The Audiovore Presents: John Wiese/Steve Jansen/Holland Hopson/Brad Davis

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I’m excited about sharing the bill tomorrow night with John WieseSteve Jansen and Brad Davis.

Wednesday April 9, 8pm
Parkside Cafe
4036 5th Ave S
Birmingham AL 3522

I’ll be presenting my Radicans project which uses small motors and soundbug transducers to transform ordinary objects in the performance space into speakers. Tables, chairs, trashcans and windows come to life in a chorus of electronic chirping, buzzing and spinning drones.

Designing Sound: Artificial Sounds – Max patches

I enjoyed reading Andy Farnell’s excellent Designing Sound book a few years ago. While working through the Practical Series examples he provides, I decided they would be more useful for me as Max patches. When it comes to coding and algorithms, I also know that I learn better by going slowly and working step-by-step, so I decided to port the patches from Pd to Max.

A few disclaimers and caveats:

  • Many of these patches rely on abstractions that Farnell or I created. Download the Sound Design Practical Series helper files
  • Some of these patches require gen~, particularly to realize the rzero and rpole filters.
  • Filter topologies differ between the programs. My goal was to get something working in Max, not necessarily to exactly match Parnell’s Pd patch. Therefore, some patches could benefit from a close comparison with the Pd version and from tuning by ear.
  • Not everything initializes properly. Consult the text for reasonable starting values, or experiment to find your own.

Download the Sound Design Practical Series – Artificial Sounds

Huntsville Hive

Status

Had a great first rehearsal with the Huntsville Master Chorale tonight of my choral piece Having Told the Hive the News. Looking forward to the premiere in May.

UAB Faculty Brass performs Purple Loosestrife (Satellite)

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An excerpt from the score

 

Wednesday January 15 7:30 pm
Birmingham Art Music Alliance presents
UAB Faculty Brass
Samford University
Brock Recital Hall
Birmingham AL

This will be the premiere performance of my brass quintet, Purple Loosestrife (Satellite). The piece functions as a distributed network of musical gestures. Each musician can influence the behavior of any of the other musicians, while simultaneously being influenced by them. No one person is more “in charge” than another. There’s also no predetermined beginning, middle or ending. I sat in on a rehearsal this weekend and loved how the ensemble was working together. I can’t wait to hear how it comes together for the performance.

Also on the program:

  • Mark A. Lackey – Three Simple Prayers
  • Bryan Page – now does our world descend
  • Monroe Golden – Some Day
  • Jan Vi?ar – Three Marches for Dr. Kaybl
  • Wesley Johnson – Bluebrass Kebyar
  • Ron Wray – Dance Like It Hurts
  • William Price – Sans Titre VII
  • Fernando Deddos – Rabecando
  • Nancy Jensen – Polaris Fanfare

The University of Alabama at Birmingham Brass Quintet consists of Dr. James Zingara and Dr. Steve Roberts, trumpets, Dr. Martin Cochran, euphonium, Jeff Koonce, trombone, and Scott Robertson, tuba.

2013 Favorite Music

Joining in the year-end spirit here’s a list (in arbitrary order) of some music-related items that were favorites of 2013. Some of this material was released this year; much of it was old-and-newly-discovered or old-and-thankfully-rediscovered.

Albums

  • Ana Maria Kiefer – Teatro Do Descobrimento
  • Tinariwen – Imidiwan
  • Various Artists – Goodbye, Babylon
  • Rebe and Rabe – Rebe and Rabe Gospel
  • Dawn of Midi – Dysnomia
  • Dwight Yoakam – 3 Pears
  • Kristin Norderval – Aural Histories
  • Laurel Halo – Quarantine
  • Meridian – Hoquet
  • Nathan Bowles – A Bottle, A Buckeye
  • Rob Stenson – Gold Mountain EP
  • Sibylle Baier – Colour Green
  • Ron Pate’s Debonairs featuring Rev. Fred Lane – Raudelunas ‘Pataphysical Revue
  • Suicide – Suicide
  • Talk Talk – Laughing Stock
  • Woody Guthrie – Woody at 100
  • Julia Holter – Ekstasis and Loud City Song
  • Butch Morris – When the Sun is Out You Don’t See the Stars
  • These New Puritans – Field of Reeds

Singles

  • Vampire Weekend – “Step”
  • Claude Debussy – “Jeux”
  • Igor Stravinsky – “Le Sacre du Printemps”
  • Big Star – “September Gurls”
  • The Blue Nile – “The Wires are Down”
  • Hasil Adkins – “Hot Dog Baby”
  • Howlin’ Wolf – “Bluebird”
  • Lightnin’ Hopkins – “Black and Evil”
  • Odds of Survival – “Neshoba”
  • Laetitia Sonami – “What Happened”
  • Little Milton – “Grits Ain’t Groceries”
  • Roxy Music – “Virginia Plain”