composition
the bonus track for the 2009 compilation
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Every year, the Banff Centre releases a compilation album of all the best recordings from the International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music, fittingly they title it “Centre Pieces”. And yes, that’s centre - the Canadian spelling of “center” :-)
Artistic Director, composer and trumpeter extraordinaire Dave Douglas asked me to create a remix track as an addition to this year’s jazz compilation album. In doing so, I recorded as many sounds as I could from the participants during my time at the workshop. All in all, I sifted through approximately 8 gigs of source material all of which were recorded with nothing more than my pocket-sized field recorder (the Sony PCM-D50 to be exact).
Then the fun began!!
I loaded everything up in a session and played around with all the various individual sound bites. Please note: everything on this track is ‘programmed’ – that is to say these clips were all live, acoustic, and improvised recordings. They were then later re-sliced, effected and synced in an entirely new context quite unique from their original:
Featured on this track is original sound from these musicians:
(in order of appearance)
Adam Miller – Tablas
Michal Vanoucek – ‘Extended’ Piano
Brian Seligman – Acoustic Guitar
Ryan Butler – Electric Guitar
Anu Junnonen – Voice
the joker is released!
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Last year I showed you all an excerpt of a piece I created for recorderist Terri Hron (to see the previous post, click here). Well, I am happy to say that her album “bird on a wire” has just been released throughout Europe, Canada and the U.S., It’s really a great example of several artistic collaborations on many levels. The album’s music is comprised of several composers Terri commissioned for this project, and the audio production is of the highest, warmest quality possible – something that is difficult to achieve when electronics and real-time processing are so widely (or should I say wisely?) utilized. This is a really unique and special album that I am happy to be apart of and encourage you all to seek out.
Terri Hron – Recorder
Dan Porter – Engineering
Yours Truly – Producer/Composer
poetry from the bowery
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Here’s a musical snippet from the last performance at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC. (see this post).
This venue has been home to many colleagues of mine over the years and it was a pleasure to perform its stage!
As many may already know I’ve been busy writing music for several albums and there’s no better way to develop new ideas than to hash it out on live – It was a lot of fun playing with these guys, and I’m eager to keep delving deeper into the sound of this repertoire.
music in the chamber
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Toronto’s Silver Line Trio commissioned me to write a piece for them, it has premiered in Toronto and now Banff, where it became subject to a 5.1 surround sound recording thanks to esteemed producer Steve Bellamy and musical director Barry Schiffman, who made these performances and recordings possible. The piece is called “Table Turned” and is a blend of several musical ideas that were jumping around in my subconscious this past winter. Both the live performance and recording was done in the luscious Rolston Recital Hall.
These musicians really played fantastic, it was really overwhelming to see a project like this come into such ripe fruition. I learned so much. Thank you guys!!!
Edwin Huizinga – Violin
Elspeth Poole – Cello
Rosabel Choi – Piano
music for television
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Here’s a little concoction intended for some sort of television broadcast. Who knows what may or may not come of these little mini demos, but they’re kinda fun to try. It’s neat thinking like a film composer especially when there is no film immediately in front of you. In fact, that’s how they used to do it back in the day.
This one sounds like it has the flavor of something dark and tribal – kinda like a urban-exotic background theme or something else along those lines. Check out this previous post, where I put on the same kind of ‘music for TV’ hat.
*thanks to Dan Porter for mastering this track!
programmed drums & piano II
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Friend and composer Darren Miller recently wrote a series of several short pieces for the digital player piano – in fact, for the very same instrument I wrote something for last fall – (see previous post here). This time, I asked Darren to give me the audio he recorded from the player piano – I felt driven to add drums and other misc percussion to his piece. After many wakeful nights tucked away behind samplers, I constructed this little hybrid.
There are hundreds of samples used in this piece, some of which originated from the drums of Nasheet Waits , Eric MacPherson and Jim Black. (see previous post “Nancarrow Arrangement” and This Mention on Post Classic). I took it further this time, employing drummer Max Goldman in the studio one afternoon – I recorded him performing all sorts of techniques across 2 drum kits, plus additional percussion improvisations. He is the drummer featured the most in this little experiment.
