BTF: Looking back to move forward

Over the course of 2020/21, composers and performers have been adapting to the constraints of the pandemic in various ways and inventing new paradigms for live musical performance. Composer Vincenzo Gualtieri has chosen to focus on one of the essential aspects of making music together: attentive and reciprocal listening.

Gualtieri’s work can now be heard on a new album: the (BTF) project, released on EMA Vinci Records: https://www.emavinci.it/lec/archives/1482.

“BTF” stands for feed-back to feed-forward, because of the extensive use of feedback principles in this work. In a deeper sense, though, BTF also stands for looking back to move forward.

Based on the premise of attentive and reciprocal listening, there is, in (BTF), an encounter between “electronic sounds” (processed in real time) and “acoustic sounds”. This interaction takes place within an environment of self-regulated feedback. The DSP system responsible for the digital treatment of sound metaphorically “listens” not only to the external acoustic energy state but also to its own own internal states. The same is required of the musical instrument performer.

As Gualtieri puts it, “Sound-producing systems – human and machine – create networks of circularly causal relationships and chains of self-generating (self-poietic processes), mutually co-determining sound events.”

Composing in this way requires an adaptation, a paradigm shift. If the digital processing of sound is linked to the acoustic properties of the environment, the quantity (and quality) of the generated sound events is no longer entirely predictable. Therefore the musical score asks the performer to take into account both the performance instructions and, at the same time, to continuously listen to the product of electronic processing and be freely influenced by it.

For (BTF) 1-4, Gaultieri worked in tandem with other musicians, with the composer managing live-electronics. Starting with (BTF) -5, he decided to perform the acoustic instruments himself. So, from (BTF) -5, onward, Gualtieri has automated the entire DSP process, resulting in two types of sound events: one managed by the digital system responsible for electronic processing (Kyma) and the other guided by music notation or word processing.

Capturing the spirit of invention inspired (and compelled) by worldwide lockdowns and isolation, Gualtieri writes:

La temporanea rinuncia a collaborare con altri musicisti mi ha permesso di concentrarmi diversamente
sull’esplorazione sonora e le sue forme organizzative.

– V. Gualtieri

(In English: “Temporarily giving up on collaborating with other musicians allowed me to focus differently
on sound exploration and its organizational forms.”)

An inspiring manifesto for what has and continues to be a challenging time for composers and performers worldwide.

Tactile Utterances

Composer/sonologist Roland Kuit encountered the paintings of Tomas Rajlich in 1992. ‘Fundamental Painting’, a minimalist strategy that explores the post-existential nature of the painting itself — its color, structure and surface — it is simply the painting as a painting. Tomas opened Kuit’s eyes to a kind of minimalism that Kuit recognized in his music at that time when he was working with semi-predictable chaotic systems. Kuit began creating works for Tomas Rajlich in 1993 and last year, Kuit released a new piece for Kyma-extended string quartet: Tactile Utterance – for Tomas Rajlich.

The world premiere of Tactile Utterance took place on 23 June 2017 in the Kampa Museum – The Jan and Meda Mládek Foundation in Prague (CZ) for the opening of a special Tomas Rajlich retrospective: Zcela abstraktní retrospektiva. Composed especially for the occasion, Kuit’s three part work Tactile Utterance, expresses 50 years of painting by Tomas Rajlich.

Kuit’s recent research into new compositional methods, algorithms, and spectral music came together in this work. His aim was to capture the process of painting: how can we relate acrylate polymers on canvas to sound? Using bowing without ‘tone’ as a metaphor for brushing a tangible thickness of color; pointing out the secants with very short percussive sounds on the string instruments as grid; dense multiphonics as palet knifes — broadened textures smeared out and disolving into light.

The premiere, performed by the FAMA Quartet with Roland Kuit on Kyma, was very well received.

The Prague recordings

For the recording, made during 15-20 February 2018, Roland decided to record the string quartet alone and unprocessed so he could do post-processing and balancing in the studio. Recording engineer Milan Cimfe of the SONO Recording Studios in Prague used 3 sets of microphones: one to create a very ‘close to the skin’ recording of all string instruments; the second set overhead; and the third set as ‘room’ recording. Kuit took the recordings to Sweden to finish the mix and Kyma processing.

Album art © Tomas Rajlich, Acrylic on Linen, 1990-1991 c/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2018

Tactile Utterance – Roland Emile Kuit
For Tomas Rajlich

1/ BRUSH 00:14:42

From a pianissimo-bowed wood sounds to noise, to an elaborated crescendo ending in a broad fortissimo textural cluster: Kyma extends the string sounds with spectral holds.

