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..ELECTROLUX (2002)

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The following link is an mp3 file of Electrolux in it's entirety (10 minutes, 2 seconds). A word of warning before you go there: It's a 9 megabyte download.

PERFORMANCES:

Electrolux received it's premier on April 19th - 20th 2002 at the Periòdic Experimental Music Festival hosted by the CCCB (Center for Cultural Contemporary Art of Barcelona, Spain), an event in which it won. it was as well selected for inclusion in the 2003 National SEAMUS conference at Arizona State University.

Other performances include the University of North Texas, the SCREAM series at The California Institute of the Arts and the12th annual Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival, presented at the University of Florida. Future performances are slated for the University of Texas, The University of Illinois, Stony Brook University, New York and the Pulse Field Exhibition of Sound-Art at Georgia State University.

Electrolux has been broadcast on radio on EAMM Acoustic Frontiers on CKCU-FM, Ottawa, Canada, WOBC 91.5 FM in Oberlin, Ohio as part of their 'Foldover' radio program, the Galactic Voyager radio program KCSN 85.5 FM in Los Anegles and streaming on Resonance FM, Virtual Concerrt Hall, London Both the SCREAM concert performance and CKCU radio broadcast were part of Seamus' Electro-Acoustic Music Month 2002 series.

LINER NOTES;

Electrolux came to me under odd circumstances: After a 22 year hiatus from writing music. This is not an attempt to excuse, but more just a simple fact and I urge you to accept, reject or remain unaffected by this body of work as you would not knowing. But in the very least it may explain its time-capsulated style and sonic pallet. Indeed, due to the evolution of the genre and to a certain extent in instrument design itself, electro-acoustic music has leapt light years in the last two decades while it seems I have remained motionless. It resides as a perfect example of what was coined to be the 'West Coast" genre of electronic music many years ago.

It was begun on October 2001 and completed in January of 2002. The piece is in boilerplate A-B-A-C form, with an over developed end movement. I was not trying to break new ground here, more just stubbornly ignoring the rules. So it may be that Electrolux is actually two pieces lumped together - like the main course plopped on top of the salad . As unorthodox as it may be, for me the resulting melange works. But I am its mother and because of that overly proud and forgiving. Please judge for yourself.

Technical Notes:

Aside from of the underlining low drone which comes about in its second half, the balance of section 1 was performed on a Yamaha 802. That pedal, as well as most of the other sound in the piece from then on is predominantly that of a Novation SuperNova II rack unit, although the Waldorf Micro Q was used for incidentals and as well for most of the secondary processing of the Nova voices. Interestingly enough, the recapitulation of section A was not performed on the Yamaha, yet is surprisingly similar in texture.

Though making no sound of their own, throughout this piece a bank of modular analog equipment - some bought and some built - was used as a governing control source for all three voicing instruments.

Click here to download Electrolux.


Click here for an audio interview on the processes, composition and realization of Electrolux conducted for the composition graduate students of Bowling Green University.
FLUXUS 1: A Cathedral in Chartres (2002)

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The following link is an mp3 file of Fluxus 1 in it's entirety (8 minutes, 7 seconds). A word of warning before you go there: It's a 7 megabyte download. Due to the characteristics of mp3 files a lot of the information in the lower and higher registers will be lost.

PERFORMANCES:

Fluxus 1 received it's premier at the Pulse Field International Exhibition of Sound-Art held at Georgia State University from January 18 thru to February 28, 2003. Other performances include the Electric Rainbow Coalition at Dartmouth College - a 24 hour extravaganza of electro-acoustic music which begun on August 22, 2003.

A Cathedral in Chartres is the first of three fluxus pieces which will be composed over the next few months. Admittedly, this is not fluxus music in the true sense of the word - LaMonte Young would surely find it anything but. Possibly however 'fluxus' can be taken relatively in this instance, or at very least as an application - that being change and progression by gradual linear variations of a single musical idea.

LINER NOTES;

The idea to do a drone piece came to me when visiting the high-gothic Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Chartres, France just as the pipe organ was getting a bit of afternoon exercise. Mimi and I were scaling the massive medieval spiral staircase to the vespers while it sounded and I was struck by the incredible natural phasing from the standing wave in the hall vs. the sound bellowing up the spires themselves.

My intention was to develop a body of work based around a single instrument (patch) that adhered to a set of five fixed sound parameters which, like an acoustic instrument, could not be altered. They were:

1) FREQUENCY: A tone cluster consisting of no more than 12 distinct root pitches were allowed. Above all of the other guidelines, this formed the basis of the minimalism

2) SPACIAL LOCATION: Spacial location was to remain constant within a given voice. Variations in spatial location could be achieved through phase cancellation of two similar voices in opposing output channels.

3) AMPLITUDE: Outside of its overall contouring envelope, amplitude was to remain constant within a given voice.

4) TIMBRE: Timbre could vary within set limitations within a given voice. Variations ot overall coloring however must be subtle, yet abrupt enough so that any minute block of time had it's own distinct timbral identity.

5) DURATION: There could be no silence from beginning to end.

Fluxus 1 is a rondo as there are four variations of basic patch which present themselves in a dovetailed canonic format. The overall contour of each voice reflects a 1 minute fade-in, a 2 minute duration, and 1 minute decay to silence. The four voices were timed so that each new part began its fade-in as the previous voice reached the beginning of its 2 minute duration period. This was the method I devised to achieve the gradual changes in coloring.

I found that writing for limited instruments (basically 1) a challenge at first. Once I established the methods in which to do it however it became quite enjoyable.

