Tag Archives: YouTube

Live From My Living Room

Posted on by

Tune in Thursday August 13 at 7:00pm CST for Live From My Living Room with Holland Hopson presented by the Hoover Library in Hoover, Alabama. I’ll perform new works and improvisations for a custom electric guitar/banjo hybrid instrument built by the amazing Jefferson Pitcher. I may also give a sneak preview of a some visualization software I’ve been developing. Check out the entire Live From My Room video series on YouTube.

The Hoover Library has a long history of presenting great concerts. I played there in person (how quaint!) in 2016, and have had my pieces played there by pianist Aron Kallay and the percussion group Iron Giant. Here’s a video of Iron Giant playing my Quartet 60x880120x208 for four metronomes:

Here’s the info for Thursday’s concert:

A History of Elevators in Film at Soundwaves

Posted on by

Aron Kallay will perform my piece A History of Elevators in Film today at Soundwaves in Santa Monica CA. The concert features selections from Beyond 12, Aron’s project for retuned and remapped keyboards.

Wednesday March 21
Beyond 12
Aron Kallay
Soundwaves
Santa Monica Public Library
Martin Luther King Auditorium
601 Santa Monica Blvd
Santa Monica CA 90401
Aron will perform my piece A History of Elevators in Film

A History of Elevators in Film is for piano and electronics with the keys remapped to different pitches in real time as Kallay plays. Here’s video from a 2015 performance at LaGrange College

ASAC Videos: Pump Organ and No Mule

Posted on by

Thanks to Eric Hardiman for shooting and posting videos from Saturday’s Albany Sonic Arts Collective show.

This is the premiere of a soon-to-be-titled work built around the idea of treating a fader box as a set of pump organ pedals, rather than simple position sensors. Using Cycling ’74’s Max I can control the organ sounds with a variety of gestures: “pumping” the faders makes the sounds louder, rhythmic motion creates harmonics, sudden and abrupt changes add distortion and bite. The samples that appear at 5:30 are from a 2010 recording session with choreographer Jill Sigman (previous story here).

(Start at 1:32 to skip the embarrassing banter and the hopeless yet obligatory banjo tuning…)

“No Mule” is another brand-new tune. The rhythmic chopping effect is a kind of slow-motion walk through a live sample of the banjo. I add a few more live samples beginning at about 4:00 and get into full-on Steve Reich mode by 6:00.

Science Fair Video

Posted on by

Cycling ’74 has posted a new video from the Science Fair they hosted as part of the recent Expo ’74 event in Brooklyn. I show off my extended banjo instrument (along with my unashamedly geeky enthusiasm). My segment runs from 2:16-3:13, but watch the whole thing and marvel at the wonderful, strange things people do with Max (and their own geeky enthusiasms). Other videos in the series can be found here.

And a big shout out to Eric Prust who built the fine fretless banjo (minus the electronics) in the video.

Fencepost

Posted on by

This month’s score from Post & Beam is Fencepost. This is the last song I wrote for the record and has become the sleeper hit of the release.

Download the score as a pdf file: fencepost.pdf
Download the score as a Lilypond .ly file: fencepost.ly

Notes on Fencepost

  • The cFCFAb tuning is one I came to after trying a more standard minor (fCFAbC) or sawmill (cFCFG) tuning. I use a Pythagorean temperament based on F which doesn’t change the tuning of the C’s and F’s very much, but makes the Ab significantly flatter than an equal-tempered Ab.
  • The whooshing, windy sound throughout (heard prominently during the intro) is generated by walking on a pair of foot pedals, almost the way you would pump an old pump organ. (You can see this motion in the video.)
  • While recording, I kept missing the foot pedals and accidentally stepping on a mic stand instead. I decided to embrace the resulting bass drum thumps and include them in the piece.
  • Yet another song with bird imagery (YASWBI).

More Wichita Mind Control

Posted on by

Jason Cosco was kind enough to post a video of me performing Wichita Mind Control for bent electronics with MaxMSP at the Upstate Artist’s Guild Gallery last April. This was the premiere performance of the piece. Though my pieces often changes incrementally (or sometimes substantially) as I continue to perform them, this first shot at WMC still feels definitive to me.

Here’s audio of the same performance (previously posted here)

[audio:wichita_mind_control_estate_capital.mp3]

Wichita Mind Control – Estate Capital

Faust Show Videos

Posted on by

I’m finally putting some videos online from the Faust/Century Plants/Holland Hopson show at Proctors. A few can currently be found at YouTube and Vimeo, with another clip or two to arrive soon. These are definitely “performance documentation” videos. If you want to bring your 3-camera HD setup and skills to my next show, feel free to drop me a line!

Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down

Born in the Desert

Born in the Desert from Holland Hopson on Vimeo.

Wichita Mind Control – Estate Capital

Wichita Mind Control – Estate Capital from Holland Hopson on Vimeo.