date from the earliest known civilizations in Mesopotamia, and in many cases are not that far off from contemporary games like chess. They’re a productive pastime that encourage socializing and stimulate your mind. Games can offer you an escape from the everyday world, yet in familiar and comfortable ways, either through simulating a situation or encouraging roleplaying. After all, who doesn’t want to conquer the world, especially when the leaders you’re competing with are all your best friends?
Sunday, November 8, 2009
La Monte Young: Three Notions
1. Tuning is a function of time. Since tuning an interval establishes the relationship of two frequencies in time, the degree of precision is proportional to the duration of the analysis, i.e. to the duration of tuning. Therefore, it is necessary to sustain the frequencies for longer periods if higher standards of precision are to be achieved. The fact that this information is not generally known to musicians may be one reason that only a few examples of pitches of long duration such as organum, pedal point, and the drone are to be found in music. On the other hand, astronomers have known for some time that if a measurement or comparison is to be made of two orbits which involve many years of time, the degree of precision of the measurement will be proportional to the duration for which the measurement is made. (1)
2. Consider the possibility that the number of complete cycles of a periodic composite waveform is a primary factor in recognizing an interval and/or in determining the degree of precision in tuning once the interval has been recognized. If this were the case, ratios comprised of lower frequencies (such as 52.5 Hz: 30 Hz=7:4) would have to be sustained for longer periods of time than the identical ratios comprised of higher frequencies (such as 840 Hz:480 Hz=7:4), in order to produce an equivalent number of complete cycles of their periodic composite waveforms.
3. In the tradition of modal music, a fixed tonic is continued as a drone or frequently repeated, and a limited set of frequencies with intervallic relationships established in reference to the tonic is repeated in various melodic permutations throughout a performance in a particular mode. Generally, a specific mood or psychological state is attributed to each of the modes. The place theory of pitch identification postulates that each time the same frequency is repeated it is received at the same fixed place on the basilar membrane and transmitted to the same fixed point in the cerebral cortex presumably by the same fiber or neuron of the auditory nerve. The volley theory of pitch perception assumes that a sequence of electrical impulses is sent traveling along specified neurons of the auditory nerve. For frequencies up to about 2000 Hz only, these produce a more or less complete reproduction of the frequency of the vibratory motion of the basilar membrane in the case of a single sine wave and a more or less distorted reproduction of the complete waveform for more complex signals. It is presumed that this reproduction will be best for sounds at lower frequencies and less good for higher frequencies since an individual neuron cannot fire faster than 300 Hz. At lower frequencies a group of neurons working together would be able to supply several pulses per cycle whereas at higher frequencies they could only supply one every several cycles. The assumptions of place theory and volley theory suggest that when a specific set of harmonically related frequencies is continuous, as is often the case in my music, it could more definitively produce (or simulate) a psychological state that may be reported by the listener since the set of harmonically related frequencies will continuously trigger a specific set of the auditory neurons which in turn will continuously perform the same operation of transmitting a periodic pattern of impulses to the corresponding set of fixed points in the cerebral cortex. When these states are sustained over longer periods of time they may provide greater opportunity to define the psychological characteristics of the ratios of the frequencies to each other. (2)
(1) A notable example of the application of principles 1 and 3 is the classical music of India which has nearly always included a sustained drone and has evolved and actually practices the most highly developed system of modal scales and moods related to modes in the history of music.
(2) Ibid.
2. Consider the possibility that the number of complete cycles of a periodic composite waveform is a primary factor in recognizing an interval and/or in determining the degree of precision in tuning once the interval has been recognized. If this were the case, ratios comprised of lower frequencies (such as 52.5 Hz: 30 Hz=7:4) would have to be sustained for longer periods of time than the identical ratios comprised of higher frequencies (such as 840 Hz:480 Hz=7:4), in order to produce an equivalent number of complete cycles of their periodic composite waveforms.
