Thursday 20 November 2014

Please take this quick survey, and a mute project

Hey everyone,

As readers know I am working on an article, part of it involves some kind of ground work research mainly to help with the focus of the article, I am on the second phase of the survey, If anyone can take this quick survey it would greatly help. Just follow the link.

Link to Survey

As well, I have started building my mute that will be used for live electronics, the first phase is really a proof of concept I will throw some photos out now and follow up a bit later. The idea here is to get a high quality audio signal for processing since the silent brass and ebrass mute sound far to 1940 phonograph for use live.


Cork and base removed. Tuning sleeve removed and trimmed for maximum internal space for condenser microphone.
 Cork drying on.
Hole cut for microphone. Again compared to the silent brass/ebrass microphone I will be using the same set up I would use for regular amplification. The goal is a high quality signal.

 Hole covered and access maintained, three different bonds in place to keep rubber wall in place. Thank to bike commuting in Chicago so I have lots of old tubes that are no longer road worthy.
You get the idea.

Monday 17 November 2014

Another collaboration!

I am excited to post that I will be working with composer Jordan Kusel on a work for amplified horn, live electronics, and reactive video. Should be a blast, coming to Chicago near you in 2015!

Sunday 9 November 2014

New exercise: One for the ears

One thing that I like to do is scale work with drones and a metronome. This past year I started working on scales that fall outside regular scales. For this post let us call Major, minor, chromatic, pentatonic, and whole tone our regular scales. They are mine, so for the next few moments that is how it shall be.

Now I started working more regularly on other scales to keep working out my ears and working new patterns into my practice routine, So I want to share them with everyone, I have found they are great for the ears, a nice change of pace, and is a great mental workout. Do things from many different starting pitches, transpose them around, and put them in different octaves. The goal for me was to get these into my bones so they are as comfortable to me as my regular scales. In addition to really working on my ears

So here is a rundown of the drill:

The scales are based around a few things, Symmetry, pitch sets, variations of pentatonic patterns from other musical styles, and finally my favorite, the enigmatic scale. Enigmatic scales are the powerhouse of building up the ears as you lose your perfect intervals and sense of tonic are not near by.

While doing this try them with drones, without drones, with a tuner, and without. An example of a way I use the tuner when working on these would be establishing my first pitch, then without using the tuner slowly playing the scale making sure to pay close attention to the integrity of the intervals. Then, when reaching the octave, establish the pitch then check into my tuner to see how the octave fared.

So here is a link.

Click me for scale fun!