January 5th, 2010
FMEA 2010 Clinic-Conference @ Tampa, FL
On Thursday this week, I will be giving a lecture at the Florida Music Educators Association Annual Clinic-Conference. This is the largest gathering of K12 music teachers in the state.
My talk will cover:
- the media’s role in how the laptop came to be considered an instrument
- myths and stereotypes about laptop music
- famous names associated with this emerging instrument
- thoughts about what the future may hold
- discussion about what K12 music education’s role could be
If you are going to FMEA, mark your planners or circle me in the program:
Thurs, Jan 7 • 2:45 PM-3:45 PM
Marriott Waterside Room: Meeting Room 4
I hope to see some of my old friends that work in music education around the state. Spread the word and invite your friends. Yes, I know it’s across the street from the main site (as the tech sessions always are!) but I hope to make it worth the walk.
Some laptops in action during an MPG performance.
Tags: fmea, laptop as instrument, tampa •
Posted in presentations •
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December 8th, 2009
Beauty, Horror and Silence @ Harold Golen Gallery in Miami, FL
Recording of this weekend’s performance is now available. Thanks again to Juraj Kojs for the invite to perform in Miami. I enjoyed hanging out with him, Paula Matthusen, Scott Miller, Michael McCurdy and the others before during and after the show on Sunday.
The graffiti sign greets visitors
Combined setup before the show on Sunday
Tags: 12 nights, Harold Golen, Miami •
Posted in performances •
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December 5th, 2009
Beauty, Horror and Silence @ Harold Golen Gallery in Miami, FL
This weekend, I will be performing as part of this three day event that ends the 2009 12 Nights concert series. It coincides with Art Basel Miami, one of the biggest art festivals in North America. The series of concerts was curated by Juraj Kojs, who selected my piece desire for to open up the silence-themed Sunday concert.
A very fitting theme for this quiet piece inspired by distant alphorns my family and I heard one afternoon wafting through the window of our Swiss hotel. It was only after everyone had settled down from the dayʼs activities and committed themselves to silence that the music could be heard and enjoyed. It persisted for such a long time (literally hours) that it was a challenge of remain quiet. Thus the alphorns became a kind of replacement for complete silence the way that a room tone typically functions, but there was something far more pleasing and peaceful about them. Lulls in the conversation would last longer as we would extend our pauses to accommodate the distant, dreamy song. I found myself wishing that all silences could be filled with such beautiful and haunting drones.
Tags: 12 nights, Harold Golen, Miami •
Posted in performances •
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November 16th, 2009
FEASt Festival 2009 @ Florida International University.
If you were not able to attend the FEASt Festival at FIU, you can now download an enhanced podcast recording of my lecture. The topic of the presentation was network-enabled coordination of laptop performance and featured the public debut of the MPG Carepackage.
The patches involved can be downloaded as well. There are currently no help patches, so feel free to comment on this post if you have questions about this work. The demo should work once you have placed the supporting files in the Cycling 74 folder of your Max installation.
Tags: Feast, Miami, MPG, MPG carepackage •
Posted in maxmsp, presentations •
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November 10th, 2009
FEASt Festival 2009 @ Florida International University.
This weekend, I will be giving a lecture as part of the FEASt Festival on my work as music director of MPG. I will be introducing for the first time to a group outside of Stetson my MPG carepackage. This collection of abstractions makes it easy for our members to share relevant musical data over the network and focus on the business building instruments that produce interesting timbres.
Special thanks to Paula Matthusen and Nayla Mehdi for the invite. I am looking forward to it!
MusicLinks screenshot
Tags: Feast, Miami, MPG, MPG carepackage •
Posted in presentations •
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September 15th, 2009
Guest & Faculty Recital @ Lee Chapel, Stetson University in DeLand, FL.
With support from the Artist and Lecturers Committee, I invited Panaiotis to visit our campus for several lectures in my courses and an evening concert. This engagement ended up being a reunion with a former collaborator in Nandu Muley and a former student in myself. Each of us brought a different style of improvisatory music to the evening and the resulting combination was a unique and exciting blend of electronic, Indian and experimental music.
Tags: A&L, labyrinth, nandu, panaiotis •
Posted in performances •
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July 17th, 2009
I have been working the past few weeks to make my site easier to update. Some people may have noticed certain corners of the site getting dusty. It was really rather embarassing. My solution was to structure it around a blogging.
Enter WordPress. This site is now using WordPress under the hood, but I have made a number of tweaks to the theme to make it look how I want. It really is a great, powerful tool and made things very easy.
This tutorial was also invaluable to unlocking the secrets of WordPress. I highly recommend it to anyone wish to set up a custom theme. I did have some HTML, CSS and PHP chops going into it, but I’m not sure I would have gotten things off the ground without that tutorial.
Admittedly I am a little late to the party. Blogging has been all the rage for several years now. Confession time: I tried blogging at blogspot once and didn’t keep up with it. (I may move those posts here now.)
So what is different this time? Well, this time it’s really not about blogging in the traditional sense. I will post more typical blog things from time to time (like this post). It is really about an effective way to easily add content and keep it organized. WordPress is giving me that.
If you are looking for old content, please be patient. My plan is to backfill the blog with the old content and date it as close as possible to when it was originally posted. That shouldn’t take too long. If you are looking for something in the meantime, you can email me.
Always nice to unveil a site redesign. It doesn’t come with it’s own smell (like a car), but nice none the less.
Tags: blogging, website, wordpress •
Posted in general •
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May 20th, 2009
Now that Cycling’74 is focussing attention on Max for Live, they have made the decision to discontinue all of their other Pluggo-based products including Hipno.
You can read the announcement from David Zicarelli here. Tim Place posted some brief comments on his blog as well. Hipno had a really good run for almost 4 years. We don’t know what the future holds for these plug-ins, but I’ll be sure to post info here when it happens.
Tags: hipno •
Posted in code •
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April 3rd, 2009
Stetson University School of Music Gala @ The News-Journal Center in Daytona Beach, FL.
MPG was invited to perform on the diverse program of this showcase concert for the School of Music. Our performance in the lobby during intermission featured our trademark shopping cart performance rig and utilized the four story atrium to reach audience members on all levels of the venue. Selections came from our recent performance at UCF.
Tags: Daytona, Gala, MPG •
Posted in performances •
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