field recording
the viper matrix vol.1
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Friends often become collaborators and whenever I team up with someone, I like to push the boundaries. This case, I wanted to see what could be done with a particular harmonic and rhythmic matrix. The sky is the limit! After much tweaking, a few hits and bowed pianos, I came up with this little gem.
The coolest part about this piece is that it is very intuitive to perform. This track is easily performed live, and is constructed so that no matter how hard you try it will sound different every time. This opens up many ways to improvise and interact with additional instrumentalists… As a bonus, all of the samples are acoustic. The goal was to make a live, interactive patch that sounds as if it were a musicological field recording.
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 sound of midnight minnewanka
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During my time at the Banff Centre a bunch of fellow artists-in-residence took a midnight trip to Lake Minnewanka, a glacier-fed mountainous valley in order to get a closer look at the stars. Luckily I had my sound recorder with me and was fortunate enough to capture the innocent sound of water rolling agaist the base of the mountains. It was one of those spectacular moments in nature that instilled a great sense of peace in all of us. Eventhough it was rather cold outside, the more I listened the warmer I felt.
