What could be more exciting than an action comic strip written by a 5 year old boy and drawn by his 29 year old brother? Nothing! You are commanded to read Axe Cop.
Music For Bionic Ears: Progress Report
Wednesday 19 January 2011
This was going to be a standard progress update on the Music For Bionic Ears concert, tickets for which are selling fast. However, there is now a bad twist ending. I’m talking M. Night Shyamalan bad; I’m talking that episode of Roald Dahl’s Tales Of The Unexpected with the bee-baby bad.
Up until 15 minutes ago, things had been going okay, more or less. I’d been immersed in getting the final rendering, editing and mix of my piece, that state of drudge-work which leaves you convinced there is nothing remotely imaginative or interesting in your music. My main points of reflection during this process were:
- I need the instrument timbres to be clear….
- but not so clear that it sounds like I’m playing keytar for Howard Jones!
- These steady rhythms are really pissing me off now.
- These irregular rhythms sound like slop.
- Now I’m just aping Morton Feldman.
- Better than Howard Jones, I guess.
- I should just use something I’ve already made…
- except that would show blatant contempt for my intended audience.
- As soon as this is over, I swear I’m going to read the instructions for this software.
- Let’s try transposing this passage one octave higher.
- OH SHIIIIIIIIII
I have just discovered a basic error in my initial calculations for implementing the tuning in this piece. This means that everything I’ve done up to now is useless. Somehow, I had managed to listen to the two differently-tuned ranges of notes without ever hearing them both together. Everything will now have to be done over, from the top.
At least I know what it is I have to do, which is always the trickiest bit.
Please Mister Please CX
Saturday 8 January 2011
Robert Ashley, “Giving Love Away” (1991).
(3’52″, 8.8 MB, mp3)
The Riddle of the Pills
Saturday 8 January 2011
Here’s an idea: if you’re making psychoactive drugs, don’t stamp cryptic numbers all over them.
Bionic Ear Study No. 3
Friday 7 January 2011
Music For Bionic Ears is nearing completion for its premiere concert in February. Here’s a sample of one of the elements going into the final work.
Bionic Ear Study No. 3
(1′23″, 1.7 MB, mp3)
Music For Bionic Ears: A question of taste
Wednesday 5 January 2011
As an artsy-fartsy Modern Composer, one of the challenges of the Music For Bionic Ears project is having to come up with something that people might want to listen to. When the publicity for your upcoming gig promises a concert “designed to be enjoyed by both cochlear implant users and audiences with normal hearing,” you’re suddenly struck by a conundrum. How do you know whether or not the cochlear implant wearers are hearing something enjoyable in your music, when most “normal hearing” people don’t like your music anyway?
My music’s already been written up as using “bizarre scales”, and I have, on at least two occasions, been confronted face-to-face with the question What Is This Shit? So for this piece, should I try to write something (shudder) “accessible”, or carry on doggedly clutching my copy of “Who Cares if You Listen?” At least I can console myself that the tunings I’m using, which may sound off to most people, seem to sound pretty normal to implant users.
This is the quandary I’ve been facing since visiting the Bionic Ear Institute in Melbourne last November. While I was in town I got to see the (fantastic) launch concert for the CD Artefacts of Australian experimental music: volume 2. One of the composers on the CD, Sarah Hopkins, played her music on whirly tubes. As well as her own works, she performed Amazing Grace. Yeah, it’s simple and obvious, but whirly tubes play only notes in the harmonic series. In other words, it’s not in conventional tuning but a “bizarre scale” similar to the scale I’m using in this particular piece.
The scale is also very similar to one used by Ben Johnston, a composer with over 50 years’ experience of writing music in alternative tunings. His best known piece? A set of microtonal variations on Amazing Grace. This string quartet marked a changed in his style, from the more abstracted idioms of the post-war avant-garde, to using familiar harmony and melody as a foundation on which to build sophisticated elaborations on the physics of sound.
Although my music is still very different, I’m using these examples as a reminder of how I would like my music to be heard: I don’t want it to be easy, but I want it to be clear.
Please Mister Please CIX
Friday 31 December 2010
Richard Trythall, “Omaggio a Jerry Lee Lewis” (1975).
(6’26″, 14.7 MB, mp3)
Happy New Year!