Look at this sort of thing like this: take a bundle of magazines, cut out letters from various attractive headlines and then piecing it all together to create a collage-like message. Today, composers are able to utilize attractive “found-sound” audio bits in very much the same way as drawing notes to a page. It’s the same process, different interface! One helps the other.
i love collaborations…
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Remember the previous post involving the recorder? Well, I promised you more, and here I am hyping it once again. Terri Hron (recorder), Dan Porter (mixing/mastering engineer) and myself (remix composition / production) have been passing files back and forth all over north america to keep the flame alive when it comes to our little trio deluxe. I have for you now, two new recorder remix pieces that are quite contrasting from each another. One, is a startling recorder-distorto-drum-maniac-fantasia (drums samples performed by long-time friend and collaborator Alex Wyatt), and the other is a harmonic-retrospective-ballad.
sound design and compositional branding
I am honored to have been asked by Audiobrain, a studio I have been working with for the past few years to give a lecture on ‘the compositional aspects of sonic branding,’ but never did I imagine such a discussion would take place in my hometown! ACAD, (the Alberta College of Art and Design) is Calgary’s premier arts institution and it is my absolute pleasure to shed light on the basics of sound design with their students and faculty. I will be speaking alongside Audiobrain’s Executive Producer Audrey Arbeeny, where she will emphasize the importance of having outstanding music and sound for well-rounded, well-branded organizations. Click Here for the write-up on the event from ACAD’s website.
music and sound from the archives…
Hey Team!
So I was going through some old stuff from past websites and hard drives and came accross this snippet I did in 2007. It was supposed to be an interactive video game with a story line similar to the hollywood movie “Hero” but sadly it was never released (I think they ran out of cash…) I worked on the trailer for it, the music and sound that is, and decided to share it once again with you all. The picture was still a working animatic draft at the time, but you get idea…
steps in the snow
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Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “Steps in the Snow” a improvised duo recording featuring London based pianist Katya Sourikova. This album was recorded in 2006, and was a very spur-of-the-moment session where we simply set up a bunch of mics, hit record and played spontaneously for an hour. Wholla! We called it an album. This is also the first inaugural release on the new “Weave Records” Label, also based in London. Last year I recorded again with Katya but this time in a quartet setting. Stay tuned for that release, also on Weave Records. You can buy this album on CD Baby by clicking Here. Or iTunes by clicking Here.
Here is what Katya has to say about the album:
Steps was recorded live, in a single take. There are no edits. Should we simply say the pieces are free improvisations? Some people have found it impressive, and somewhat surprising, that free improvisation could sound so accessible and harmonious. We have not set out to break any common assumptions or prove any points. To those less familiar with improvised musical forms, we think that the album is a gentle reminder that it’s not all fast, furious and sonically challenging.
Steps is a spontaneous collision of two musical minds and personalities. Nothing was pre-planned or discussed beforehand. There are moments of true musical telepathy that both slightly spooked and delighted us at the time. As is the nature of these sorts of musical encounters, the magic is in the moment. The process of unravelling each sonic thread takes you through unexpected twists and turns. It’s a real delight to find that your musical partner, if not following you every step of the way, is there to meet you at the next corner. We lost ourselves in the momentous magic of it all. Happily, the result was captured here in this recording.
a piece for player piano
It’s inspiring to ponder how situations, environments and new communities of people have on one’s creative output. I arrived in Banff with all sorts of goals and expectations, but I quickly put most of them off on the sidelines once I realized how many new things I could really take advantage of – things that normally I don’t have access to, like amazing classical musicians and digital pianos! Once of these mini-projects I took on was to write a piece for a digital ‘player’ piano, a Yamaha Disklavier built in 1988 – the thing even has a 3.5″ floppy disk drive built into it!
With this new undertaking, I quickly did a ton of research. I remember as a kid seeing some white baby grand piano in a hotel lobby playing ‘The Entertainer” or something similar, never dreaming that I would be programming a piece for it one day. I studied the works of Conlon Nancarrow (see previous post) and Steve Reich in particular in order to gain some perspective, and then I began to hash out some ideas.
Now that I got the hang of it, I plan to write another something for this instrument…
And as always, let me know your thoughts!
a taste of nancarrow
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About six months ago guitarist and composer Travis Reuter introduced me to the work of player-piano composer Conlon Nancarrow. Immediately I was intrigued with the rhythmic complexity of his works and began to research his methods. Just recently I came up with a little sample-based arrangement of one of his etudés for player piano. I love the way that this piece feels so dark, and yet is so grooving with a feel of improvisation-like freedom!
**Update: Check out Kyle Gann’s Blog “Post Classic” for a special mention of this post!
a string trio
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Once in a while I get the urge to do something completely different in music for the sake of learning something new. This is a short chamber piece I wrote in 2006 for two violins and cello. At the time, I was inspired by the wind ensemble composer Mark Camphouse’s work “Watchman, Tell Us Of The Night” which is a stunning composition inspired by child abuse. I decided to use his moods as a starting point for my composition, and wholla! My first piece entirely for strings in two short movements.
A thousand thank yous:
Jeremy Harman – Cello
Jesse Irons – Violin
Shaw Pong Liu – Violin
