a score that sings {?!}

DXarts Digital Sound class, continued!

[in case you missed it, here's my first post about this class I took, summer 2012]

The Breakdown:

Every class was broken down into an hour or so of lecture, usually covering technical topics from how the ear works to how to use Reaper (a free digital audio workstation program); followed by an hour or so of listening. We began with listening to examples from the early days of electronic music, occasionally venturing into classical music, particularly Baroque, and followed a generally meandering, sometimes curious, often jarring, aural path up to the latest and greatest in digital sound art.

A few works I particularly enjoyed:

Charles Dodge's "The Waves (with Joan La Barbara)" 12 min.
this woman has ridiculous vocal control, and this piece is both poem and poetry of voice. with words from The Waves, by Virginia Wolf.

Jonty Harrison's "....et ansi de suite..." 20 min.
an artist takes glass sounds to a whole new level, and then continues to take it all somewhere else entirely. I enjoyed how he grounded us in typical glass sounds, then took us a great distance from them (though we know all the sounds are made from glass objects, he takes us to where they don't sound like it anymore), so that we become aware of how it is we hear, and how we are compelled to identify the what we hear -- and if you're lucky, you can escape this mental prattle and just enjoy the sounds ;)

Luciano Berio's "Sequenza XII for bassoon" 18 min.
this composer gives the bassoon freedom to do things it had never done before - before this guy and this piece, this poor wind instrument was quite neglected and unexplored. btw, this is a continuous breathing piece (!) -- the performer inhales/exhales and plays constantly for the entire 18+ minutes. truly phenomenal.

There are other pieces that blew me away, but I'll leave my list to these three for now. That's a good deal of listening in any case ;)

LAB 1
So. The next assignment, and one much more up my alley, being visual and all:

Make a score for the first 50" of Bernard Parmegiani's, De natura sonorum: Dynamique de la Résonance

Here's mine, click the song title link above while looking at this:

by yours truly, in Photoshop w/ my trusty drawing pad

I had fun doing this one.

But -- I assure you that as this intensive class continued (4 days a week, 3 hours a day in class, 3 hours a day homework plus my algebra homework that was threatening to bury me; plus, you know, *my life*) well, suffice it to say that my scores become increasingly less elegant, as you will soon see, and came to be something much more Frankenstein-ish. (Not to diss the poor creature or anything, I'm sure he's a lovely guy, on the inside.)

cheers,

me