aroundNorth around Northern Ireland

If the stars were a musical instrument, how would they sound? As the Earth spins on its axis, and day becomes night becomes day, our view on the near universe changes as reflected by the changing positions of the stars in the sky. One star appears to stay stationary (the North Star); and the rest take about 23 hours 56 minutes and 4 seconds to complete one complete revolution. Robert Jarvis’ aroundNorth is an eight-channel sound installation created entirely in Kyma 7 that offers listeners an opportunity to hear this phenomenon in real time. As each star crosses one of the equally spaced virtual lines emanating from Celestial North Pole, a sound associated with that star and its characteristics is heard at the corresponding position in the sky, its size, its distance from Earth, its brightness and its temperature, creating a mesmerizing sound map of the universe as viewed by our turning planet.

aroundNorth, will be touring Northern Ireland throughout the month of March 2015, culminating in the work’s permanent installation at Armagh Observatory. The tour begins on the shores of Lough Neagh, at Oxford Island, the first Dark Sky site in Northern Ireland, proceed to the top of Divis & the Black Mountain National Trust Park, and then on to Armagh. The installation will also travel to Colin Allotments in West Belfast before travelling to Derry for a special performance to coincide with the deep partial eclipse of the sun on the morning of Friday 20th March 2015. There will then be an evening performance in the sports grounds at St Cecila’s College before the final event at the spectacular Beaghmore Stones complex, near Cookstown in County Tyrone.

By mapping the parameters of the stars through the medium of sound, aroundNorth changes the way we think about our stellar neighbors. As stars move across the score’s virtual lines, brighter stars sound longer, fading in and fading out as they move across the score’s virtual lines, while fainter stars sound shorter; stars that are closer sound louder; hotter stars crackle corresponding to their heat; and, bigger stars sound deeper whilst smaller stars are higher sounding.

aroundNorth humanizes the astronomical, giving us an emotional key to help us relate the unfathomable heavens to our own experiences of time and space. With echoes of a Neolithic monument of ancient myth, the installation introduces us to a universe full of interest, encouraging us to think differently about the cosmos and our place within it.

Scroll down for a full schedule of when and where you can experience aroundNorth this month.

THU 12
Lough Neagh Discovery Centre, Oxford Island, Craigavon BT66 6NJ
FREE 7pm – 9pm

SAT 14
Divis & the Black Mountain, Divis Road, Hannahstown BT17 0NG
FREE 6.30pm – 9pm (Approx 20 minute walk to installation area)

TUE 17
Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG
FREE 2.30pm – 4pm

WED 18
Colin Allotments, Upper Colin Glen Rd, Belfast BT17 0LR
FREE 7pm – 9pm

THU 19
Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG
FREE 2.30pm – 4pm

FRI 20
St Cecilia’s College Sports Ground, Fanad Drive, Derry BT48 9QE
FREE 7pm – 9pm

SAT 21
Beaghmore Stones, Blackrock Road, Cookstown BT80 9PB
FREE 6pm – 9pm (Visitors required to walk over rough ground)

MON 23 & EVERY MON, TUE, WED, THU & FRI until further notice
Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG
FREE 9.30am – 5pm

Kyma meets Buchla

Composer/synthesis-researcher Roland Kuit will be demonstrating his work with Kyma and the Buchla 200 interacting with each other in EMS Studio 4 in a live stereo broadcast from EMS in Stockholm for the Dutch Concertzender Radio on 25 February 2015…

Roland_Kuit_Buchla_200_EMS_Stockholm_7On February 25, composer/synthesis-researcher Roland Kuit will be broadcasting live and in stereo from EMS in Stockholm for the Dutch Concertzender Radio, demonstrating his work with Kyma and the Buchla 200 interacting with each other in EMS Studio 4.

At the heart of these compositions are the Kyma algorithms that Kuit uses to frequency-modulate the Buchla Complex Waveform Generator Model 259 which, in turn, is used as trigger function for the Sequential Voltage Source Model 243, thus exploring the intriguing area that lies between note triggers and wavetables. This sequential control voltage is controlling a second Complex Waveform Generator Model 259. And the audio of this Waveform Generator is used as the carrier for the 285e Frequency Shifter / Balanced Modulator. The 266e Source of Uncertainty modulates a third Complex Waveform Generator Model 259 and is used as modulation signal for the Balanced Modulator which is fed through 296e Spectral Processor for filtering. Finally the loop is closed by routing these algorithmic audio ‘sentences’ back to Kyma for Ring Modulation and quadraphonic placement.

