At the rate I am going, I should rename my drones to "Drone of the Year" - anyway, I made it by running sounds I had beaten out of an old wok (which I found while searching for musical sounds in the streets of Cork) through my new home made granular synthesis tools. The download is much higher sound quality than the stream. Enjoy!

Drone Of The Week 46 ... Granulated Wok

My main composition and production project for the next few months is a substantial "Rhapsody" inspired by repeatedly reading Nova Express by William Burroughs. This is the first one of several related pieces of music towards it which I am giving away online, like I do with most of my music. For the final piece, I'll try to come up with something better.

There is also going to be a Net Label "EP" release of perhaps six related miniatures.

I am composing and producing this entirely using my "home made" granular synthesis tools (with the help of MaxMSP). Doing granular synthesis means extracting tiny bits of sound from a recording or a stream, up to thousands every second, even, and re-arranging them while modifying them in a number of ways, creating grain clouds. This seems to reflect the "cut-up" method (used for writing the book) nicely.

The source material for the grain clouds are my Cork City Gamelan samples: sounds made with ordinary everyday "things" which can be found around most cities. I also used a recording of Phil Spector reading from Nova Express - for THIS piece only, it won't feature in the finished work.

enjoy!

Subliminal Entrainment (inspired by repeated readings of Nova Express)

A sketch towards a kind of musical sorting out of my thoughts, feelings and ideas set in motion by reading and re-reading Nova Express by William Burroughs since the 1980s. It is my main music composition project for 2014, the Centenary Year of William Burroughs.

It took me almost four years from conception to getting started: In order to reflect the cut-up method which Burroughs used to create the text, it is entirely a granular synthesis project. Doing granular synthesis means extracting small "grains" of sound from recordings or from a live feed, re-combining them to create "grain clouds", and shaping those clouds to make music.

I found the available software programs too restrictive for what I had in mind. In order to move forward, I needed to learn Max/MSP, a function graph data flow programming language, to create my own granular synthesis tools. I made this sketch entirely from sounds scraped and beaten out of objects I found in the streets of Cork City. The actual piece I have planned should also include sounds made from recordings of some text from Nova Express. Getting permission to use that text seems to be the most difficult aspect of the project …

Escalate, Walk Away ... And Say Nothing (Granular Synthesis, based on Nova Express)

Update: the complete piece of music is now finished:
https://soundcloud.com/corkcitygamelan/pay-back-your-stolen-colours-1

My second sampler for a more substantial composition based on notions and ideas which came to me while reading Nova Express off and on for some decades.

I am making the piece entirely from sounds built by re-arranging and manipulating small fragments ("grains") of voice recordings of some of the text of the book. This is called Granular Synthesis.

I am extending the technique of Granular Synthesis by using the smallest grains as complex wave shapes in wave tables. I call them "Grainwaves", and I can use them to make beats, drones and musical motifs. In isolation, these very short grains can only be perceived as clicks.

the text:
Copyright © 1964 by William S. Burroughws
Copyright renewed © 1992 by William S. Burroughws
used by permission

my first sampler for this project is here:
https://soundcloud.com/corkcitygamelan/give-us-a-little-more-time-nova-express-project-teaser-trailer

enjoy!

Don't Tell Them What We Are Doing (2nd Nova Express project "trailer")

Three improvised live recordings, layered on top of each other...

The Duke of Whimsy is my familiar spirit, similar to Fripp's King Crimson, I guess. He shows up unexpectedly, does his thing, goes away ... and he might be back tomorrow ... or next week ... or next year...

He wanted to find out what my Nova Express toolkit might do do to my Cork City Gamelan samples. So I gave him just one single sample: the sound of a superball bouncing in a wok - a piece of street litter which I educated to become a musical instrument. This is what he came up with.

Enjoy!

The Duke Of Whimsy Explores The Space Between Rhythm And Not Rhythm

Three sound grains of a recording of Denis O'Sullivan ( https://soundcloud.com/denmus ) reading from Nova Express, each between 5 and 8 milliseconds long, used as oscillators in my wavetable synth - a part of my home made granular synthesis toolkit.
The Nerd Info: It has three oscillators and three highly controllable filters. Human voice grains used as oscillators are very rich in unusual overtones. This is a single take recording with no post processing ...  and the only thing I am actually "playing" are the filters.
I have made this one available for download as an uncompressed file - the Soundcloud MP3 has lost some of the dynamics ...

Drone Of The Week #30 2014: my Grainwave Synthesizer is ready for going live

Season's Greetings, everybody - enjoy this oldie - I am not doing this kind of work any more.

It is all "fake", a DAW mock-up, originally recorded for the Crux Dance Theatre in 1907 with a "Flute", swapped for "Saxophone" in 2011, probably for reasons of nostalgia: I actually used to play the Soprano Sax for real before I became a "person with a disability".

Happy New Year to All!

O'Carolan's Farewell To Music (traditional, arrangement for Soprano Saxophone, March 2007)

A broadcaster, introducing a sample recording of one of my Gamelbots (software robots which compose algorithmic music), spoke of the development of technology as compared to the development of music. Together with my own notion - that real flesh and blood musicians improvising along with the robot can sound as if it listens and responds to the musicians in an intelligent manner - this gave me idea ...

The inventor and general genius Ray Kurzweil has calculated that by 2029 neuroscience should have achieved its ultimate goal: the complete decoding and mapping of all the functions of the human brain. At the same time, machine intelligence will have surpassed human intelligence, making it possible to model how the brain works. He predicts that machine intelligence and human intelligence should become indistinguishable from each other and converge. Parts of machines and humans should become freely interchangeable. Unless we are prepared to partially (and eventually probably entirely) become machines, the machines we have created are going to render us obsolete.

This piece of music is mainly intended for live performance. The score is a Max MSP patch which includes the robot and a way for me to play along with it. Since I have no control over what the robot is doing, no two performances will ever be the same.

2029

Another piece of music for life performance - it would be cool to do it with a real kitchen sink - or perhaps with water dripping into one of my Waterphones. The sound of water dripping was all it took to create this soundscape.

A while ago, Fluxus was mentioned on my favourite radio show (Nova - http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/nova/). Rendering some of the Fluxes scores (curated by Danny MacCarthy) in the 1980s at the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork City (Ireland) was one of the activities which started me off on my present musical journey. This mention of Fluxus inspired me to compose and perform a fluxus-like event score.

>>>>>
Capture and play the sound of water dripping. The drops may be evenly spaced or not.

Make it so that the sound of each drop falling selects an electronic effect according to a selection algorithm of your choice. Any or all of the effects may be null effects, making no changes to the sound.

Route the sound of each drop to its selected effect.

Capture each of the resulting sounds into a continuously repeating loop of arbitrary length, sound on sound, while continuously playing back the contents of the loop

Add further effects or not as desired. 

When the output reaches the desired density, fade or cut off the sounds as desired.

Repeat as many times as desired.
<<<<<

I used four different delay effects and an envelope follower in order to side-chain a bass sound into the mix. To perform this music back in the 70s or 80s would have required at least five (ideally nine) tape machines and four synthesiser modules. I used a small computer and Max/MSP software for this single take recording.

Please feel free to perform or to record your own version and to credit me as the composer.

This is a tribute to the few survivors from those days with whom I am still in touch, and who are still making music: https://soundcloud.com/chewedupsounds , https://soundcloud.com/mixile , and Danny himself. It is inspired by the drip music of George Brecht, and it somehow seems resonate with Ligeti's piece for Metronomes.

A Kitchen Sink Event (composed from only the sound of water dripping ...)

Natalia Kamia ( https://soundcloud.com/kamikuma ) posted this:

https://soundcloud.com/kamikuma/improvisation-ic-b-071

and left it open for collaborations

I simply got my Waterford City Gamelbot (a Max/MSP algorithmic music patch)to jam along with it - that's all. It uses percussion motifs played by Alison "Little" Forbes on traffic signs, gates, and street furniture in Waterford, Ireland, and two monophonic wavetable synthesizers loaded with wave shapes extracted from the percussion sounds.

enjoy
G.

Gamelbot Music (Kamikuma and Waterford City Gamelbot)

Last night the experimental music duo with no name, which is Alison "Little" Forbes and I, augmented by the incomparable Denis O'Sullivan (https://soundcloud.com/denmus), played a short improvised music set at the Zolala Klub (https://www.facebook.com/ZolalaKlub/), Siopa Gan Ainm (https://www.facebook.com/siopaganainm/), Cornmarket Street, Cork, Ireland. Here is the whole set, raw and unedited (excuse the overdriven Waterphone near the beginning): Denis and Little on Waterphones, yours truly on a home made Sample Player and Sound Processor, loaded entirely with sounds which Little and I recorded in my kitchen sink. Enjoy!

Apologies to my followers on Soundcloud: my account had been vandalised by a hacker, and I was keeping a low profile for a while.

