The first set consisted of duo improvisations by Holland Hopson, fretless banjo and  electronics with Mike Majkowski, double bass.

Holland Hopson & Mike Majkowski; Photo: Terumi Narushima

Hopson Majkowski Improvisation 1.mp3

Hopson Majkowski Improvisation 2.mp3

Hopson Majkowski Improvisation 3.mp3

Hopson Majkowski Improvisation 4.mp3

Next was a wonderful set by Kraig Grady, just tuned vibraphone and Terumi Narushima, just tuned pump organ.

Grady Narushima.mp3

Holland Hopson & Mike Majkowski; photo: Terumi Narushima

So when I came across LilyPond this time I immediately noticed the support for non-standard notation, everything from Gregorian chant notation to proportional notation found in contemporary music, and of course, tablature. I also saw examples of common (for me) notation tweaks and features such as staves without bar lines; staves in multiple, simultaneous time signatures (that align!); note heads without stems; staves without staff lines (blank staves); note clusters; quarter tones; various accidental-handling schemes, etc. More encouraging was the fact that these features, while not always highlighted, also weren’t buried in the back of the documentation and were presented as viable (even desirable) notational choices. And did I mention that the output looks amazing! LilyPond produces gorgeous scores.

With those encouraging signs I jumped right into the tutorial and quickly decided I would try to notate some of my songs for five-string banjo. After about about a week of daily half-hour sessions I had a usable score for “Born in the Desert” and a new found enthusiasm for LilyPond.

Download the score as a pdf file: born_in_the_desert.pdf
Download the score as a LilyPond .ly file: born_in_the_desert.ly

Working with LilyPond

LilyPond uses a scripting language for all input: there’s no GUI, no point-and-click, no pretty graphics. I suspect my initial reluctance to try LilyPond the first time around was largely a result of this structure. (“What? I have to type out a bunch of ASCII? And then compile it to see the result?”) After a short time with the language, however, I found I quite enjoyed working without a GUI. Here are a few reasons why:

WYSIWYM: LilyPond operates on a “What You See Is What You Mean” principle. I like the fact that I can encode the information that’s important to me separately from its presentation. Working with tablature provides a good example. In some tablature programs, your data only “looks” like actual notation. Behind the scenes it’s actually a collection of graphics commands and specifications–a drawing that resembles music. If you decide later to extract the notation, or even simply transpose it or try an alternate tuning, you quickly find you’re stuck; there’s no (musically significant) “there” there. In LilyPond, you encode the important data and then decide how to present it. If you later change your mind about the presentation, the original data is still around, preserved in a musically sensible manner.

Variables: I may be more of a programmer than I realize or admit to being, since I immediately grabbed on to the powerful options presented by variables. Anything that can be represented in LilyPond can be assigned to a variable: from a recurring rhythmic motive, to a sequence of pitches, to an entire staff of notation. This provides  composers with the ability to generate a personal “language” of modules.

I used two simple variables in the score for “Born in the Desert”. One holds a recurring “pinch” gesture that will be familiar to fingerpicking guitar and banjo players. I named it “pinch”

pinch =
{
< g’\5 d’ >8
}

This simply creates an eighth-note chord consisting of a d and g above middle c. The “\5″ after the g tells LilyPond that this note belongs on the fifth string.

The other variable contains a similar sequence of notes, a sixteenth-note g on the fifth string played by the thumb followed by a d on the first string plucked by the index finger. I named this variable “ti” for thumb-index.

ti = {
g’16\5 d’
}

My use of these variables is far from earth-shattering but felt wonderfully convenient. Every time I needed to represent these gestures all I had to do was type \pinch or \ti.

