February 2012
3 posts
3 tags
Morphogenesis: Excerpt from “Improvisation...
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Algorithmic Music for the Masses: WolframTones →
A brainchild of British mathematician Stephen Wolfram, WolframTones is an online application that creates musical scores from the patterns generated by one-dimensional cellular automata. A few parameters determine the rules followed by the automata, and thus control in a very general way the structure of the resulting music, which can be further customized by adjusting certain musical settings,...
January 2012
4 posts
4 tags
Area: “Mela di Odessa”
From the...
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The App Store Instrumentarium
I recently bought an iPad for the primary purpose of exploring the device’s potential as an experimental musical instrument. After about a week of research, I’ve discovered some very promising and creative software that suggests that the iPad can indeed function as a very powerful means of sound control and exploration. However, I was surprised how difficult it was, amidst the glut of...
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Louis Andriessen: Excerpt from De Staat (1976)
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Ernst Krenek: Excerpt from Spiritus intelligentiae...
December 2011
4 posts
5 tags
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Herbert Eimert and Robert Beyer: Excerpt...
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November 2011
5 posts
5 tags
Joseph Paradiso's Massive Modular Synthesizer →
Joseph Paradiso is professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab, where he is co-director of the “Things That Think” workgroup. Paradiso is trained as a physicist and electrical engineer, but in his spare time he has built one of the world’s largest modular synthesizer configurations, a creation known simply as “Massive Modular Synth.”
In the age of...
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Richard Lerman: Travelon Gamelon, promenade...
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"Continuum, Expanded" →
A fascinating essay by Roc Jiménez de Cisneros (of the computer music project EVOL) on scientific conceptions of spacetime vis-a-vis 20th century music, with an extended discussion of Ligeti’s classic 1968 harpsichord composition Continuum.
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Raymond Scott: “Nursery Rhyme”
From...
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Paul Hindemith: "Trio"
Undated drawing by Paul Hindemith (from the book Der Komponist als Zeichner)
October 2011
8 posts
3 tags
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Music, technology, utopia: The legacy of Pietro...
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Mike Weis - Ritual Mix →
Ecstatic, hour-long mix of ritual music made by human beings the world over, lovingly curated by percussionist Mike Weis. Includes South Korean shamanistic rituals, Sufi music to accompany the kinetic meditation of the “whirling dervishes,” the polyphonic yelli singing of the Baka forest people of central Africa, trance music of Brazilian Candomblé worshippers, Afro-American Baptist...
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"Switched-On Garden": Public art goes green
The new “trans-digital conservatory” Data Garden celebrated its launch yesterday with an ambitious public art extravaganza at Bartram’s Garden, the stately botanical garden founded in 1728 on the banks of the Schuykill river in southwest Philadelphia. Entitled “Switched-On Garden,” the event was a lovely mix of technology and nature, old and new, experimental art and...
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Percy Grainger: “Experiments to Provide...
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19th-century chant notation from Tibet
“The MS belongs to the ‘Yang’ tradition, the most highly involved and regarded chant tradition in Tibetan music, and the only one to rely on a system of notation (Yang-Yig). The chant consists of smoothly effected rises and falls in intonation, which are represented by complex curved lines. The notation also frequently contains detailed instructions concerning in what spirit...
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Felix Kubin: “Psyko Billy”
From the...
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September 2011
8 posts
4 tags
Mireille Chamass-Kyrou: Étude I (1960)
From the...
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Austrian composer and visionary Josef Matthias Hauer
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The naïve listener
“There is a sense in which the naïve listener retains an advantage over his learned peers. He, like the child who only up to a certain age may learn easily and naturally a number of languages, may, by listening, learn of the wider possibilities of musical languages. To listen is to let music speak on its own ground.
“But the problem is that none of us are any longer naïve listeners....
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Charanjit Singh: “Raga Madhuvanti”
...
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Thomas D’Urfey: “Young Collin Cleaving...
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Steve Porcaro of Toto tweaks the band’s massive Polyfusion syntheszier “Damius” (1982). From Mark Vail’s Vintage Synthesizers, p. 155.
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Roger Winfield: “Windsong 2”
From the...
August 2011
10 posts
2 tags
Information Society: “Growing up with...
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Pérotin: Excerpt from “Viderunt omnes”...
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"Forget academic rigor": An ethic for culture...
Geoff Manaugh, author of the brilliant architectural/design site BLDGBLOG, shares the following thoughts on blogging in the introduction to The BLDGBLOG Book, released in 2009. His attitude is in essence mine:
“I’ve often joked that BLDGBLOG is organized around one thing only: the pleasure principle. It’s not theoretically rigorous or disciplinarily loyal or beholden to one...
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Xenharmonic triad, part 3
Alois Hába: Suite for...
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Xenharmonic triad, part 2
Ivan...
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Pascal Comelade: “The Hallucinogenic...
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Alireza Mashayekhi: Chahargah I (1979)
From the...
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“Musician’s Costume,” from Nicholas de Larmessin, Les Costumes grotesques et les métiers (late 17th century).
July 2011
9 posts
8 tags
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Michael Maier: “Fuga V: Appone...
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Boris Blacher: Skalen 2:3:4 (1964)
From the...
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Boris Blacher: “Angst”
From the...
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Yasunao Tone: Excerpt from “Solar Eclipse in...
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UbuWeb: Electronic Music Resources →
Long the go-to resource for devotees of experimental art, UbuWeb recently added this new section devoted to the documentary history of electronic music. The collection will focus on the older history of the genre, with an emphasis on technology as opposed to aesthetic debates. As curators Michael Johnson and Matthew Wellins admirably state,
Most previous treatments of electronic music have...
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Henri Chopin: Excerpt from...