2/ MAZE 00:12:06

When walking by a grid, we see it first condensed – then open – then condensed again in both horizontal and vertical directions. The string quartet interprets ‘intersections’ by means of percussive sounds like pizzicato, spiccato, martelé, col legno etc. These sounds are treated as particles copied 100 times with the Kyma system, resulting in a noise wall. A ritardando to the center of the piece allows these particles to be distinguished as single sounds. With these single sounds, Roland made “spectral pictures” that could be smeared to complement the grid lines, followed by an accelerando back to prestissimo particles again.

3/ SURFACE 00:14:59

Multiphonics morphing to airy flageolets and the Kyma system processing the string quartet in algorithmic multiplexed resynthesized sounds, dissolving them into a muffled softness.

Roland Emile Kuit – Kyma

FAMA Quartet:
David Danel — violin,
Roman Hranička — violin,
Ondřej Martinovský — viola
Balázs Adorján — violoncello

Recorded by Milan Cimfe at the Sono Recording Studios Prague

DONEMUS
Composers Voice: CV 229

Architecture of Sound

RIETVELD PAVILION — Roland Emile Kuit’s new album published by Donemus — is now available on iTunes. The album was released in conjunction with the 9 July 2017 World Premiere at the sculpture park of the Kröller-Möller Museum in Otterlo in The Netherlands. With this work, Kuit makes a connection between sound and De STIJL’s ideas and architecture, using pure tones as spectral building blocks, stacking energies to build harmonic sound planes and placing them in space by dividing the spectrum and displaying it on a maze of speakers.

Photography: Henk Porck

Sonologist-composer Roland Emile Kuit balances on the interface between research, music and sound art, at a point he called “the new listening”. Using Kyma, Kuit warps time — influencing the present with events that will happen in the future and vice versa. He uses real-time analysis of the sound of acoustical instruments to create spectral compositions.

Anna Martinova releases Dusha II

Anna Martinova
DJ, producer, and graphic designer, Anna Martinova, has just signed with a new publisher who will be releasing her new album Dusha II in April 2017 and following up with videos and other artist collaborations. Watch Anna’s new web site for details on upcoming releases and live shows. Here’s a teaser for Dusha II drenched with mesmerizing and mysterious Kyma sounds:

Martinova works by generating WAV files in Kyma, arranging them in Logic, adding melodic lines created with Alchemy, and layering in recorded vocals using Logic and has linked her DAW with RolandCloud.

…Kyma (Pacarana) is very special tool, i am happy to be introduced to this system. It boosts up my creativity, inspiring me in every sound atom i generate with it, and the machine is limitless. The quality i have on the output is so powerful, clean and unique. I grow with it.

Known as Tulpa for her dark progressive DJ sets and Dusha for her chill out / ambient music, Anna got her start at age 17 as a vocalist in a rock band. After shifting to the psy-trance scene, she now lives in Amsterdam where she continues live DJing and producing.

Here’s a taste of her alter-ego, Tulpa:

Live from the subconscious of Barton McLean

Dreamscapes, Barton McLean‘s ambitious new suite of five pieces with video accompaniment, explores the uncanny parallels between music and dream logic.

Symphonic in texture, complexity, and visceral impact, with an impressively broad sonic palette, ranging from quasi-acoustic, to raw electronic, to sounds that are indescribably ambiguous and fresh — electronic yet entirely physically plausible, this all-Kyma soundtrack is electronics with the subtlety and dynamics of acoustic instruments. It’s like listening in on the soundtrack of the universal unconscious.

Белые сны Dusha

Anna Martinova’s new album Белые сны Dusha is now available on iTunes.

Luxuriously ambient tone paintings with just a touch of frozen exhalation from the arctic, the music on Dusha is as uplifting as it is peace-inducing. A continuation of The Soul project and Martinova’s Tulpa psygressive work, Dusha is also heavily influenced by her discovery of Kyma.
 
 

I must say it is such a pleasure to work with Kyma, so incredibly inspiring.

Martinova works by generating WAV files in Kyma, arranging them in Logic, adding melodic lines created with Alchemy, and finally layering in recorded vocals using Logic. This is the first album on which we get to hear Anna’s vocals (all recorded at night, when her child is asleep and her cat isn’t jumping on the speakers).

Martinova is already hard at work on two more albums in the series. As a taste of what’s in store, here’s a song from the second album in the series Душа / The Soul. The music came to Martinova in a dream after she learned that a dear friend was experiencing a tough situation; she heard this music as a link connecting her to her friend:

Roland Kuit invites you to join a Kyma bicycle tour

Roland Kuit Bi-Cycle 3

Roland Emile Kuit’s 2CD Bi – sonic is now available at Donemus, the Dutch Contemporary Music publishing house and features Kyma-processed bicycle sounds.