Note to self: I enjoyed how useful writing comments to myself could be. If something wasn’t working exactly how I wanted it I could simply add a comment like “% ??? what’s going on here? why is the second verse not aligning the way I expect?” or “% FIX This bar may need to be transposed.” These kinds of placeholders are nothing special in a word-processing environment, but when working with a graphical notation tool I often resorted to maintaining a separate “to do” file that was clumsy to use since it required including wayfinders like: “violin part, page 6, bar 23, beat 1: …”

And here are a few frustrations with Lilypond, all having to do with its script-based nature:

“error: failed…”: Seemingly trivial lapses in syntax can produce disastrous results. More than once I forgot a curly-brace or a quote and witnessed a dismaying string of errors pop up in the console when I tried to compile the score. A little bit of code management and common sense goes a long way here, such as indenting blocks of code and adding plenty of comments. I also found working with LilyPond within jEdit provided excellent color-coding of syntax.

Move it!: Sometimes I wanted to nudge a notational element or move staves a bit closer together. With Finale or Sibelius there is often a simple click-and-drag solution. in LilyPond I was back to poring over the documentation to find the correct \override statement and which engraver to invoke. Sound tricky? It is. And for simple fixes it was frustrating (though I’m sure with time the simple \overrides would become second nature). The one consolation is that the same \override principles are used to move practically _anything_ in LilyPond, providing a degree of flexibility that Finale or Sibelius simply don’t offer.

LilyPond Life

My next step with LilyPond will be producing scores for more banjo tunes to be released in conjunction with my upcoming CD. I’m particularly interested to find out how flexible the tuning schemes for tablature can be. LilyPond’s banjo tablature supports a number of common tunings already. I wonder how will it handle the non-standard tunings in some of my pieces. Then I hope to tackle some of the more outlandish notational problems in my existing works that have previously prevented me from rendering them electronically.

• On Thursday, June 17 at 7pm I’ll perform Life on (Planet) for 2 rocks and computer. The concert will be at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Eugene Goossens Hall. The featured performers are Ensemble Offspring.
• On Friday, June 18 at 5:30 pm I’m performing a set of works for banjo and electronics. The concert will be on the University of Technology Sydney campus at the Bon Marche Studio.

Then I’m excited to play with bassist Mike Majkowski on Saturday, June 19 at 7pm. We”ll improvise together as part of the Left Coast Festival 2010 at the Sedition Gallery. The gallery is apparently a working barber shop by day–sounds like a unique venue.

Throw in a Dorkbot gathering, the usual conference geekery, and some sightseeing and this should be a busy busy trip.

I’m pleased to be a (small) part of the most recent round of 60×60 events presented by Vox Novus. 60×60 is an hour-long concert featuring 60 1-minute pieces by 60 different composers. This year there are 6 different 60×60 concerts, totaling 360 pieces. Here’s what 60×60 director Robert Voisey says about the events:

“This is an event like no other event you have been to before. Every minute there is a new piece. 60×60 represents a diverse cross-section of music with different styles and aesthetics.  I can pretty much guarantee that you will love one of the pieces, it is a pretty good bet you will not like one of the pieces; regardless of whether you like or dislike the work in 60 seconds you will hear a new piece.”

There have been about a dozen events already including 60×60 Dance – “Order of Magnitude Mix” that happened this weekend at McGill University. Many others are upcoming, such as the presentations associated with ICMC 2010 at the Electronic Music Foundation Creative Resource Center (today and tomorrow, June 2 and 3) and Stony Brook University (June 3-5). Here’s a list of all six 60×60 mixes and every composer represented.

Saturday May 29 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

More about the artists after the break…PINE SMOKE LODGE = Matt McKeever and Hillary Dickerson from Portland, Maine. From Stunned Records: “Together Pine Smoke Lodge summit snowy banks of acoustical drone in ever-ascendant strides of bowed & plucked strings, icicle bells & xylophone, and heat-generating vocal mantra. The trail they follow is never steep, but vista-revealing peaks are reached in good order. Bookended between two stretches of sparkling activity comes a middle passage where one feels the clock has frozen as solidly as the ground underfoot. Such moments of palpable harmonic stasis trickle throughout ‘Haligdaeg’, making the climb worth it every time.”