Kuit is a frequent guest on the Concertzender where he’s often called in as a modular synthesis expert to explain various synthesis algorithms or to discuss music by some of the pioneers of electronic music.

EMS#1 will stream live on 25 February after which it will be available as a podcast from the Concertzender archive.

UFO’s over Los Angeles

Film composer Tobias Enhus has had a lifelong fascination with jet travel, perhaps due in part to the fact that his mother was one of the original hostesses (as they called the cabin crew back then) for Swedish Airways. So it’s no surprise that his latest music video, LumiTECTURE is something of an homage to flight and movement.

I’ve always been interested in flying. And there’s so much movement in the air, so many UFO’s over LA—balloons, airplanes, birds, satellites.  I’m always trying to capture that sense of movement.

 

In LumiTECTURE, Enhus used a combination of time-lapse and telescopic lenses, and an all-Kyma soundtrack to create a sense of Los Angeles as an energetic, living, breathing organism.  Skyscrapers and the LAX flight stack-up take on the appearance of a rain forest full of insects, and the notorious traffic on the 101 takes on the appearance of red blood cells moving through a capillary.

To get that incredible opening shot of the moon, Enhus schlepped his gear up to Mount Wilson to get above some of the atmospheric clutter, filming for several hours in 34 degrees F, then back to downtown LA where the temperature was 58 F.

“After filming in that tunnel, I’m going to have to drink wheat grass shots for a month to overcome the effects of breathing all that fine particulate roadway pollution,” he joked.

And how about the UFO scene?  Was it looped?

“No loops! There are about 1700 landings at LAX within any 24-hour period. That means 700 or so landings on the north runway where i was filming on the rooftop of a building.”

What’s next for Enhus?

“I want to do more software control over the time-lapse and telescope mount—trying to capture all those UFO’s in the skies over LA!”

Gualtieri’s BTF-3 performed in Naples

Vincenzo Gualtieri’s new work—(BTF-3), for Bass recorder, larsen-tones and Kyma—was performed for the first time with Tommaso Rossi playing bass recorder on November 16th 2014 in Naples as part of a concert at the MADRE Museum (Museo d’Arte contemporanea Donna Regina -> Donna REgina contemporary Art Museum), where it was performed in a room containing the site-specific work Spirits by Rebecca Horn.

Gualtieri BTF-3 side view

An adaptive/site-specific digital system with an ecological approach, (BTF-3) stands for BackToForward-3rd and is based on an array of granulators arranged in series with a feedback loop frame. The work was performed again in Padua at the Pollini Conservatory.  Although there is no recording of BTF-3 yet, in BTF-4 you can hear a similar system, also implemented in Kyma, performed in this case with tenor sax.
Gaultieri BTF3

Di Scipio’s work featured in Forms of Sound Festival

Agostino Di Scipio is the featured composer/scholar/sound artist at the Forms of Sound Festival in Calgary 29-31 January 2015.  Featured works include:

  • Modes of Interference n.3 (2007) by Agostino Di Scipio
    • Autonomous feedback system for electric guitars & Kyma
    • open daily in the CIBC Hub Room (Rozsa Centre)
  • Two Pieces of Listening and Surveillance (2009-2010) by Agostino Di Scipio
    • Autonomous sound-generating system with flute and live Kyma electronics
    • August Murphy, flute
  • Agostino Di Scipio 2 sound pieces with repertoire string music and live Kyma electronics

 

Sci-fi communication sounds SFX Library

Tune in your shortwave radio and establish a comm link; Transmission Apparatus is Unidentified Sound Object’s new recombinant construction kit for creating a broad range of communication sounds, from real to “alien” broadcasting signals. The library contains more than 2 GB of data, delivered in 373 files of unique sound material, including radio samples, unintelligible voices and Kyma-synthesized noises.  Here’s an audio demo! 

