Category: composition documentation

naked empty silence in Hannover

My new piece for cello (Martha Bijlma), electronics, and Jean-Francois Laporte’s self-made compressed-air-driven instrument the Bol was premiered on November 19th 2023 at the Rampe in Hannover, Germany….

making sense of: recording

On July 20th 2023, with the help of Jorge Vallejo, Karin Schistek and I recorded my solo piano piece making sense of at the Folkwang University’s Tonaufnahmestudio. There…

in competence: algorithms

Anyone who knows my work can guess that in competence was substantially made with my slippery chicken algorithmic composition software. A lot of free-form editing and development of score…

in competence: ZKM recording

From the 18th-22nd December 2022 Trio Abstrakt and I rehearsed and recorded in competence in the Kubus of ZKM Karlsruhe. This c. 70-minute through-composed work was commissioned by Trio…

image to sound synthesis

Back in the early 90s I experimented with extremely primitive translations of various data sets into sound. The most basic translation of all is taking a computer file…

spem in alio numquam habui

On February 18th 2022, in the stunning Red Dot Design Museum in Essen, my new piece for 41 consort tenor recorders and tablets was premiered in a concert…

ma bell premiere (and recording with Ambeo mic)

On January 10th 2022 Michael Pattmann premiered ma bell, a reworking of ma bel. For one beautiful bell and four percussion groups consisting of six objects each of…

seven rotations of seven for three premiere

The premiere of my seven rotations of seven for three (triple doubles) for three violas and electronics was premiered at the NOW! Festival on October 30th 2021. The…

Kla4

Kla4 is a piece by Michael Edwards, Thomas Neuhaus, Dirk Reith, and Günter Steinke for four self-playing pianos, e.g. Yamaha Disklaviers, as in the video below. Kla4 was…

hyperboles 6 for Ensemble S201

On June 11th 2021 at the RüBühne, Essen, Ensemble S201 gave the premiere of the sixth installment of my hyperboles series before repeating the concert on August 12th…

WDR Broadcast on Electronic Composition @ ICEM (in German)

On September 21st 2020 I was a guest of Johannes Zink and Frank Hilberg at WDR Cologne. Johannes and I spoke about the Institute for Computer Music and…

Portrait in Deutschlandfunk (in German)

Last October, Georg Waßmuth contacted me out of the blue to arrange an interview session in preparation for a portait broadcast about my career and music as part…

gold im bach

  The title gold im bach arose from a discussion I had with Karin Schistek during a trip in summer 2019 to Camogli, near Genoa, Italy. I had…

ma bel

ma bel, my new piece for Jean-Francois Laporte’s compressed-air instrument, the babel table, was premiered in Canada at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal on October 4th 2019….

orchestration algorithm in
“days with glass edges”

  days with glass edges (chasing the butterflies in my wallpaper), for fifteen-piece ensemble and 4-channel electronics, was premiered at the NOW! Festival by the Folkwang Modern ensemble…

Premiere of Durchhaltevermögen in Münster

In May 2018 I was in Münster with edimpro colleagues Dimitris Papageorgiou and Karin Schistek to give improvisation workshops to students at the Hochschule für Musik. Mieko Kanno…

HOTPO

On July 12th 2018, Portuguese saxophonist Henrique Portovedo premiered HOTPO, my new piece for alto saxophone, ensemble, and electronics. The performance was part of the World Saxophone Congress…

Recording “in limine” with Henrique Portovedo

  Henrique Portovedo and I have just finished recording my piece in limine, for two soprano saxophones and computer, written 2003-2005. We’ve now got to work on the mix and…

hyperboles 3 in Montreal

Quasar Quartet, Le Gesu, Montreal, Canada, 19/1/17:   It was disappointingly warm in Montreal. I’d promised Martin temperatures of -20C and below (it reached -33C on my last trip)…

for rei as a doe: the making of the video: an online interview with the artists

Below is an interview I initiated online with the artists who made the above video to my algorithmic composition for rei as a doe. CI = Chante Inglis (animation)…

premiere of hyperboles 5, Birmingham

  Ellen Fallowfield and I outed the latest version of my hyperboles project last weekend at the Crosscurrents Festival in Birmingham. After two days of intense rehearsals and development it…

using auto-sequence to order chords: part 1

slippery chicken’s automatic chord sequencing algorithm creates an ordering for a set-palette’s sets (or chords) based on user-given dissonance and spectral centroid envelopes. The terms set and chord…

using auto-sequence to order chords: part 2

Back to part 1 auto-sequence examples and analysis The following examples process a set-palette created from a harmonic reduction by Emilios Cambouropoulos of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End…

The use of Reaper and MIRA in jitterbug

jitterbug is a four-movement four-channel work/album for computer, with or without improvising musicians. It is documented more generally but in detail in another blog post. Here I’m going…

jitterbug

(aka four views of a rhythmic-structural procedure based on iterated proportions of 6:3:5:4)     jitterbug is a four-movement four-channel work/album for computer, with or without improvising musicians….

Music for Parallel Consumption

  Update, January 2016: This project has now been released on bandcamp It’s a lovely word but a little overused by self-help and marketing gurus: serendipity. Those familiar…

for rei as a doe: annotated timeline

Artists Colin Lawson and Chante Inglis  are working on a video using Colin’s paintings as visuals alongside my 40-minute piano and computer piece for rei as a doe. This…

The mNAP sound installation

Experiencing this sound installation involves stepping into a custom-built soundproofed box (the mNAP) and listening to the twelve-minute piece I made on stereo headphones. Simple feedback on the…

Lisp Code to generate double harmonics

In response to Russell Snyder’s request for my code to generate double harmonics (natural) on the viola d’amore, I’ve abstracted the following from my piece 24-7: freedom fried….

hyperboles are the worst thing ever
(aka Epimenides would have been gutted)
Amsterdam

Since August 2013 I’ve been working on hyperboles, a series of pieces that allow musicians to tweak the algorithm parameters that are used to generate the work’s score, sound…

their faces on fire, San Marino

Gianpaolo Antongirolami and I premiered my new piece for baritone saxophone and computer their faces on fire in San Marino on June 20th 2014. It’s 100% algorithmically generated, and…

you are coming into us who cannot withstand you, Freiburg

For Ensemble Aventure, Freiburg, Germany. The title of this piece is taken from the poem “Final Notions” by Adrienne Rich (1929-): It will not be simple, it will…

don’t flinch

Essentially, “don’t flinch” for guitar and computer is a three-part mensural canon, but similar to late Mediaeval and Renaissance isorhythmic techniques, melodic material is repeated along with a…

5.0 mastering with the TC System 6000

To get to know the various dynamics, EQ, and reverb effects on the TC System 6000 I tried a mastering session with the 5.0 mix files of my…