CRUUDEUCES = Nate Brennan from North Adams, MA. Nate’s played ASAC before, when he dazzled with a clarinet and electronics set. It’s anyone’s guess what surprises Nate will pull out for this set, but we’re sure it’ll be amazing. Recent releases on Tape Drift and Kimberly Dawn Recordings, as well as live sets all over the Northeast. Not to be missed!

GRAB ASS COWBOYS = Jason, Christian, plus assorted others always deliver the noise goods at ASAC. We’ve seen them get impossibly better and better each time they perform, displaying increasing levels of instrumental and vocal prowess. Secret Albany treasures.

JEFFERSON PITCHER – Final ASAC performance (as a local, we hope he’ll be back to visit). He’s off to live in Canada, so come give a hearty farewell to this AMAZING guitarist. He has performed and recorded with many artists including Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, Okkyung Lee, Scott Amendola, Christian Kiefer, J. Matthew Gerken, Denison Witmer, Sarah Weaver, Mark Dresser, Mike Bullock, Tim Keiper, David Gibson, Kristina Forester, Ron Guensche & many more. He has twice found himself on NPR’s All Things Considered and has been well reviewed by the likes of Pitchfork and Harp Magazine. While much of his work explores free improvisation he also draws heavily from his love for melody, the simplicity of minimalist composers, a long love of flamenco, and a history of performing and recording in the west coast indie-rock scene as a singer-songwriter, where he fronted the band Above the Orange Trees.

Photo: MisterV

I’m looking forward to floating in the River of Drone II: Seven Hours of Sound.

Sunday May 16th
12 noon to 7pm
at the SoundBarn in Valatie, NY.

The Albany Times Union wrote a preview here. Find more information on the Albany Sonic Arts Collective site or below.

Albany Sonic Arts Collective (ASAC) and The soundBarn are proud to present River of Drone II: Seven Hours of Sound. A very special, long-form event, River of Drone II is a free, seven-hour, improvised sound performance from 12 noon – 7 pm on Sunday May 16 at The soundBarn, Valatie, NY.

River of Drone II: Seven Hours of Sound is a collective sonic improvisation that will unfold and develop unlike any ordinary concert. From quiet, peaceful soundscapes to full-on noise, the ever-shifting rhythm, pace and mood will evolve as the ebb and flow of performers, energy and instrumentation progresses through the seven hour performance.

Set in a former orchard cooler with views of the Catskill Mountains, The soundBarn is a uniquely suited location for visitors to lounge, listen and linger for an hour, a few minutes or the entire performance. The audience is encouraged to make themselves comfortable and to bring pillows, chairs, food and drink. Unlike a traditional concert setting, performers will be located throughout the venue and listeners are encouraged to move around, watch the accompanying video projections, wander in and out and discover new relationships to sound through immersion, reflection, deep listening, meditation, and concentration.

We hope you will join us to listen, meditate, self-hypnotize, bliss out– or to simply enjoy a swim in the RIVER OF DRONE!

River of Drone II is a collaborative presentation of Albany Sonic Arts Collective and The soundBarn and will be presented at The soundBarn.

Featured musicians include: Jason Cosco, Matt Ernst, Tara Fracalossi, Eric Hardiman (Rambutan, Century Plants, Burnt Hills,) Ray Hare (Century Plants, Fossils From the Sun, Burnt Hills,) Holland Hopson, Thomas Lail (soundBarn,) Patrick Weklar (soundBarn) Matt Weston (Barn Owls), Mike Bullock, Linda Aubry Bullock, Mark Lunt, Chris Bassett, Jeremy Kelly, and many more special guests.
Videos by: Tara Fracalossi, Kyra Garrigue and more.

The soundBarn is a project of artist/musician Thomas Lail and artist Tara Fracalossi and is located on what was once Heald Orchards in Valatie, New York. The soundBarn is sited in a modern addition to the orchard’s 100 year old Dutch style barn. The cavernous, heavily insulated space served as the orchard’s cooler where apples and pears were over-wintered and chilled by the massive, still visible refrigeration system.

