In June 2018, I initiated a project to capture audio field recordings at DeLeon Springs State Park in Florida. It is a location with evidence of human activity dating back 6,000 years, but today it primarily draws tourists and Florida residents for swimming and other forms of outdoor leisure. As of July 2019, I have made 24 visits over a 12 month period and recorded over 16 hours of audio.
To celebrate World Listening Day 2019, I have released via SoundCloud 5 tracks captured at DeLeon Springs during my yearlong field recording project. They will sound best over a good pair of headphones.
If you enjoy these free recordings, please consider a donation to one of the following organizations:
My students in DIGA 366 put together the third edition of DIGAHERTZ, a concert to showcase their electronic music projects. This year, I had more students interested in sound design, so the program reflects that. The first half featured original sound designs for examples from music videos, anime, Cartoon Network, and classic animation. The second half featured some live performances on original instruments that used Ableton Live, Roli Blocks, Makey-Makey, and LED sensors.
Every so often, I run into someone that has fond memories of the Hipno plug-ins and asks me if they will ever be resurrected. These folks inspired me to spend the tail end of 2018 looking back in my archive and trying to resurrect one of my favorites from that collection: GoMoDo.
My contributions to the collection were focussed on hybrids between granular techniques and other common types of audio processing. One of problems I had with real-time granular processing on a live source is that the loud bits sound interesting, while the quiet bits are less so.
GoMoDo aimed to solve this through a hybrid of noise gating and granular processing. The plug-in lets you set a threshold and use the audio source’s dynamic variations to control what goes into the sampling buffer, and what gets ignored.
Just before Christmas, I posted a new version of GoMoDo to maxforlive.com as a free download. At the time of this writing, it has already been downloaded over 300 times, which confirms there is still demand for new granular devices among Ableton Live and Max users. It also motivates me to try resurrecting more plug-ins from the Hipno collection in this format, so check back in the months ahead.
GoMoDo: this Max for Live device resurrects one of my favorite plug-ins from the Hipno collection.
Using modular synthesizers, my DIGA 365 students had to design a cohesive set of sound effects for a smartphone interface. This was my second year assigning this sound design task to my students, and I once again enjoyed the results. The somewhat unpredictable nature of these hardware synthesizers requires students to generate lots of potential options then edit, which is an important skill to learn for their future creative lives.
The piece was created using binaural recordings that were captured on Stetson University’s palm court. Listeners can choose a pair of headphones and listen for as long as they like. Visitors frequently start with one set of headphones and close their eyes, trying to imagine the scene playing out for their ears. After a few minutes, they then work their way through the other headphones in turn.
For the second year in a row, students in my advanced electronic music course worked together to produce a concert of original works. Once again, Collective Church graciously hosted us and helped produce the live stream (which is still available as an archive here). Overall, it was another great learning experience and another great night of electronic music. More details online at digahertz.com.
In the Spring 2018, I was able to work out an agreement with Essential Pianos, who generously loaned us a Yamaha Disklavier grand piano for two full weeks. The Disklavier is a fully acoustic piano with added mechanics that allow it to be controlled by computer using MIDI. My students and I held a joint meeting with the Prof. Sean Kennard and his piano students so that we could explore the technology together and get their perspective on its strengths and weaknesses. Before the end of this short-term loan, my students used Ableton Live to collaborate on a generative composition and produced the following video to document their work.
I was invited by members of the Music Composition program at University of Florida to present music as part of their Unbalanced Connection concert. For this event, I composed a new work called for this day for the eight channel sound system in their concert hall. It was great to catch up with colleagues James Paul Sain and Paul Koonce, and a privilege to meet many of their graduate students in Gainesville.
I also had some time to mingle with some of the other composers, including Robert Normandeau who came from the University of Montreal. Normandeau’s trip to Florida was part of an artistic residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (ACA) in New Smyrna Beach. About two weeks after first meeting him in Gainesville, I was able to travel with students from my DIGA 366 course to hear him lecture about his work at the ACA.
Presenting a new piece tonight at @UF for Florida Contemporary Music Festival. Concert @ 7:30pm. pic.twitter.com/0HXUQAzB6O
In the Fall 2017 semester, I introduced my DIGA 365 students to Eurorack hardware synthesizers. As a way to explore these devices, I added a new project that required students to design sounds for a smart phone, including a ringtone, social media alert, and messaging. Most students found it fun to take control of these sounds on the devices they use everyday. Some of the results were more imaginative, with the students even adding office ambience to fill out the video. You can hear results of these projects in the following video:
