COMPEL Omeka Dev

Browse Items (868 total)

  • Source material from Buchla synthesizer and the voice of Axel Bodin. Composed in the Fylkingen Electronic Music Studio.

  • Held at the University of Richmond in Virginia, Third Practice is an annual festival devoted to adventurous acoustic and electronic music. See www.thirdpractice.org for details. Live and unedited with no post-performance processing or overdubs: I improvised a short set in AudioMulch layering, mixing, and processing acoustic and electromagnetic field recordings.

  • Live in the Moment; Live in the Breath, was written for Sam Wells, and premiered at the 2015 SPLICE festival in Kalamazoo, MI. When I was asked to write this piece (my first for solo wind instrument), I immediately was drawn to the power that the breath has for this type of performer. Their breath empowers them to do amazing things with the instrument, just as our breath empowers all of us to do amazing things with our lives if we learn how to harness it. This piece focuses on the con- nection between our breath and the greater natural world around us, and begs the listener to always live life to the fulllest and make the most out of the time they have here on this earth.

    Thank you to Sam Wells for your collaboration on, and performance of this piece!

  • Lizamander was written for Elizabeth McNutt. It is the second in a series of works for solo instruments and Max/MSP, the first of which was called Gerrymander, written for the clarinetist, F. Gerard Errante. The focus of both of these works is on interactivity and live audio processing. The computer captures material played by the solo instrument during the performance and uses that material (as well as some pre-recorded sounds) to generate a syncopated rhythmic accompaniment, while adding various effects to the sound of the flute. Since the computer is constantly “listening” to the flute, the tempo is somewhat flexible, which allows the performer considerable interpretive freedom.  Lizamander relies heavily on pitch tracking throughout the piece, not only for score following, but also for sample triggering, contrapuntal harmonization, and other “intelligent” effects. It relies even more heavily (as does Gerrymander) on having an extraordinary performer!

  • Kyma processing of human voices and lobby sounds

    Lobby Reforms is a live computer processing audio environment that brings the pre-concert sounds of people passing through the lobby into the concert hall (as well as back into the lobby) in an informal collage of social activity. Microphones are placed at key locations in the lobby to gather the sounds of people arriving for this concert, buying tickets, discussing the printed concert program, chatting about the day, and just milling about before the concert itself begins. The audio sources are processed in real-time and then directed back through the sound system to create a sonic environment that leads organically into the concert itself as the lobby sounds eventually diminish as a result of the audience leaving that space for the concert hall.

  • Written for SPLICE Ensemble
    Local Equilibrium Dynamics is a work for two musicians, working both within and around a single piano. These sounds are processed in real-time both algorithmically by the computer, and by a small chamber ensemble of electronic musicians. The duo performs a number of interactions throughout the piece, including collaboration, disruption, and dispersion of the sound each produces. The live processing complicates this relationship even further as the sound is transmitted to the audience. As these two musicians perform within such an intimate space, they variably help and hinder each other as the work progresses. This creates increased moments of tension in both the musical output and the performance dynamic between these two musicians. The title refers to a principle in thermodynamics, whereby the thermal state of a system can be determined if the variations within it happen slowly enough in space and time. This concept serves as a metaphor for the system formed by the interplay between the two performers and the live processing.

    Score and Pd patch available at www.vidiksis.com.

  • “Democracy is lovely, but baseball is more mature.” – Richard Greenberg

    In my never ending search for formal models which paradoxically display properties of randomness and asymmetry yet completeness and structure, I turned to baseball. The skeleton of this piece (although it wouldn’t be apparent unless I told you) is derived from a scorecard I kept of a Cubs/Cardinals game. The title references what one commentator refers to as “a move which has worked once in the last twenty years” – the Look to Third, throw to first. In homage to the many paradoxes that lie latent within the game of baseball (for example, it’s a pastoral game with urban roots) there is a second possible, more literal, reading of the title. This is music which is inspired by the features of sculpture, the art form which dwells in the third dimension and utilizes space, volume and perspective. Baseball is often described as poetry in motion, and any true fan of the game can speak to this point for hours as they describe the beauty and intricacies of watching an infield in motion as a ball is perfectly bunted down the line or the excitement of judging whether a throw from the outfield will beat out a runner at the plate. These motions through space become the narrative, the story of each game. Every baseball game has 9 innings, 27 outs per team, yet each game, each story is different and unique. It is these aspects of the game that this piece tries to capture, for each movement, with the aid of electronics, presents essentially the same structural narrative but in a unique way, from a unique physical perspective. Imaging how the same musical materials would react and resonate as they move through different physical spaces guided the creation of this piece, and is the way in which the piece “looks to third” for inspiration – I’m still working on the throw to first.

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If you see an error or would like to add content to COMPEL, please leave a comment or contact Hollis Wittman at hollisw@vt.edu.