Browse Items (868 total)

• Incipit (from "A.M.A. (Ask Me Anything)")

  Clarinet at the centre of an eclectic EDM fusion album

• inChuck

  inChucK (2010, v3 2011) is an homage and recomposition of the minimalist masterpiece In C by Terry Riley, written specifically for laptop orchestras. As with In C, each performer has a series of musical snippets to play, in sequence with some discretion as to when, octave, loudness, and for how long. Against this backdrop is a constant percussive pulse that fades into the musical fabric created by the mini-sequences.

  While this is clearly an homage to the Riley work, it also is designed to be a metaphor for grid-based distributed computing, where a single computational problem is split between many computers scattered across a network – a “computational grid” in scientific terms. Each player receives messages from a master computer telling them to run a computer process or script. They run the script based on the environment that they are in (both musically and physically) and add additional processes as needed. The master computer continues to send messages throughout the piece, guiding the individual computers through the sequence of steps that defines the total composition. Each musical fragment is in fact a computer process, with a start and an end, and configurable parameters that determine the length the process runs and the pitch register of musical output. This piece is meant to articulate the concept and process of grid computing through the laptop orchestra as a reflection of its conceptual and aesthetic beauty.

• In Wahrheit saß ein buckliger Zwerg darin, der ein Meister im Schachspiel war und die Hand der Puppe an Schnüren lenkte

  Excerpt of a live performance of "In Wahrheit saß ein buckliger Zwerg darin, der ein Meister im Schachspiel war und die Hand der Puppe an Schnüren lenkte" for kalimba and electronics by percussionist Patti Cudd (www.patticudd.com).

  In Wahrheit saß ein buckliger Zwerg darin, der ein Meister im Schachspiel war und die Hand der Puppe an Schnüren lenkte consists of contrapuntal dialogue between a live equal-tempered kalimba and its just-intoned and/or ring-modulated electronic reflections.

• In Deserto

  Material from the Dartmouth Digital Synthesizer.

• In Bocca al Lupo

  IN BOCCA AL LUPO was composed during a year’s fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, and is a companion piece to SOGGIORNO, also for violin and tape. The title means, “Into the Mouth of the Wolf”, and is an Italian saying that is equivalent to our “Break a Leg”, which is said in an encouraging way to actors and performers who are heading onto the stage. Indeed, the beginning of the piece bursts into life, much as an excited performer would take the stage, and the extensive use of tremolo recalls the combination of nerves and bravado that all of us face in performance situations.
  
  The tape sounds consist entirely of violin samples recorded and stored on computer, then manipulated, edited, and mixed using Csound software. The resulting combination of live violinist and taped violin sounds takes on the character of a concerto for performer and him/herself, with a natural timbral unity between parts.
  
  This recording is a live performance in Austin, Texas by Jennifer Bourianoff-Luke in 1995.
  
  
  Composer contact: mobberleyj@umkc.edu
  
  Website (scores, recordings and info): http://jamesmobberleymusic.com
  
• 

  Improvisation

• Implied Movement

  At times minimalist and pattern driven. At times warm and buzzy. Hardware-based electronic music.
  
  Implied Movement is an electronic music piece which I completed work on in February of 2015. It is included on the Six Projects album, which is available on Innova Recordings. The piece was created using a combination of vintage and contemporary analogue modular synthesizers and a vintage Minimoog D. All of the material was recorded into a computer, where the final composition was assembled using my fragment-based compositional process. The piece has as it’s primary organizational underpinning, a series of short repeating ostinatos, which are constantly evolving in one way or another. This is significant, as it is a bit of a departure for me. I tend to avoid loops like the plague. I don’t even like using repeat signs in my traditionally notated scores. I’ve done my share of copying and pasting within MIDI sequenced projects over the years, but even in that environment, I tend to try and play all the way through on each part most of the time. Not only does this encourage improvisational “comping”, but it also has the added benefit of infusing the individually performed parts with a lot of variation in (MIDI) velocity and pressure, which results in constant slight variations in volume and timbre. That’s what I’ve done a lot of in the past in my MIDIsequenced pieces, but the sequencing in this piece is accomplished using hardware-based sequencers. A different world entirely.
  
  Using short repeating patterns that evolve, also lends itself quite naturally to minimalism, the influence of which is clearly evident in the piece. There are also some chance operations which crop up in the form of the application of random voltage. This is particularly evident near the beginning of the piece at about 0:45, when the first quick note are heard.
  
  There is a lead synthesizer melodic part that makes an obvious entrance at about 3:30, which was created using the Minimoog, played through a Big Muff distortion box. The listener might also notice sustain-y, distorted electric guitar-like gestures in this piece, the first of which shows up at about 3:15. These were performed on my Moog Model 12 modular synthesizer using the Big Muff and a device called a Talk Box. The Talk Box is a small metal box with a speaker in it that sends the sound up a flexible plastic tube. The tube is placed in the mouth, which is in front of a microphone. The sound comes through the tube into the mouth, where it is shaped in realtime and picked up by the mic. I didn’t use this device to make the synth “talk”, but rather to shape and filter the sound with my mouth. Both the Big Muff and the Talk Box and traditional electric guitar effect boxes, which is why my Moog playing comes off as being at least evocative of the electric guitar.
  
  The short repeating patterns were a lot of fun to work with, perhaps because I had so assiduously avoided their use in the past. The end result reminds me in places of 1970s vintage Tangerine Dream. Actually, the whole piece has a kind of “old-fashioned” feel about it. But then again, I’m no spring chicken. I really love the warm old buzzy analogue sound of this piece. Even though it makes use of strictly repeating machine like sequences being generated by electronic instruments, it still retains a human, and in my opinion, “musical” feel.

• impaired contact with reality

• iMonkeypants

  An album of five algorithmically generated compositions in the form of an iOS app

• Icarus Wept

  Icarus Wept is a five-movement work commissioned by Keith Benjamin for his trumpet and organ duo Clarion, with organist Melody Turnquist-Steed. This version of the work is for trumpet and tape only, with organ sounds on tape. It was funded by a Composers Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, “a federal agency”; therefore the original concept, involving full frontal nudity, had to be abandoned. The tape sounds are drawn from an impromptu recording session and brain fry in which we came up not only with trumpet sounds of all kinds but also with the formula for a partially androgynacious anodized serial copolymer (patent pending). We also recorded a wide variety of other sounds (e.g. Keith’s trumpet stand, swirling coins, laughter/vocal sounds, and various expletives). The title, Icarus Wept, was loosely inspired by the legendary flight of Icarus toward the sun and the sudden realization of the fatal mistake. Three movement titles reflect themes of Icarus or of the sky. Getting Waxed, Climbing the Blue Staircase (from a Native American Peyote Song), and Eleven Feet from the Sun. However, Somebody Else’s Face and the newly completed first movement, Strap on Your Lobster, have nothing to do with Icarus at all, or with weeping either, pretty much.