Friday 31 December 2010
Music For Bionic Ears: Media update and the romance of composition
Tuesday 21 December 2010
The Melbourne Age has published an article today about Music for Bionic Ears:
In February, the audience will get to hear the culmination of his experimental musical dialogue when [Robin] Fox and five other composers perform a selection of works at the Arts Centre created especially for the 1000 or so Victorian Cochlear implant recipients.
It will be a concert like no other; the deaf as well as those with normal hearing will be gathered together listening to the same music. While it is difficult to know how it is going to be interpreted by those wearing the device, Fox said: ”Hopefully, it will be a shared musical experience. Those with normal hearing will be able to discuss it together afterwards with those that are hearing-impaired.”
In the meantime, I’m getting stuck into making the finished piece for the February concert:
As you can see, the creative process is a thrilling mix of heady inspiration and unbridled fun.
Please Mister Please CVIII (repost)
Sunday 19 December 2010
Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, “Sue Egypt” (1980).
(2’58″, 3.38 MB, mp3)
Culinary Cage Match: Australia vs Italy
Sunday 19 December 2010
It’s the ultimate showdown: which proud national cuisine can turn out the most disgusting pizza?
Acoustic beats electronic, every time.
Wednesday 15 December 2010
Underneath all the music I make, there’s a problem nagging away at me. Whatever I do will always be second-rate because of one fatal mistake: I’m working with electronics instead of acoustic instruments.
Have you had this experience? You’re at a gig, someone with a laptop or decks, hi-tech or low-tech gizmos, and you’re into it, thinking to yourself that it all sounds damn good. Then for the next act some old bloke comes on with a penny whistle or ukelele or whatever and blows the room away.
It’s not just that we’re impressed by the visible effort – the ‘work’ – going into the music that is usually less evident in electronic music: the whole experience is tangibly different, more engaging, more exciting. I can’t explain in any satisfactory way why it always has to be like this.
Coincidentally, while procrastinating from writing this I just read a quote from Jeff Harrington:
I find that electronic music has a real problem to it, because, at this point, there is no good way to get across the kind of energy and vitality that the performer brings to acoustic music.
I don’t think that really gets to the heart of this problem, without understanding exactly what is meant when we talk about energy and vitality in music.
And I don’t think it’s all down to the performer either. There’s something in the natures of the two media that will always put acoustic music at an advantage, at least in a live setting. (I suspect I’d rather listen to recordings of boring acoustic music than of boring electronic music, but I’m reluctant to test this theory.)
One time I was playing a gig with live analogue electronics, spontaneously generated, no samples, nothing canned or taped. The air was alive with fresh, new, exciting sounds. As I wound up the piece with a flourish and the last sound ebbed away, a loose cymbal on another act’s percussion rig behind me slid to the floor with a resonant crash, capping off my whole set. The punters laughed and cheered. Acoustic beats electronic, every time.
Music For Bionic Ears: Concert Dates!
Saturday 11 December 2010
The Music For Bionic Ears project now has a confirmed concert date and venue:
Interior Design: Music for the Bionic Ear
George Fairfax Theatre, The Arts Centre, Melbourne
13 February 2011, 5.30pm or 8pm (the concert is repeated)
Tickets: $25 (Concession $15).
There will also be a 7pm lecture for ticket holders.
The premiere of six new musical works written specifically for reception through the cochlear implant:
Robin Fox
Natasha Anderson
Rohan Drape
Eugene Eugetti
Ben Harper
James Rushford
Blurb follows:
Six of Australia’s foremost experimental music composers have been commissioned to research and test new sounds and musical forms both in the lab and with cochlear implant users themselves.
These tests have resulted in unique new approaches to the composition and diffusion of musical ideas and sensations. The concert is designed to be enjoyed by both cochlear implant users and audiences with normal hearing.
There are over 1000 Bionic Ear users in Victoria today. For these people the Bionic Ear brings sound into a previously silent world, and for the most part allows them to converse with friends and family. However, listening to live music can be a difficult, or even annoying experience!
INTERIOR DESIGN: Music for the Bionic Ear aims to start addressing that problem. Prepare to be challenged by what you hear and be careful not to make assumptions about what others might experience!
Please Mister Please CVII
Saturday 11 December 2010
Gene Chandler, “In My Body’s House” (1969).
(2’42″, 3.7 MB, mp3)
Meanwhile, in Narre Warren
Thursday 25 November 2010
I come home to London next week, after having a great three weeks in Melbourne. More updates will follow then, with news about the Music For Bionic Ears project and other cool stuff, but right now I’m having too much fun catching up with friends and watching the Ashes. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this:
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