ABSTRACT – Mobile Performance Group is a collaborative, multimedia project involving faculty and students from Stetson University’s Digital Arts program. The group’s primary mission is to find new ways of presenting art outside of traditional venues. Since 2004, MPG has fulfilled this objective by presenting a number of site-specific performances at festivals and conferences throughout the country. For each performance, members of MPG collect sounds and video from a given locale using digital equipment, edit the material into libraries based on common traits and use these libraries as the basis for a structured improvisation using laptop computers and specialized controllers. Requiring students to design their own instruments for our collective improvisation system provides a platform for them to apply advanced musical concepts including sound synthesis, audio processing, algorithmic composition, and gestural control. This demonstration will address technical methods used and discuss how these reinforce learning objectives within our interdisciplinary university program.
Stephen, Jana, me, Amanda and David. Photo courtesy of David Royse.
This performance was presented as a Thursday night preview to my presentation on Friday morning. It allowed the conference attendees to experience MPG in our normal setting so that they had a better idea of what we do. As is our usual method with Collective Sites, we gathered sounds and images from around campus to use as material for our performance. The following 3 tracks were the results:
The performance also featured the premiere of our new interactive shopping cart. This touch-sensitive controller is simple enough to allow audience members to join in the fun. You can see it in action here:
Spring 2009 Faculty Composers Recital @ Elizabeth Hall Auditorium, Stetson University in DeLand, FL. Featuring David Plakon on guitar.
This piece is a first attempt to couple my laptop performance system with another live musician. The electric guitar improvises using short motives that are captured by the laptop. This sonic material is processed and looped to form a variety of textures. Part 1 slowly builds to form a wall of looping figures that evokes a meditative state. Part 2 uses chords as the basis for an animated rhythmic pattern that features subtle changes in timbre. Overall, this piece demonstrates the expressive potential of the laptop in small ensemble settings.
During Fall 2008, I required my Computer Music students to submit a YouTube video documenting their final projects for the first time. The course teaches students to use Max/MSP as a platform for studying fundamental computer music techniques. Having them produce videos was a bit of an experiment, but the final results made it a success. I look forward to doing this in future years.
Accompaniment for Solo Performer – 6 min, 6 sec
Chat Music – 4 min, 47 sec
Scriabin Audiovisualizer – 6 min, 17 sec
Aliens in Baltimore: a piece for electric violin, iPhone and 2 computers – 8 min, 17 sec
Spring 2008 Faculty Composers Recital @ Elizabeth Hall Auditorium, Stetson University in DeLand, FL.
Go-Go-Go. Music is usually the place where I take refuge, find calm, enjoy meditation. Not this time. My hectic pace spills over into the sound and hurries the notes, infuses energy, excites the ear. Must slow down. The harmonic language fights against this thick texture, unflustered by the hurried pace, slowly churning the waters. Can’t stop now. Together they negotiate their way forward, providing a window into the pace of life at the moment, providing a personal form of silicon therapy.
Array: the Journal of the ICMA. 2007-2008 double issue.
EXCERPT – In Altered Realities, Erdem Helvacioglu has found a balance between guitar and real-time processing that results in a cohesive disc with moments of true beauty. The titles of the tracks are visually suggestive and offer vaguely poetic extensions of the disc’s title. Names such as “Sliding on a Glacier” and “Shadow of my Dovetail” betray nothing of the musical mood, the programmatic intent or the creative inspiration. They are almost interchangeable on a disc that has no lyrics or program notes, but maybe this betrays Helvacioglu’s aesthetic intent to create a compact disc that plays like an extended composition as each track flows effortlessly into the next. Because the disc works so well as a unified whole that unfolds its macroform over the course of 53 minutes, it makes little sense to isolate the tracks from each other and talk about them as individual compositions. So instead my review will focus on the connective elements that Helvacioglu uses throughout the disc: his method and materials.
Array: the Journal of the ICMA. 2007-2008 double issue.
EXCERPT – Bob Gluck’s new compact disc Electric Brew features an eclectic mix of influences. The backbone of the disc is formed by four original compositions that were inspired by and use motifs from famous jazz compositions by Miles Davis and his collaborators, namely Joe Zawinul and Dave Holland. In addition, Gluck offers up two additional interludes that he describes as “collages” formed by editing together several live performances of his original compositions. Gluck mixes these jazz references with his eShofar, a twenty-first century take on an instrument typically used in Jewish religious ceremonies, and Stravinsky’s infamous Rite of Spring. Unfortunately, these varied influences often yield muddled results.
ABSTRACT – The National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) maintains a broad set of guidelines for music technology degrees. Even after assembling the required resources to establish such a degree program, applying for NASM approval can seem like a daunting task. This paper will discuss the questions to consider when establishing an undergraduate music technology degree program, distill the NASM proposal formatting requirements into an easy to follow format, and detail the process of preparing for plan approval. The author will illustrate specific points with descriptive accounts from of his recent experience preparing a successful NASM application to establish a Bachelor of Music in Music Technology.
ABSTRACT – Most learning management systems feature online discussion forums, allowing students and instructors to communicate asynchronously outside of class meetings. However, beyond their ability to exchange text messages, most also include the option of attaching small files to user posts. It has also become common for audio software to export projects as MP3 files, a file format that today’s students are very familiar with. These two technologies, discussion boards and MP3 files, can be easily combined to implement a powerful system for tracking student progress on music composition and audio production assignments.
Fall 2007 Faculty Composers Recital @ Elizabeth Hall Auditorium, Stetson University in DeLand, FL.
In the summer of 2007, I traveled to Europe with my family. Late one afternoon while resting in a Swiss hotel, the sounds of an alphorn ensemble in the distance began to echo through the alley into the window. The slow, pleasant droning continued for several hours well into the evening. “desire for” is the continuing echo of these alphorns in my memory.
