First created for a gallery opening in Canberra's "Lonsdale St Traders", the app-instrument for MetaLonsdale blends field recordings from the area's cafés and shops with the textures of tuned percussion. While the four players improvise their parts, network connections between the iPads challenge their instincts by changing the sounds and effects under their fingers while matching their harmonic structure.
credits
from Ensemble Metatone, released 18 March 2014 
Charles Martin - iPad and instrument design 
Christina Hopgood - iPad 
Jonathan Griffiths - iPad 
Yvonne Lam - iPad

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MetaLonsdale

Electric Counterpoint composed by Steve Reich (1987).
Recorded at ANU Big Band Room - 2007.06.18
Backing tracks recorded at the Australian National University, April-June 2007.
Program Notes from the performance:

Reich has written three ‘Counterpoint’ pieces, each of which are written for one instrument accompanied by pre-recorded tape of the same or very similar instruments. Reich creates structures of repetitions of patterns; one phrase enters and establishes itself, then another enters, but offset by 2 beats, and another, this time offset by 3 and a half beats from the original. In this way, Reich explores the relationships of the notes within the one pattern, not only rhythmically but also harmonically by adding patterns in the same rhythm but transposed in pitch.

This piece was originally written for guitar (with electric bass) and first recorded by Pat Metheny in 1987 with consultation from Reich, most performances use Metheny’s tape part or are by an ensemble. My version required no transcription since the guitar and bass parts fit within the concert marimba’s range. I recorded the tape part in sections over a period of about 5 weeks and was assisted in post-production and the live sound by Niven Stines.

The impression I want to convey with this piece is of an all encompassing beautiful sound, contrasted with incessant, confusing rhythm that assaults conventional musical sensibilities. The use of marimba is perfect in this context. The deep bass affects not just the ears but the whole body and the high register brings out the clean precise melodies.

This juxtaposition conveys the theme of the piece – counterpoint – but it is also expressed in other ways. The grandest is the relationship between the three sections, labelled fast, slow, and fast, one of the smallest is the ambiguity of the time signature towards the end of the work.



Electric Counterpoint (Steve Reich)

New work for upcoming concerts - Study in Bowls for 3+ iPads + Random Forest Classifier.

A server tracks the performers’ gestures and ensemble interactions sending messages back to the iPads to react to new sections and explorations

Metatone - Study in Bowls


February 2009 + March 2014

In 2009, the old Belconnen Bus Interchange was decommissioned and demolished, (much to the chagrin of concrete lovers everywhere… ). In the interchange’s final days, a mini-festival was in the weird space to celebrate the end of an era for everyday life in Belconnen.

This work is constructed in the SuperCollider music programming language from field recordings I took at the interchange at different times of day and night. The weekday bus timetable forms a score for the work with snippets of recordings triggered for each bus departing the interchange. In surround, the sounds come from the approximate position of the interchange’s platforms and move in the direction of the bus.

The pieces runs on a scale of two minutes to one second, meaning that the entire day’s buses, from the first service at 5:43am to the last after midnight is compressed into a 10 minute piece.

While I originally intended that the piece could be drawn out to a full day, this version gives a listenable snapshot of the phases of life in Belconnen with busy commuters in the morning to school kids at 4 o’clock and the weird radio channels they played late at night to keep teenagers from loitering.

Music For Bus In2Changes

The DIY Synth Group performance at Collected Resonances in Canberra, 2015-07-24.

Charles Martin, Jack Livingston, Marcel Berthon - synthesisers
Chloë Hobbs - mixing desk

20150724 - Collected Resonances - DIY Synth Group

Gesture Study No. 2 for iPad Ensemble. Performed by the ANU iPad Ensemble - 2015-11-20.

Gesture Study No. 2

A new version of "Footprints in Snow" recorded at Kroumata Theatre with AÅ and EA -  tune written in December 2011.

Footprints in snow

Demo for the day! Nola! Thanks Felix Arndt!

Christina: Xylophone
Charles: Vibraphone

20120117 - Nola

Log Cabin Blues (G.H. Green)
Christina - Xylophone
Charles - Vibraphone

C+C - Log Cabin Blues 20120207

From "Sounds from the Treetops", recorded with Ensemble Evolution - June 2012.

This piece was inspired by the "Mirror Cube" treehouse at Treehotel in Northern Sweden as part of a collaboration between Ensemble Evolution and that boutique hotel.

I knew about the mirror cube even before we went to the Treehotel because it was advertised at Lulea airport, so every time we flew back and forth from different places I would see this amazing building. With this piece, I wanted to keep the instrumentation to only metallic mallet instruments, I had recorded a few demos of layered vibraphones playing rolled chords in the upper register so I decided to use two vibes and one glockenspiel to play an ostinato part and keep the pulse through the whole piece.

It really reminds me how much work Maria, Jake and I did on improvising together when I hear this piece. The score had three sections with a few bars of motivating material for each player but as soon as we started rehearsing we found that we would take the music in new directions and visiting the melodies every now and then to get our bearings. After performing this piece a few times we really knew what we wanted to do and when we recorded it, it seemed like we had nailed it first try! I made everybody do another take just in case, but the first one is what we used. We wanted to add a bit more variety to the sound so Maria overdubbed tubular bells over the whole take and you can really hear them in the end result!

My favourite bit of this piece is the low F's from the vibraphones at about 9:20. That's the lowest pitch in the recording and it really signals the closing section of the piece and wakes you up as a listener. Press play and drift off for 12 minutes! 

Mirror Cube

A promotional snippet from Last Man to Die's 2009 work "Vital LMTD". Featuring the voice of Hanna Cormick, percussion of Charles Martin and words of Mary Shelley.

Vital LMTD Teaser

Soundtrack for a promotional video for Last Man to Die's 2010 work "THE LAST MAN TO DIE".

Charles Martin - percussion and computer sounds
Hanna Cormick - voice
Benjamin Forster

LMTD2010 Promo Soundtrack

Snippet of the soundtrack for LMTD Transcendence - an installation created at PACT Centre for Emerging Artists in April 2010 by Charles Martin, Benjamin Forster and Hanna Cormick.

This installation became part of the work "THE LAST MAN TO DIE", performed in Canberra, Perth and Brisbane throughout 2010 and 2011.

LMTD Transcendence @ PACT

Percussionist, computer musician and interactive media designer from Canberra, Australia.

Charles Martin

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