Remember the first River of Drone? Listen to some of the first River of Drone.

Ben Miller

Doug Van Nort

Albany Sonic Arts Presents Ben Miller/Doug Van Nort Duo, Barn Owl and Shape Shifting Shepherds

Saturday May 1 @ 8pm
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany NY
$5 suggested donation

More about the artists after the break.

Ben Miller was a member of legendary Michigan proto-punks Destroy All Monsters with ex-MC5 bassist Michael Davis and ex-Stooges guitarist
Ron Asheton.  His intuitive approach to creating a multiphonic soundscapes features a deconstructed electric guitar modified with multiple pickups. First used in the Michigan art band GKW in 1982 and then with Chicago’s Dirty Old Man River in the mid-90‘s, Miller focuses on a textural, cacophonic amalgamation that defies standard guitar playing. With the addition of electronics and analog tape, it is difficult to discern where any one sound originates or where it is heading.

“If new expressionists closed their eyes and painted what they saw
then Ben Miller must be taping shut his ears and playing what he
hears…blood thrashing through arteries, nerves popping, synapses
burning,.. Formerly a part of the ‘anti-rock band’ Destroy All
Monsters, Miller takes the ‘anti’ idea a step further.” — Detroit
Metro Times

For this performance, Ben will be performing with Doug Van Nort, local sound artist and Pauline Oliveros collaborator.

Since their formation in 1999, Barn Owl has been one of Western Massachusetts’ most enduring and intriguing musical institutions.
Foxy Digitalis called them “fantastic. There’s all sorts of cut-up and manipulated electronic and synthesized sounds mixed in with the drums
and bass. It’s disorienting at times, like being totally smashed and hanging your head over the toilet waiting to puke.”  Between them, the
three members of Barn Owl (guitarist Chris Cooper, bassist Andy Crespo, and percussionist Matt Weston) have played with such luminaries as Paul Flaherty, Smog, and Fat Worm of Error, among others.

Hailing from Saratoga Springs, Shape Shifting Shepherds have crossed many fields to bring you improvisational herds of sonic sounds. They
are a duo who wander through aural soundscapes seeking to share their discoveries through experimentation. Up their collective sleeve is a mixture of analog and digital crooks used for milking the bulbous teat of uncertainty.

Photo by Nicholas Zambetti

I recently ordered an Arduino board to try another approach for getting sensor data into my computer. More and more of my students are using them, too, and I wanted some first-hand experience. Most of my previous work has been with the Basic Stamp family of boards. The Arduino arrived this week and I promptly sat down and gave it a try.

The first thing I noticed (aside from the price: the entire Arduino setup costs significantly less than similar boards!) was how much easier it was to get the Arduino going than the Stamp. This isn’t exactly a fair comparison, since my initial experience with Stamps was way back in 1999 or 2000, and it was also my first time fooling with microcontrollers. I’ve learned plenty since then, and the products (along with their attendant software) have come a long way. I have to give the nod to the Arduino for its cross-platform, open-source software. (When I first started with the Stamp I kept a junker 386 PC around, just to run the Stamp compiler. No fun.)

I’m also impressed by the Arduino software. I’ve admittedly done little more than fire up the example “sketches” and tweak a few lines of code. However, the Processing/Java-style language seems a better fit for my (weak) coding style. The community around the Arduino seems very active. There are already a number of projects that simplify moving data from the board to common software such as MaxMSP and Processing.

Then there’s also the luxury of the USB cable that serves for both communication and power supply. This may seem trivial, but I look forward to the day when I don’t need to change the battery in my sensor box before every performance, or carry a spare 9-volt wherever I go. I may also jettison my USB MIDI interface along with a MIDI cable required by my Stamp setup. Suddenly, though, my USB ports are getting a little crowded…

The one niggling worry I have is the serial communication with Max. Using MIDI is certainly slower, but seems foolproof to me: no handshaking necessary, a dead simple initialization process, etc. I hope my fears are simply due to a lack of experience; that once everything is setup and tested I’ll feel just as confident with the serial connection as I do with my aging MIDI cables.

