darren miller

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.

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Curtis Macdonald is a saxophonist, composer, sound designer and producer based in NYC.

mail@curtismacdonald.com
347-464-9149

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