Winter Leaves

Winter Leaves is an investigation into the relationships between harmony and timbre.

The basic technique is to build sounds whose spectra have a harmonic value. One of the ways to achieve this is to create sounds whose spectral components have chordal relationships.
In fact, Winter Leaves is based on 3 sounds, each made up of 5 sinusoids whose frequencies have a fixed musical interval between them. All sounds are built on the same root (47.5 Hz, about G). The other 4 components have ratios of 2 (8ve) in the first sound, of 2.24 (major 9th) in the second and 2.8856 (non-tempered interval corresponding to an increasing 11th) in the third.
The 3 basic sounds, therefore, have the following sinusoidal components:

  • Ratio 2 -> 47.5, 95, 190, 380, 760 (overlapped 8ve)
  • Ratio 2.24 -> 47.5, 106.4, 238.3, 533.9, 1195.9 (overlapped 9th)
  • Ratio 2.8856 -> 47.5, 137.1, 395.5, 1141.3, 3293.4 (overlapped 11th+).

Of course spectra like this have both a tonal and a harmonic value. In the first spectrum the sound is a perfect consonance, in the second is a temperated dissonance and in the third with a non-tempered sound.

Continue reading

Wires

wires sonogram

The Wires basic idea is working with large sound masses evolving and changing through the time like a complex flux. Each mass is composed by a great number of single sounds (from 10 to 300, average is 50 to 100) that can seldom be perceived as “notes”.
So the way the mass “sounds” depends on parameters like frequency range, density, durations, attack time and spectra of composing sounds in a sort of granular micro-polyphony.
I composed Wires defining the masses evolution at high level by means of tendency masks, using the first version of my computer assisted composition system, called ALGEN to generate the low level instructions controlling the single sounds that has been synthesized by a simple FM algorithm.
Wires was realized at the “Centro di Sonologia Computazionale” (CSC – University of Padova) using the MUSIC360 software for digital sound synthesis.

V’ger

Click here to listen.
Note: This is a compressed stereo reduction from original quad – MP3 256 bps – Dur 7’30”


This piece was composed for the International Year of Astronomy (2009) and for the “Music and Astronomy” conference organized by the Bonporti Conservatory of Trento and Riva del Garda.

In the first Star Trek movie, V’ger (pron. Vyger) is the name given by the Borg to a fictional Voyager 6 intelligent probe, launched from Earth and recovered by them while wandering in outer space. The real Voyager 1 and 2 probes, was launched in the late 70s and destined to get lost in interstellar space, after passing around the outer planets from which they sent us images, but also sounds.

Continue reading

How to Record Yourselves

Useful tips for home recordings:

How to Record Yourselves from Noise addicts

10 Rules for Students and Teachers by John Cage

10 regole

Books from Guggenheim Museum

image

From this page you can download about 200 art books about the art of the ‘900, in PDF or ePub format.

The texts were made available by the Guggenheim Museum.

Instructions:

  1. click the text you are interested in
  2. a page opens where you can see the cover and the data of the book (below)
  3. on the right of the cover there are two icons: one with 4 arrows (opening) and a lens (search in the book)
  4. click the 4 arrows icon to show the book in full window; here you can browse it
  5. immediately above there is a PDF/ePub button: click it, choose the format and the download starts.
  6. enjoy

Miri Kat

Miri Kat’s debut EP brings ephemeral collages, in turns frenetic and and lyrical, in a unique brand of glitchy grindcore for a post-Internet age. Miri’s hyperactive textures are rooted in original engineering, live-coded from found sounds with open source tools, derived from open ecosystems in both sounds and software. For Establishment, she is producing an original audiovisual edition, pairing her live visual talents with the compositional ones.

The London-based artist self-described as “oriental” in origin has fast become a mainstay of the underground livecoding scene. Her day job is as an engineer of electronic musical instruments, with expertise in music tech, web technologies, hacking, creative coding, algorithmic music, immersive multimedia, and generative visuals.

Show more

Show more

Cloud Sequencer

A new work by Ronald van der Meijs.

Notes from the author:

This project is a first start for a new sound research project into the diversity of clouds, sun and wind in order to create a sort of ‘natural sequencer’ for an outside sound installation. This site specific instrument consists out of seven solar powered bass organ pipe units interacting on the brightness of the sun to control the loudness of the sound. In this way passing clouds form a natural sequencer for this installation. Each organ pipe unit is catching the wind with one of the 5 smal sails, controlled by a system of pulley wheels and counter weights for pitching the sound of each organ pipe by a moving valve.

The weather conditions of the island determine how the sounds and its composition evolves as a constant changing requiem for the West Vlieland village which disappeared into the North Sea in 1736. As for this village the installation is completely handed over to the unpredictability of the weather. This plays a major part in the concept of this sound installation; one has to accept the weather conditions in al its appearances. This means that it needs sun, clouds and wind to produce a variety of sounds. So if there is no sun at all there is no sound to produce. What is left in this situation is the sound of nature itself.

The work has been installed on the Dutch island of Vlieland (53°18’02.3″N – 5°05’12.0”E) from July 22th to aug 30th 2017

Author’s blog

George Crumb: Zeitgeist, tableaux vivants for two amplified pianos

Crumb - Zitgeist

George Crumb, Zeitgeist, Six Tableaux for Two Amplified Pianos (Book I) (1987, rev. 1989)

I. Portent – Molto moderato, il ritmo ben marcato
II. Two Harlequins – Vivace, molto capriccioso
III. Monochord – Lentamente, misterioso
IV. Day of the Comet – Prestissimo
V. The Realm of Morpheus (“. . . the inner eye of dreams”)
Piano I: Lentamente quasi lontano, sognante
Piano II: Adagio sospeso, misterioso
VI. Reverberations – Molto moderato, il ritmo ben marcato

Alexander Ghindin & Boris Berezovsky Amplified pianos

Notes from the author:

Continue reading

Avatar

Avatar is video for a dance performance that conveys the formation of the human body into the avatar on the computer screen while it is inprocess of questionning it . Avatar exposes some occasions such as “loading” and “Disconnected” through its own way, while using the internet .

10 min.
2009

Visuals: Candas Sisman – csismn.com
Sound design: Mert Kizilay – myspace.com/mertkizilay
Choreography: Yigit Daldikler
Concept: Neylan Ogutveren
Performance: Yigit Daldikler