A Kitchen Sink Event Live Feb 8th 2017

Music and Video in three very different movements - all movements made from the same set of found percussionsounds in Cork City, Ireland. I processed the sounds beyond recognition to compose the first and the final movements. The intro and the	 coda are field recordings which I made in the City. I created the animation using a Modular Graphics Synthesizer (Artmatic Designer).
I started this project a little over three years ago and had to abandon it when I became ill. I finished it and made the video during a single weekend.
You can view the video her: https://youtu.be/VyLZ5mz0AIA

Three Different Ways Of Looking At The Same Thing (see description for the video)

This is a Tribute to Louis and Bebe Barron. Bebe passed away on April 20th, 2008. Her anniversary is my Birthday... but I was abroad, away from my studio, and laid up before then, hence the delay.

I tried to build a software version of Todd Barton's (https://soundcloud.com/user7621213) popular Krell Patches for the Buchla synthesiser - lovers of Science Fiction will spot the connection. I was  searching for original timbres which don't sound too bad when I compare them to Todd's mastery of his Buchla. I ended up with quite an original new instrument in my toolkit. It can probably be called an AM Synth: simple cascades of multiplied sine waves - no filters or other modifiers involved. Todd will hopefully tell me whether this qualifies as a Krell patch.

The Nerd info: This is the first couple of minutes of a self-generating (automatically composed)  8 minutes long piece, one take, no edits, no added effects.  A "Chaos Metronome" drives The Thing: Two controllable pulse generators, one modulating the other in an intricate manner, and each of them additonally controlled by its own very low frequency oscillator with an arbitrary complex wave shape, create the "beat". This goes into a sample and hold which can sample any signal (filtered noise for this piece) to create the control signals for the audio. Most of the routing for each control signal is determined by an algorithm built around two random generators. Nine sine waves interacting with each other make all the sounds you hear... anyway, enjoy!

Foreboding Planet (tribute to Bebe and Louis Barron)

For Bass, Alto Flute, Waterphone, and Tamtam - a bit different from what I usually do - a lot more "common practice". I composed this for "Pupa", a show by Emma Fisher. I constructed it from pre-recorded phrases and samples - I would find it impossible to repeat Waterphone phrases with such precision.
For "political" reasons, there are two different versions of this music - another one with whale song added, called Whale Dance. I needed it as a birthday present for somebody before the premiere of the show, that's why  ...
A slide presentation with stills from the show and this music as a sound track is here:
https://youtu.be/T11ft9T8Iqk
The Whale Dance version is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYyFeRYvxSk

The Cat, The Fox and Pinocchio (from "Pupa" - see descrption ...)

A sparse double-tracked Waterpohone improvisation.
This was supposed to be ready by July 4th, but rendering the video graphics took forever.
The video is here:
https://youtu.be/J4fBRQ3PCdg
About one in 10 million people on this planet owns Waterphones, and July 4th means something special for us.

enjoy

A Journey To Hy Brasil (belated July 4th track - see description for more detail)

How to do it:
1) Make a really slow animation in a procedural modelling program - I used Mandelbulb 3D, which combines fractals with ordinary 3D space transformations
2) Set up a  drone of the same length in a music synthesis application - I used Max/MSP
3) Use the changing parameters of the animation to control some of the parameters of the drone, so that it evolves over time in perfect synchronisation with the animation.
It really IS that simple... but ... would anybody notice?
Hardly, I guess ... enjoy, anyway!
here is thevideo
https://youtu.be/75BuAGZtd7w

Dance Music For Really Slow Creatures (see description for video)

I made the sounds originally by hitting and scraping a huge stainless steel barred gate, then processing them beyond recognition using Max/MSP.

VIdeo at https://youtu.be/-iiqff2KC0g

I Know What I Saw

Collaborative piece of work with Natalia Kamia (field recordings)

Music created entirely from recordings of a door creaking and banging:  https://soundcloud.com/user-992438679/sets/doerren

Video on Youtube
https://youtu.be/JcQHb-MQ-ZM
(3D Fractal animation)

enjoy

On The Far Side Of The Door (collab with Kamikuma, Video on Youtube)

A musical tribute to Bebe and Louis Barron.

Please note that this is a technology test or proof of concept - the real thing will follow later this year.

I made the music on a home made software synth, built using Nax/MSP. It uses a "Krell Patch" for sequencing - an original idea by the American composer Todd Barton - https://soundcloud.com/user7621213.
I used Mandelbulb3D to create the animation.

Video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/hVjVLootfBg

I shall probably delete this track and the video whenever I finish the final piece of work.

enjoy
G.

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