Moving notice

I've moved this podcast to Libsyn. Please visit us there. Update your RSS feed here.

New feed: http://podcast1024.libsyn.com/rss

Podcast1024: Kraig Grady - Crickets

Listen here.
Add this feed to your Podcatching tool: http://podcast1024.libsyn.com/rss

Today's podcast is a very short but delightful piece by Kraig Grady. He calls it an experiment, but I think it's so great, I'm going to play it twice today. He writes:

I had meant to go into Logic Vocoder and see whatIi could do with noise to illustrate to Bill [Sethares] what it might do. But it didn't work at all. While I was there I somehow ended up doing this.
--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main.html> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

It's called Crickets, and here it is. Twice since it's so short.

Podcast1024: Tidal Falls by Jonathan Szanto

If you want to hear this podcast directly, click the MP3 logo: To subscribe, drag the Podcasting logo:
to your iPodder or Doppler subscription window.

Today's podcast is a piece by Jonathan Szanto, written for a dance performance. He writes:

Tidal Falls - I got called very late (4 weeks before performance) to create a score for a dance piece that already existed. The piece was metered, and has both metric and tempo changes in sections; therefore, the bulk of the piece already had an existing tempo/meter format. Flowing/falling water is the theme of the piece, including an actual working 'fountain' on stage that dancers go into. Water sounds were one of the requests.

I looked at this piece as a good place to try getting better at some of my toolset, especially in seeing what happened when I started working with a lot of multiple instances of soft instruments - how far could I task my poor little DAW? The main compositional/recording/mixing application is Sonar 4.

It's about ten minutes long. Listen and enjoy the wet goodness!

Podcast1024: Bill Sethares - Maple Manytet

If you want to hear this podcast directly, click the MP3 logo to hear it now.

To subscribe, drag the xml logo to your iPodder or Doppler subscription window.

Today's episode is a work in progress by Bill Sethares. From his description:

I've been working on mapping procedures to take the partials (overtones) from a sound (the source) and move them somewhere else (the destination).
The application is to create sounds (currently planning on using Kontakt [from Native Instruments]) that have spectra specially designed for particular tunings.

As I've been playing with the algorithms, I have been "trying them out" on complete mixes and have some interesting sounding results... for these two
pieces, the destination was set as all integer multiples of 65 Hz. So all of the "notes" are squished down to one big harmonic sound.

The source in this piece is Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. See if you can hear it through the rush of harmonic partials. Neat stuff.

Podcast1024: Music by Joe Pehrson, Aaron Krister Johnson, Christopher Bailey

If you want to hear this podcast directly, click the MP3 logo: To subscribe, drag the Podcasting logo:
to your iPodder or Doppler subscription window.

Today's podcast will be a bit longer than usual, since I'm going to play the works of several composers - music by Joe Pehrson, Aaron Krister Johnson, and Christopher Bailey.

But first, some words of advice from Eve Beglarian, who was profiled on a podcast put together by the talented composer Corey Dargel. His podcast, called Composers and the People Who Love Them, is a terrific collection of viewpoints on one composer by a variety of personalities. And they are quite the personalities. I'm going to play a clip of Eve being interviewed by Professor Heebie McJeebie:

Play clip.

I agree with Eve.

On to the musical numbers. First up is Joe Pehrson. He writes about Inner Voices:

Inner Voices is my first electronic piece which uses software, rather than hardware, synthesizers. I'm using the z3ta+ softsynth which reads "Scala" tuning files. Therefore, virtually any intonation can be realized. In this piece, I use the “Blackjack” scale, a 21 note scale which very closely emulates just intonation (non-beating intervals) within a margin of 2 or 3 cents. The z3ta+ is a very flexible softsynth and I use no presets: all the sounds are especially created. Sonar is my sequencer host and a second software synth, the TTS-1 creates percussion effects. I use quite a few of these, since they are handled so nicely by this second synth. I’m currently completing a version for electronic playback and 2 live percussionists.

Listen to Inner Voices by Joe Pehrson.

Next piece is by Aaron Krister Johnson, and is a suite of Four Pieces for Harpsichord:

• Praeludium distretto
• Contrapunctus null
• Eat My Two-Against-Three
• ADD Crisis Center

Here's how he described them:

3rd of August, 2005- four new works for 2/5-comma meantone tuned harpsichord.

A note about the improvisations: I often do them in real-time at about half tempo, then, for a Nancarrow-like effect, they are sped up in tempo. But,
yes; they are improvised real-time. And occasionally I'll fix a sloppy flam
or something like a note not being held long enough which sounded choppy,
etc.

Listen now to Four Pieces for Harpsichord by Aaron Krister Johnson.

The final piece of the podcast is a fun romp by Christopher Bailey called "Post-industrial Nuclear Thrash Mutated Smurfette JumpFest" by Christopher Bailey. He describes it as follows:

I did it in ProTools, with a few basic plug-ins, samples, and an XV-3080 Synth. It's not systematically microtonal, just lots of random pitch-bends added to juice up the
pitches. Plus a lot of the samples are kind of weirdly colored sonorities. Beyond that, I suppose the title speaks for itself.

Listen now to music by Christopher Bailey, "Post-industrial Nuclear Thrash Mutated Smurfette JumpFest". Great stuff.

Podcast1024: Subduction Zone by Prent Rodgers

If you want to hear this podcast directly, click the MP3 logo:

To subscribe, drag the Podcasting logo:
to your Doppler subscription window.