3. In the tradition of modal music, a fixed tonic is continued as a drone or frequently repeated, and a limited set of frequencies with intervallic relationships established in reference to the tonic is repeated in various melodic permutations throughout a performance in a particular mode. Generally, a specific mood or psychological state is attributed to each of the modes. The place theory of pitch identification postulates that each time the same frequency is repeated it is received at the same fixed place on the basilar membrane and transmitted to the same fixed point in the cerebral cortex presumably by the same fiber or neuron of the auditory nerve. The volley theory of pitch perception assumes that a sequence of electrical impulses is sent traveling along specified neurons of the auditory nerve. For frequencies up to about 2000 Hz only, these produce a more or less complete reproduction of the frequency of the vibratory motion of the basilar membrane in the case of a single sine wave and a more or less distorted reproduction of the complete waveform for more complex signals. It is presumed that this reproduction will be best for sounds at lower frequencies and less good for higher frequencies since an individual neuron cannot fire faster than 300 Hz. At lower frequencies a group of neurons working together would be able to supply several pulses per cycle whereas at higher frequencies they could only supply one every several cycles. The assumptions of place theory and volley theory suggest that when a specific set of harmonically related frequencies is continuous, as is often the case in my music, it could more definitively produce (or simulate) a psychological state that may be reported by the listener since the set of harmonically related frequencies will continuously trigger a specific set of the auditory neurons which in turn will continuously perform the same operation of transmitting a periodic pattern of impulses to the corresponding set of fixed points in the cerebral cortex. When these states are sustained over longer periods of time they may provide greater opportunity to define the psychological characteristics of the ratios of the frequencies to each other. (2)
(1) A notable example of the application of principles 1 and 3 is the classical music of India which has nearly always included a sustained drone and has evolved and actually practices the most highly developed system of modal scales and moods related to modes in the history of music.
(2) Ibid.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Great Show Last Night
Last night there was a house show on Windsor St. with some awesome acts. Here were a few of my favourite sets and a recording of the set I played.
OmmaCobba played an awesome 20 minutes or so of fuzzed out wash that you could crawl inside of like a blanket. The highlight for me was a new version of Policeman, a song that Dan originally wrote for The Dooms. This performance of it though was slowed way down and instead of the punching rock riffs of earlier versions there was just an insistently static wash of chords that shifted slowly through the progression with high, ethereal vocals overtop.
Fascism played right after OmmaCobba and Denis and Jennica's songs were great. I'm definitely excited to hear their new CD when it comes out. Dan helped beef up the sound on electric guitar and percussion. Highlight was the final song of the set with awesome vocal interplay and counterpoint.
After Fascism finished up Matthew Duffy and I played our set. We had been working on it throughout the week and it was a pretty fun approach to composing the piece. We mostly exchanged rough cut recordings of vocal lines and poems over e-mail taking turns making transcriptions of parts of them and turning them into melodic heads that could be improvised on and around. Then we added in the melodic line of Taurus from the Karlheinz Stockhausen composition Zodiac. Both of us are Taurus', so it seemed appropriately cosmic.
Overall I'm really happy with how the set sounded. It ended up playing out like some kind of melancholic reinterpretation of a Biblical melodrama in a desert. Check it out:
Ryan Kirk and Matthew Duffy-To the Storm/Offering/Taurus/Awake
OmmaCobba played an awesome 20 minutes or so of fuzzed out wash that you could crawl inside of like a blanket. The highlight for me was a new version of Policeman, a song that Dan originally wrote for The Dooms. This performance of it though was slowed way down and instead of the punching rock riffs of earlier versions there was just an insistently static wash of chords that shifted slowly through the progression with high, ethereal vocals overtop.
Fascism played right after OmmaCobba and Denis and Jennica's songs were great. I'm definitely excited to hear their new CD when it comes out. Dan helped beef up the sound on electric guitar and percussion. Highlight was the final song of the set with awesome vocal interplay and counterpoint.
After Fascism finished up Matthew Duffy and I played our set. We had been working on it throughout the week and it was a pretty fun approach to composing the piece. We mostly exchanged rough cut recordings of vocal lines and poems over e-mail taking turns making transcriptions of parts of them and turning them into melodic heads that could be improvised on and around. Then we added in the melodic line of Taurus from the Karlheinz Stockhausen composition Zodiac. Both of us are Taurus', so it seemed appropriately cosmic.
Overall I'm really happy with how the set sounded. It ended up playing out like some kind of melancholic reinterpretation of a Biblical melodrama in a desert. Check it out:
Ryan Kirk and Matthew Duffy-To the Storm/Offering/Taurus/Awake
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