Unidentified Sound Object is an independent sound effects libraries publisher offering high resolution sound effects and virtual instruments for film, games and music creations, launched by Matteo Milani in 2011. All of the audio files have been loudness-normalized, based on the recommendations of the European Broadcast Union, and embedded with metadata for detailed and accurate searches in your software asset management.

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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Portrait of Anne La Berge

Anne La Berge is a flutist, composer and improviser working with interactive electronics in both composed and improvised music.

What Anne tries to provide audiences

I offer the individuals who come to my concerts the opportunity to be curious and to hear, see or think in a way that wakes them up, that sparks them to wonder if the world as they see it might be different than they usually assume it is, in some unexpected way.

Her work, in her own words

Most of my works embrace the unpolished and unbridled opportunities that unforeseen combinations offer us to respond to in the process of making art. I try to provide those opportunities by guiding players through improvisations.

Most people who hear my work (and that includes my purely free improvisations), hear that I am trying to communicate something. That I have something to say whether the message is a kinesthetic gesture, an emotion or even words. 

On the joy of music and live improvisation

I was performing a piece called Lotus Blue Dream with my daughter, Diamanda, composed by my husband for piccolo and violin. There is one section of the piece where I feel elevated into another world. One of the contributing factors is that Diamanda and I relate to one another on an intuitive level and another is that the composition brings us to a musical place that moves me in a very special way every time we play it.

I play with a couple of small groups where that happens regularly. One is Shackle and the other is a trio called Zebra that has 2 saxophones and me. The improvising magic happens when we are all sharing the responsibility of musical invention and we arrive in a musical place that integrates our instrumental timbres and our personal fantasies in a way that we’ve never experienced before. We all know it when it is happening and have the skills and the desires to stay in the music and develop a mini-composition at that moment that works for us. I know for certain that the audience feels it too. Magic. Wholeness. Entirety in the moment.

On creating a thriving community of composers and performers

I am the director of VOLSAP, a non-profit foundation that supports and produces experimental music in The Netherlands and abroad.

Splendor is a collective of musicians in Amsterdam. We have renovated a historic bathhouse in the old city that has two concert halls, a bar, and a few small rehearsal spaces. The programming and production for Splendor is the responsibility of 50 musicians. We produce our own projects and we can produce other productions by artists outside of the 50 core musicians. We are a club and have around 1000 members who can come to our concerts for free or for a reduced price.  Our members pay €100 a year to be part of Splendor. It is a musical mecca of our time.

Making music with others

Shackle

[Shackle is] an electro acoustic duo that have found a way of making music all our own. At our heart is a self-designed, digital cueing system that operates as a sometimes-visible third member. Both prodding and reactive, the Shackle System suggests musical directions and textures to Robert van Heumen and I, opening up a fascinating array of sonic choices for us to both play with and against. Our performances are between improvisation without borders and tightly controlled forms. Improvisation and structure coincide in our music making. With spontaneous transitions and long, spun-out sections of sound, our music works on many levels at once: full of delightful discoveries that can happen at any moment, we savor the possibilities that those discoveries offer up.

With composer Scott L Miller

Scott and I usually send Kyma Timelines and/or Kyma Sounds back and forth after a lengthy email exchange regarding our desires and the practical issues of the project we are working on. Fortunately we’ve performed together a few times now so we know the ins and outs of one another’s musical quirks. We also send sound files of rehearsing with the Sounds. That gives us an aural feedback that words would never be able to fully communicate.

Taking an active role in new instrument development

Alexander Murray [Anne’s flute professor at the University of Illinois] developed a flute that was slightly different from the conventional western flute that most people play today. The flute was more in tune and the fingering system was more logical. I had a flute built for myself and played on it for a few years. A couple of the design features did not suit me, so I had another one built that I used for many years until I moved to The Netherlands and met Eva Kingma. She was developing a quartertone flute in the early 1990’s that interested me. My experimental passions and history with unusual flutes made me a prime suspect to work with her as one of the consultants on the development of the Kingma flute. After playing a couple of prototypes, I ended up with a quartertone flute that has worked wonderfully for me for many years. As to my experimental nature, I think that is simply in my DNA. When someone needs a guinea pig, I’m first in line.

How Anne became an improviser

Both my piano and flute teachers had me invent and improvise exercises and/or tunes as part of my training. I grew up believing that improvising was part of one’s personal practice routine. Much later, I learned that some people made a career doing it! 