Saturday April 10th
Upstate Artists Guild
247 Lark St.
Albany, NY

8PM
Suggested Donation $5 (all proceeds go to touring performers)

This concert features Finnish- based composer/sound artist Marko Timlin alongside thenumber46, the collaborative effort of electro-acoustic flutist Suzanne Thorpe and electronic musician Philip White. Both Timlin and thenumber46 employ improvisation and non-linear analog systems to create music in which a delicate balance exists between the human and machine. A music at once intuitive and mechanical. Explosive and subdued. Violent and meditative.

More about the artists after the jump.

Marko Timlin is a Helsinki-based sound artist, composer, musician and inventor of virtual and analogue instruments. He has developed an intuitive interaction with electronic media, creating his own unconventional sound adventures in an improvisational context challenging to both the ear and the mind. Maintaining a delicate balance between order and chaos, his music happens in real-time, often surprising the artist as well as audience. His performances are effectively a dialog between man and machine.

Timlin founded the Berlin-based group tritop with Antye and Jotka of Laub, with whom he released 2 CDs and a Vinyl-maxi on INFRACOM records. His collaborations include Merja Nieminen, Kristina Frei (Zeit_Raum), Klaus Janek, Pink Twins and Petri Kuljuntausta (Helsinki Invasion), NewImproMasters, Laub, Tarwater, Rope, Foo Fanick and the 17 Hippies. He has toured extensively throughout Europe with his “Sensor-Sound-Machine” instrument.

thenumber46 push and coax feedback systems, physically and psychologically, into ultimate audible terrains, extracting sonic extremes from their instruments and themselves. Consisting of Suzanne Thorpe on flute and electronics and Philip White on electronic feedback, the duo improvise on the precipice of unpredictable sounds, exploiting the volatile and explosive in their music. They have toured throughout the U.S., performing at galleries and venues including the Fractal Mind Gaze Hut, Oakland, CA; OK Mountain, Austin, TX; Redux Contemporary Art Studios, Charleston, SC; Monkeytown, Brooklyn, NY; The Stone, NYC; and the Pyramid Atlantic, MD. Their recording, “bleach and ammonia”, was recorded at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, Oakland, CA, and recently released in limited-edition cassette format on Tape Drift Records.

Suzanne Thorpe is a composer, improviser, educator and curator. She has performed with Chris Brown, David Dove, Annette Krebs, Maggie Nicols, BhobRainey, Pauline Oliveros, Gino Robair, Zeena Parkins, Ulrich Krieger and more at places such as Issue Project Room (NYC), The Stone (NYC), Diapason (NYC), the Activating the Medium Festival (SF), the No Idea Festival (Austin), etc. In another life, she is a founding member of Mercury Rev, with whom she worked from 1989 – 2001, a member of The Wounded Knees and can be heard from time-to-time mucking it up with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr., all three of whom she played with at 2009′s All Tomorrow’s Parties: The Nightmare Before Christmas in England.

Philip White’s performances center on a non-linear feedback system, which consists of a mixer and several homemade circuits. In addition to his work with analog and digital electronics, White has written extensively for chamber ensembles and created a large body of inter-media pieces that explore meaning in information transmission. His works have been exhibited in galleries across the US and Germany. In addition his solo performances he currently works with Suzanne Thorpe (thenumber46), Chuck Johnson (with chuck johnson with philip white) and Ryan Talman. Recent and upcoming performances/exhibitions include Bent Festival 2010, New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, Diapason (NYC), The Stone (NYC), Sonic Circuits (DC), Redux New Media Festival (Charleston, SC) and Galerie Neurotitan (Berlin). Philip was recently awarded a Meet the Composer Creative Connections grant.