TECHNICAL NOTES;

Fluxus was pretty much the inverse process used in Electrolux, this time allowing voices from analog modular equipment to be processed by digital instruments. In this case that processing was done the Waldorf Micro Q. Fluxus 1 was the first piece completed (or attempted) on the Eclectic Music Box seen in the Frankensynth section of this site and consists entirely of square waves (at one point, up to 126 of them simultaniously) from Blacet oscillators. The overall contouring envelopes of each of the four voices were also generated by analog means via Blacet EGs. Although Fluxus 1 required a considerable amount of pre-composing, the actual tracks themselves were laid down in a single weekend last July.

The final mix for Fluxus 1 was done at Gary Chang's studio using a TC Electronics system 6000 reverb, which did wonders to the overall sonic pallet. There is a 5.1 mix of this piece as well, although the mp3 sample below is stereo.

 Click here to download Fluxus 1

 

.SECRET LIFE: (a work in progress begun in 1979 and continued in 2003)


PERFORMANCES:

Portions of Secret Life were composed for and performed by the Odin Dance Company in the fall of 2003. While not in its current version, Parts 1and 3 ~ then titled X (I just die, you just kill me) and consisting of enitirely different source materials, were premiered in the Fall of 1978 (that's no typo) at the 6th annual Electronic Explorations series concert in Los Angeles. It recieved a horrid review by Douglas Lynner in Synapse Magazine and two glowing reviews by composer/performer/soundartist Joan La Barbara for the Los Angeles Times and High Fidelity Magazine.

LINER NOTES:

The samples below are portions of a piece that's been floating around my head for a very long time. And with anything that old, there's a story behind it:

The basic idea behind of what has become to be known as Secret Life was begun on my Serge System some 25 years ago. While I had been toying with completing this abandoned work for some time, at wasn't until 2003 that I had an opportunity to do just that.

I received an email from an individual who had heard my work at the 2003 SEAMUS National Conference at ASU, who outlined a commission to compose a series of pieces for his dance company. Along with what he had heard at ASU, he was struck by the composers I had worked with as he envisioned a score derivative of a particular piece by one of those individuals (whom will remain nameless here, although it should become immediately apparent once hearing the samples).

Oddly enough, what he described was remarkably close to Secret Life's original sketches from 1978 and this work was unearthed in earnest in 2003 for the Odin Dance Company. The work's original title 25 years ago was X, yet I've since decided that was horrid and it has been rightfully renamed Secret Life (an abbreviation of the main title of The Secret Life of Semiconductors). I struggle with titles always - but I have come to appreciate the mystery that Secret Life suggests.

None of the original tracks (recorded at my parents home in the summer of 1978), still exist in a state suitable for presentation. I have attempted to transfer some of those source tapes to digital, but many years of bad storage has taken its tole on fidelity. This work is from all new material, composed mostly from my 25 year old notes (Part 4 was not and would not have existed without the Odin Company's commission) .

At the time of this writing (Nov 2004), only two of the four main parts and two of the 3 transitional sections have been completed. I am working slowly on this one, picking it up and putting it down, at times with long intervals in between. The balance of the sound design and the piece itself has been completed ~ what remains is the translation/realization of the score. When completed, Secret Life will probably end up an opus 28 or so minutes in length. It deals with two main motifs (patches) which progress over time from a nebulous soundscape to a highly organized set of rhythmical and tonal relationships. The development which evlolves over the first 27 1/2 minutes solidify in the last 30 seconds as the piece presents itself in a rather traditional rhythmical and tonal fifth species counterpoint , in this instance a circle of fifths.

Note: Part 1 has undergone some major changes since the Odin presentation as it consisted of the drone sections only. The percussive phrasing (the second to fourth minutes actually) was added after the fact.

A bit of humor: The coda was sent to Odin by accident. It was a little tail that I didn't mean to but included on the CD when delivering the work. Not knowing this, they thought it was intentional and used it for their curtain calls. Also - About midway into Part 3 you will notice a series of gliss phrases that sound like an xylophone. I got the idea for these when listening to a mix while checking my email and was struck how nicely Outlook's 'you've got mail' chime accompanied what was going on. These are not a sample of Outlook's bell chime, but merely derivative (I know better than to 'borrow' from the wealthiest man on the planet without permission).

Technical Notes

Outside of the digital recording, Secret Life is entirely analog using the Eclectic Music box seen in the 'Son of Frankensynth" tab of this site, although it's looking a lot different since this picture was taken last year. In accordance with times in which it was originally composed, this piece has an old feel to it and much in the style of what most of us were all doing at Cal Arts in the late 70s.

I will be posting bits and pieces of this work here as they are completed.

The following are mp3 conversions from digital files, which killed the high and low end and effected the transcient reponse, which unfortunately this piece is all about. Not that this should come as a revelation, but I've included two mixes of part 4, just to give you an idea of the chnages one can inflicted by track volume alone.

SECRET LIFE (The Secret Life of Semiconductors).........(28:00)

Section Notes Time
Option
___________________________________________________________________
.
PART 1 - Beginning (4:20)
1:0
Transistion 1 (3:15)
1:1:00
PART 2 - The Principles of Repulsion
beginning
 (1:10)
1:0 only
Transistion 2 (2:00)
1:0
PART 3 - The Principles of Attraction (6:00)
1:0
Transistion 3 (1:00)
1:0
PART 4 - End MIX 1 (4:16)
MIX 2 (4:16)
1:0
CODA (1:00)
1:0

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