On CD1:

  1. The Impossible Bicycle compilation
  2. Atomic Wheeled Vehicle Compilation

Tour de Force, or how to de-construct a bicycle into sine- and cosine waves? Real-time spectral analysis, FFT, IFFT, spectral blurring, phase and frequency shifts of bicycle sounds are constructing a three dimensional sonic world whereby different algorithms produce a trajectory as a journey in stages.

On CD2:

  • 99 Re-Cycle Sound Objects

Now it’s your turn! With the sounds on CD2, you can compose your own bicycle pieces using Kyma 7! Re-create Bicycle Music or create new Sound Art and upload your creations to: http://soundcloud.com/bicycle-soundart
2CD_Bi-Sonic_Roland_Emile_Kuit

Stanley Cowell @ Smoke NYC

Described by the New York Times as “A pianist of deep authority and resolute purpose”, Stanley Cowell will be in New York City this weekend with his quartet (Bruce Williams [saxophone & flute], Stanley Cowell [piano], Jay Anderson [bass], Victor Lewis [drums]) for a 3-day gig/CD release party at the Smoke jazz and supper club, 1-4 October 2015.

Cowell is also featured in the October issue of Jazz Times Magazine where he also describes how he uses Kyma in live performance and was just interviewed on WKCR radio).

If you’re in New York, be sure to check out his Smoke debut so you’ll be able to hear (among other things) Cowell using Kyma to do live harmonization of the piano. At 7, 9 and 10:30 p.m., Smoke, 2751 Broadway, at 106th Street, 212-864-6662, smokejazz.com.

According to the Smoke web site,

Smoking is not permitted at the club, or at any venue in NYC for that matter. But the music will be smokin’ for sure.

Nanophonic Similarities

What happens when you combine two unique and individualistic instruments (the Buchla 200 and Kyma) and one individualistic, experimental composer, fearlessly following the dictates of a bright and restless curiosity (Roland Kuit)?

Kuit’s new album, Nanophonic Similarities, is refreshingly raw and experimental.  It’s pure sound and the thrill of discovery!

Buchla 200 audio is used as a starting point, then algorithmically scrambled, granulated to create a new sono-language and rendered to the quadraphonic 24 bit Super Audio format.

Listen and order Nanophonic Similarities from the Donemus site.

Roland Emile Kuit = nanophonic similarities

Becoming Polyphonic: Review of Cristian Vogel’s New Album

Ready to be transmogrified at the micro-cellular-level? Premised on the proposition “that we are what we hear,” Cristian Vogel’s new album Polyphonic Beings seeks to expose each of our cells to musical qualities that will effect the deepest possible transformations.

Cristian once again employs Kyma to achieve his signature far-afield timbral explorations, surprising tricky silences, and trance-inducing slow timbre morphs. Eminently danceable, Polyphonic Beings transports you through the imaginary landscapes depicted in the cover art and deposits you safely in the serenely peaceful state evoked by the Society of Hands.

  1. Exclusion Waves: The pilgrimage begins with pink noise waves breaking gently onto an indigo shore, with vocal-chants enfolded in the noise.
  2. Mccaw’s ghost: Slow and easy, runs out of steam punk at the end
  3. How many grapes went into that wine: Here, Vogel is in his element: pitchy cross-synth rhythms and his signature metric modulations paired with crazy pitch unwindings! Trance-inducing vocalesque timbres ride rhythmic spirals and a sudden break leaves you catching your breath to a humorous chorus of squeegee “la-la-las” that morph into synths.
  4. Lost in the chase: Lovely liquidy sounds like hitting an open-mouth tube (or modal filters?) establish an ostinato  pattern that change every 8 bars until a gorgeous smooth disintegration into gentle noise & silence.  But wait, there’s more!  An over-the-top metallic plate reverb with metallic hits finishes out the track.
  5. La Banshee 109: (or is it LA Banshee?) Sounds of metal rigging wiggling in a stiff breeze and trying hard to settle into a groove.  It finally settles into a liquid pattern as reverse attack brass-like timbres create a heart beat pulse which evolves into conga-like plucky patterns with unstable frequency swoops.  Once again a lovely dissolve and disintegration.
  6. Forest Gifts: One thing about the forest is, it’s full of insects!  A delightful buzzy buggy intro blurs and then comes into focus as a fast groove of buzzy shakers with an overlay of creatures encoded into the northern lights and luxurious harmonic sweeps. Filtered noise, like distant boat horns, peacefully resolves into a misty forest dawn with delicate violin tremolo.
  7. Society of hands: Exquisite slow machine room gradually morphing into an icy wind rattling the vents, against slow delicate piano chords with reversals gradually working their way from high to low. Landing in a raspy Japanese vocal and peaceful filtery suspensions.  You’re left feeling serene and elevated.

Order online and then get your tickets for the 22 November launch party in Berlin. (with Vogel and SØS on the bill, prepare yourself for a transformative experience).

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