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Meditations pour les Femmes
2005 – 2006
La poésie est par Jean SIRIUS 1981. La traduction est d’Isabelle JULIENNE 2006. La voix est celle de Solène RIOT.
The French version of Meditations for Women.
Performed at la Barbare, 11 Mars 2006
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Train Filter (2005)
This piece uses GrainPIC to control filters over a sample of Broadway mid-morning traffic in NYC. Each filter is described by a cloud, which sets a resonant high pass filter and a resonant low pass filter, creating a resonant bandpass filter. The 1/q of each filter moves towards 1 as the cloud is played. The pitches of the filters move towards pitches in the Bohlen-Piece scale. The envelopes on each moment of filtering obscure the traffic sounds, so instead a train sound is evident.
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Scribble
2005
This piece is done with the first alpha of GrainPIC, which you can find out more about here.
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Rain Clouds
2005
I’m writing a SuperCollider program based on Xenakis’ description of granular synthesis in Formalized Music. My program has a graphical interface very similar to UPIC. The working title for this program is GrainPIC. This piece is generated by a prototype of this program and is a proof-of-concept. Xenakis envisioned cloud synthesis with only sine wave grains, so the prototype only supports sine grains, however, I expect to change this shortly.
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Organic Forms
2005
This piece was created on the UPIC system at CCMIX in Alfortville, France. When UPIC was invented, composers using the system would typically create a drawing and then listen to it, making changes as needed. Today, composers tend to listen as they go and the drawing aspect of the system is not emphasized. In this piece, I started with a drawing, inspired by the sorts of shapes that Xenakis used for his compositions. In order to add richness, I used a triangle wave for high sounds, a sawtooth wave for low – mid range sounds and a very short period square wave for very low sounds.
This is my second UPIC compositon and it may be my last.
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Beep
2005
This piece moves through undertones of (2^x)/y. It starts with 32/21 and then adds in 32/19 and then 32/17 to create a triad. Then 32/21 drops out and 16/15 enters. As the farthest out note finishes, a closer one comes in so that the piece migrates from 32/21 to 2/2, always playing a triad.
These triads are AM modulated by low frequency pulse waves, starting at 2 Hz. As the piece progresses, faster pulse waves are added to modify new pitches. The pulse introduced are the base pulse times 2, then 3, then 4, then 5 and finally 6. They do not reach the audio range, although they flirt with the idea. The hard cutoffs of the pulse create interference patterns of clicking.
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UPIC Impressions of Paris
2005
This is my first UPIC piece at CCMIX. UPIC (plus bonne version française) is a graphical, glissando-oriented system designed by Xenakis. This piece uses all sine tones and all glissandos are straight lines (no vibrato)
This piece contains extremely low frequencies that may be difficult to hear on some speakers. The sounds are inspired by the surprising, different and wonderful mechanical noises made by the appliances in my kitchen here.
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Savage Beasts
2005
To the right of Rush Limbaugh on the prison torture issue, there was Michael Savage, who advocated increasing prison torture and sticking lit dynamite in the anuses of Arab detainees. (Savage May 10-11, 2004)
I found a similarly racist clip from a morning show on NBS called Imus in the Morning, which was showing pictures of Palestinians mourning the death of Yassir Arafat. One of the voice-overs from the Imus show was calling the Palestinians “animals” and was advocating dropping “the bomb” on them and killing everyone. The other co-hosts laughed along with this idea. A week later, they played a clip of someone pretending to be General Patton, speaking about a real event in which an embedded reporter had just filmed footage of a US Marine shooting an injured, unarmed Iraqi insurgent. “Patton” used the term “raghead,” and the phrase “bearded fatwa fairy.” (Imus in the Morning) Imus’ racism was thus clearly linked to his homophobia. During the Arafat sequence,, one of the male voices said something about the “fat pig wife of [Arafat] living in Paris.” Another commentator, noting the emotion of the Palestinians said, “It’s like the worst Woodstock.” Hippies are liberals are feminists are Palestinians are ragheads are gay are women are Iraqis are French. Alien others are thus interchangeable. Every group is standing in for every other group. And while they laughed, one of the commentators kept repeating “animals” and “kill them all.”
As I worked on the piece, I became discouraged. NBC was forced to apologize for the content of the Imus show (“MSNBC apologized for racist commentary on Imus”), but the piece only reminded me of the left’s failure to turn torture into a mainstream issue. I decided that offensive statements about the desirability of torture were not enough to support the piece, as clearly, not enough people would care. Also, “here’s a guy saying something offensive” seemed too weak to carry a piece.
I decided to focus on the laughter. I looped the laughing track and played violent phrases from Imus and Savage on top. Thus the Imus men laugh hysterically at themselves and at Savage. The entertainment value of genocide, violence and torture is thus highlighted.
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Morpehus’ Snare
2005
In this piece, I have detuned the left and the right channels. As the piece starts, the detuning falls randomly in between 2 Hz and 20Hz. As it progresses, the range narrows until the left and the right always differ by 10Hz. Alpha brain waves are generally around 10Hz. There are rumors that listening to pitches detuned between the left and right ear at 10Hz will make the listener sleepy and cause them to enter an alpha state.
Dans cette pièce la droite et la gauche ne sont pas en accord. Au début, il y a un écart de 2 à 20 Hz d’accord. Dans la conclusion, l’écart est toujours de 10 Hz, la même fréquence des ondes alpha dans le cerveau.
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Et sonnera le baffroy de la ville sans cesser durant l’assault
2004 – 2005
This recording is of a reading of this piece by the Wesleyan University Orchestra, conducted by Aaron Siegel during their annual Symphonic Workshop in 2005.
This piece takes it’s title from a stage direction in a 15th century French mystery play about Joan of Arc called Le Mystère du Siège d’Orléans. The play is one of only two secular plays of the era and is one of very few with stage directions that include musical cues. The title means “And the bells of the town ring without ceasing during the attack.”
Instrumentation of the piece is piccolo, flute 1 & 2, clarinet 1 & 2, horn 1 & 2, trumpet 1 & 2, trombone, tuba, percussion (tubular bells, xylophone, glockenspiel, tom-tom), violins, viola, cello, double bass. Contact me for a score, if interested.
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