Today's piece is one I wrote, called Subduction Zone. It is scored for Alto Flute, Bass Clarinet, Guitar, Marimba, Finger Piano, and Percussion. It is based on four chords in the Partch Tonality Diamond: F 4/3 minor; A 8/5 major; C 1/1 major; and A 5/3 minor. There are many notes in common between these scales, and many more that are only slightly different. The subduction takes place where the differences lie.

For complete details about the piece, please see my web site here. The title comes from the geological phenomenon when two tectonic plates converge, and one goes under the other.

Podcast1024: Revenge of the Inorganic Compounds by Igliashon

If you want to hear this podcast directly, click the MP3 logo:
To subscribe, drag the Podcasting logo:
to your Doppler subscription window.

Today's piece is by Igliashon, who writes as City of the Asleep Music at Soundclick.com. He also posts comments to the Yahoo Groups called Make Micro Music, where I get most of the music I podcast here at Podcast1024. Here's what Igliashon had to say about today's piece, written in 22 tone to the octave equal temperment:

Check out "revenge of the inorganic compounds". Decatonic [mostly, except for some Superpyth in the interlude] Metal to the EXTREEEM!!!! with some really f'ed up compound meters. Not quite the level of Mr. Stearns' work, but I'm getting there ;->. Comments highly encouraged.

-Igliashon

Comments from MakeMicroMusic at Yahoo Groups

Dave Seidel said: "Cool stuff, Ig! Keep doing it. My favorite part is the shredding ... when the second guitar joins in. Is the guitar all real-time?

"It is!" says Igliashon.

Daniel Anthony Stearns said: "Nice job mister Jones, more in this style please ."

Danny Wier said: "Oy vey! That was fun, really"

Joe Monzo said: "this is some crazy shit. i love it!"

Jonathan Szanto said: "Igs,

Bonus! Might not be too late for you guys to open for U2 and gain micro-exposure. Killer stuff."

Aaron Krister Johnson

"Fantasic--I'm glad you're going in that direction. I'm not a metal fan per se, but I'll like anything more if it has a micro-slant. This was thoroughly enjoyable; some of your best and most intricate work to date!"

All I can say is: "What he said!"

Podcast1024: Symmetrical Melodic Variation on La Monte Young's Romantic Symmetry by Dave Seidel

If you want to hear this podcast directly, click the MP3 logo: To subscribe, drag the Podcasting logo:
to your iPodder or Doppler subscription window.

Today's piece is described in depth on Dave Seidel's web page here. Here's how he describes the piece:

This is a variation, in four voices of long, slowly-changing tones surrounding a central drone, on La Monte Young’s 1989 sine-tone piece The Romantic Symmetry (over a 60 cycle base) in Prime Time from 144 to 112 with 119. It is an electronic piece written and realized with Csound.

Dedicated to La Monte Young in his 70th year.

Duration: 9 minutes 14 seconds.

Background & Technical Details

La Monte Young’s Romantic Symmetry is a piece consisting of a chord of 22 sustained tones that express a specific set of harmonics of a 7.5 Hz fundamental frequency. All of these harmonics are prime or octaves of primes, except for 119. It is one of Young’s sine-tone installations, intended to run continuously for extended periods of time. The frequencies in the piece range from 60 Hz up to 8.64 kHz.

...

For timbral materials, I made an instrument that combines a simulation of a plucked string (using Csound’s pluck opcode) with a simple oscillator tone. I did not use a pure sine wave except for the central drone, but the other tones use relatively pure waveforms consisting of the first partial with different strengths of the 2nd, 4th, and 8th partials; since these are all octaves of the fundamental, the pitch ratios remain unmuddied.

I am indebted to Kyle Gann, without whose writings I could not have even begun to study and explore areas of La Monte Young’s work which would otherwise have been inaccessible to me.

The most intriguing thing about La Monte Young's piece is how it sounds when you move about the space. Each discrete location in a room will have a different sonority, and bring out different overtones as you walk, or turn your head. Turn this piece on at home and walk around and see if you don't experience some of that effect in your own space.

Podcast1024: Omar's Shuffle by Omar Y Los Bandelleros

If you want to hear this podcast directly, click the MP3 logo: To subscribe, drag the Podcasting logo:
to your iPodder or Doppler subscription window.

Today I play a piece I wrote, called Omar's Shuffle. When it was originally released a few years ago, I claimed that I had recorded it in a bar in Ajijic, Mexico, near Guadalajara. In fact it was all done on the computer using Csound and some sound samples. The tuning is straight Just Intonation, from the Partch Tonality Diamond. Details on the story behind the song, deceitful as it may be, can be found on my liner notes page here.

Note the trumpets playing 7:9:11 against the guitar's 4:5:6. And the sharp marimbas made possible by perfect attack times. All in fun.

Podcast1024: Boogie Pie by Aaron Krister Johnson

Aaron wrote to describe this piece: "You could say that it uses a 12 of 23-tet scale that Paul Erlich calls 'ripple', and that it is modelled on Conlon Nancarrow's player piano music."

The piece was generated from a MIDI file on his Korg X5DR. 23-tet means that the scale is equally divided into 23 steps, much like the 12-tet scale is divided into 12 steps. This means that there are very notes in common between 12-tet and 23-tet. They are as different as you can get, I suppose. Aaron picked 12 of these tones to use in his piece, and went to work composing. This is the result.

More information about Paul Erlich scale systems can be found here.

If you want to hear this podcast directly, click here to listen. Or drag the Podcast logo: to your iPodder or Doppler download window.