During college and then directly after I was always part of improvisation ensembles. When I graduated from the University of Illinois and moved to Los Angeles, I became part of a few improv groups that performed regularly. One was with the musicians Ron George and Susan Rawcliffe who built their own instruments. While working with Ron and Susan, I developed a playing style where I didn’t sound at all like a classical western flute in order to fit into the the group sound.

Another extreme milestone was while I was living in Los Angeles in the early 1980’s, had no access to a music library and was not willing to put out the money to purchase music. I asked the clarinetist, David Ocker, to play with me on a concert but we didn’t have any composed music to play so we improvised. The duo worked so well that we formed a trio with Vinny Golia and had a fantastic time playing together for some years.

After I moved to The Netherlands I performed regularly with full time professional improvisers. The free jazz scene in Amsterdam was remarkable and has remained so. The musicians in the Corkestra were particularly influential for me. Playing with them brought my improvising and my general artistic growth to another level.

On teaching improvisation to classically trained performers

Most classically trained performers have music that they know well and that they feel is somehow close to their hearts and bodies. When asked to improvise using the pitch, rhythmic and timbre material of that music, they are usually excited to do so. The next step would be to make the separate parameters of that music more available to improvise further. An example of combining parameters and waking up musical fantasy would be if one imagined two or three favorite pieces and combined them in different ways over a period of a few minutes. For example using the “feel” of a Berio Sequenza while playing Country Western that breaks down into the rhythmic structure of a Bartok piece and then ending up in sustained noise. That sounds like fun to me. And potentially our imaginations would be focused on the task of group instant composition and not on our own shortcomings or other personal inhibitions.

Advice for a performer/composers at the start of their careers

Composer/performers are a rare breed. The majority of composer/performers began their musical careers as exceptional instrumentalists or singers. By exceptional, I mean that they, somewhere along the line, developed a somewhat convoluted approach to learning the music put in front of them confounded by a spotty devotion to the conventions of music performance. I would recommend that they follow their noses and move to a place where they can work with like-minded colleagues. Usually this would be a metropolitan area with a vital improvisation and new music scene. Most hopping scenes have institutions where one can study but it is the colleagues who are most important. Collaborations inspire us to learn and develop. And those collaborations are essential in launching our careers as performer/composers.

Her philosophy of teaching, workshops and master classes

…my main focus in all workshops is to inspire people to take musical risks and to help them free their imaginations so that they can play together without obsessing on their own issues and discover ways to focus on making music. That way they can dig deeper into playing their instrument(s), coping with technology and building an ensemble sound and/or behavior.

A day in the life…

Depending how late I stayed up the night before, I get up and have tea while my husband David has coffee. We go into the yard and feed our pet bunnies Syd and Ginger and then we go to our desks. I turn on my computer and check my email just to see if there are any world catastrophes to solve and then I work creatively for a while. At some point in the day I practice the flute for a couple of hours. Then I have rehearsals, or meetings or concerts. My schedule is not regular seeing that I tour regularly. I practice the flute wherever I go. I also keep thinking or working on new work. Either in my head or with my gear.

Humor in new music

Frank Bowen [Anne’s flute professor at the University of New Mexico] was an incredibly talented musician and a warm hearted and devoted teacher. He was also extremely shy socially. He encouraged his students, including me, to develop a personal style of playing that would be immediately recognized as unique. He wanted us all to be who we were and even more. One comical memory that I have is when I brought in the Berio Sequenza to a lesson and during the second lesson he asked me what I was playing as the fourth event. It seemed wrong. As it turned out, my score had an ink mark on it that wasn’t part of the notation and I was just playing a smudge! A serious and ambitious flutist interpreting a glob of lost ink. Ridiculous? How would I have known? I’ll never forget how hard we laughed.

Current work in progress — A Lovely Gesture (world premiere scheduled for 28 September at KISS2014 in Lübeck Germany)

A Lovely Gesture is a 12-minute work for acoustic performer(s) with live Kyma processing and a Max patch communicating with the Kyma. The Kyma will have Sounds that process the musicians. We [Anne and collaborator Scott Miller] would like to give the performers and the computer the responsibility to progress through presets in the sounds. Therefore the players will be given pedals to press when they would like to move to a new preset. At least three players will need to vote to move on before the Max patch will consider sending the request to the Kyma. The Kyma and the Max patch will choose the next sound randomly each time. This system of moving to a new musical section randomly guides the players into all sorts of unexpected musical opportunities, especially as they strategize in real time from section to section including all the transitions between sections. The Kyma VCS will be visible on iPads located where the performers can see them. It is essential that the performers see what sections and presets we are in and that their votes are coming in loud and clear.

Basic description of Anne’s performance setup

1x acoustic microphone for flute – Neumann 184

RME ff400 firewire audio device: I use the RME as an onstage mixer. I use the pre amp for the flute and send the signal to a Mackie Blackjack that is the audio device for the Kyma. The Blackjack then returns the Kyma stereo audio to the RME so I can mix it into a stereo signal with audio coming from my computer that is usually generated by Max but sometimes Ableton Live.

I communicate with the MacBook Pro running Max and the Kyma software via a set of pedals sending data via an Arduino. The pedals are used to cue sounds on the Kyma Timeline and to control volume and parameters that I have clumped into one continuous controller. I try to keep the number of pedals to a minimum and use the audio from the flute as the main controller and musical voice.

I use the Kyma to process the flute in live performances. This summer I am working on using it to play sounds as part of compositions. Until now I have used Max to play audio samples in my compositions and used the Kyma to process the instruments. I am making a work now were the Kyma processes and plays samples or synthesized sounds in addition to processing the live performer.

On the Kyma community and KISS

The Kyma users I have met are for the most part exceptionally imaginative and intelligent people who have a penchant for creating music that is very much their own. People who love sound and through tinkering with hardware and software are convinced they will come up with yet another musical moment that feels fresh and exciting. 

[At KISS] I was pleasantly surprised to meet up with people who I knew from years past. The level of invention and funky use of all kinds of hardware was also a high point for me. I …was delighted to see and hear work that gave me ideas for my own work.

I hear from musicians that I run into at gigs, festivals or just hanging around that the Kyma is a fantastic instrument but many of them have never actually gotten their hands on one to try it out. I think that these people who are curious…would be a great group to encourage to come to KISS.

Origins and the future!

My father is a scientist and a choral conductor. My mother is a violinist who has always been faithful at caring for people. Both parents are 85 and still active in their chosen paths. I have inherited a perpetual curiosity and penchant for invention from my father. I have been gifted with a fine musical ear, physical endurance and a preference for time-present focus from my mother.  If I have to live a life that is nearly as long and rewarding as they both are continuing to do, I have years of challenges in front of me!

Links

QUANTUM World Tour

You’ll soon have a chance to experience Gilles Jobin’s QUANTUM for yourself when the Swiss choreographer and his dance company begin a world tour beginning with three performances at BAM in New York October 2-4 2014.

From a review of QUANTUM in Le Monde:

The perspectives opened to Gilles Jobin by particle physics have given a new texture to his dance. Tight but flexible, light but consistent, it propels an unceasing stream redistributed in layers of forms in constant motion. On a stunning score by Carla Scaletti, the circumvolutions are made fresh and compelling.

Dancers: Catarina Barbosa, Ruth Childs, Susana Panadés Díaz, Stanislas Charré, Bruno Cezario, Denis Terrasse
Music: Carla Scaletti
Kinetic light sculpture design: Julius von Bismarck
Costume design: Jean-Paul Lespagnard

Marie Predour, the company’s technical director, will be running the musical cues live from a Kyma Timeline each night.

Check the schedule for the latest information on when and where you can see a live performance.

Kyma transforms Lucy

A few months ago, sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas got a call from sound superviser Guillaume Bouchateau asking him to join the team for Luc Besson’s latest project, Lucy. Gurwal was tasked with creating sound design libraries that the editors could draw upon when creating the special effects. In particular, Gurwal was asked to focus on:
  • Organic cellular movement (when Scarlet Johansson’s body is transforming)
  • Electromagnetic fields (because she can see electromagnetic fields) and
  • Voice effects (on her thoughts)
Gurwal used Kyma cross-synthesis on all the sounds and is enthusiastic about the results: “The movie is great, huge, surprising, probably one of Besson’s best, and the soundtrack is amazing!”