A demo of Chapter 7 from my forthcoming album 'The Trial'
I've still so much to do with this one but it's getting there.

The Trial Chapter 7 Demo

Fantasia over "Lilja" is based on a very old Icelandic folk song, so old it's almost gregorian. There is a saying in Iceland that everybody wanted to have written "Lilja" (actually meaning the words rather than the music, but who cares). This is my share to the fulfillment of that saying, an enjoyable share, especially in the considering that I have never before been involved in anything "folk" or "national".

The work consists of several linked computer generated variations, where the computer has been fed the original song and plays it back in original order, reverse order, or simply back and forth, in its entirety or in looping bits and pieces, a technique mostly used by "techno" dance musicians. Every single note heard is therefore taken from the original song, and then the material is further developed in register, speed, dynamics, articulation and spatialisation.

Technically this is a variation of granular synthesis where many "grains" played fast form a variably dense sound mass. Usually the individual grain frequency is random within some limits, but in this case the grains consist of variably long bits of the "Lilja" song, always giving the results some character of the original song and its strange "pseudo-dorian but not dorian at all" mode.

All the grains come from a single FM bell sound that goes through many transformations of dynamics and articulation, some of which result in "surprise" side effects that are used constructively or destructively as (sp)icing on the aural "cake".

Fantasia over "Lilja" was composed in the summer of 1998 at the Kopavogur Computer Music Center, Iceland. Final processing and four-track mixdown was done at DIEM, Aarhus, Denmark in October 1998.

Fantasia over "Lilja"

Vincent Eoppolo  LA NOTTE for electronic and electric viola

Episode XLIV takes a look at versions of the traditional songs that made their way onto Lankum's fourth album False Lankum, as well as a cello version of A Stór Mo Chroí, a song by Genoese Anarchist Fabrizio De André and a recent anti-racist ballad from New Zealand!

Tracklist

Finn – A Stór Mo Chroí
Fabrizio De André – Un Blasfemo (Dietro Ogni Blasfemo C'è Un Giardino Incantato)
Jean Ritchie – Go Dig My Grave
Died For Love – Jasper Smith
Gordon Bok – Clear Away in the Morning
Cormac Begley – Master Crowley's / The Roscommon
Francie and Mickey Byrne – Master Crowley's (Miss Patterson's)
The Deadlians – Newcastle
Luke Cheevers – The Waterford Sea Captain
Frank Feeney – Lord O’Bore
Beanie Entwistle and Joe Yorke – Monday Morning
Sammy from New Zealand – The Battle of Wellington

https://campsite.bio/firedrawnear

Fire Draw Near Episode XLIV

Mouth music - music without instruments.
Track 1 consists of two tunes written in the Kerry Polka style by Paul Ó Colmáin and lilted by him. There is an accompanying animated video that goes with this track; https://youtu.be/LJUMGV6yZcg
Track 2 is a version of the traditional song, arranged by Paul Ó Colmáin. He reads a poem consisting of over fifty different Irish names for seaweed.

02 Dúlamán (cóir.traid. Ó Colmáin)

01 Port Béil (Ó Colmáin)

Dying

What does it mean to die? Marie Brett talks about her new filmic artwork - Last Breath. The artist collaborated with palliative care specialists and researched Irish folklore traditions to create this special piece. It reflects the liminal space between being alive and dead using soundscapes echoing the ancient Irish practice of keening and utilising evocative visuals. She explains what she learnt through making the piece. (A still from 'Last Breath' pictured above)

A Screening & Artist Discussion with Marie Brett - Last Breath takes place on Thursday 1 November 2018 / 6.30 – 8.00pm, Lecture Room, Irish Museum of Modern Art. 

More information here: http://www.imma.ie/en/page_237387.htm
MarieBrett.ie

Aftering - Marie Brett - Last Breath

While we cannot see small nanoscopic objects like proteins or other molecules that make up virtually all living matter including our cells, tissues, as well as pathogens such as viruses, our computational algorithm allows us to make its material manifestation audible.  This piece is a musical representation of the amino acid sequence and structure of the spike protein of the pathogen of COVID-19, 2019-nCoV (protein data bank identifier 6VSB [1]). 

MUSICAL DECEIT

A virus’ genome hijacks the host cell’s protein manufacturing machinery, and forces it to replicate the viral genome and produce viral proteins to make new viruses from it.  This musical art teaches us something about the fine line between beauty of life and death as an opposite pole.  As you listen to the protein you will find that the intricate design results in incredibly interesting and actually pleasing, relaxing sounds. This doesn’t really convey the deadly impacts this particularly protein is having on the world. This aspect of the music shows the deceiving nature of the virus, how it hijacks our body to replicate, and hurt us along the way. So, the music is a metaphor for this nature of the virus to deceive the host and exploit it for its own multiplication. 

HOW IT IS DONE: 

What you hear is a multi-layered algorithmic composition featuring both the vibrational spectrum of the entire protein (expressed in sound and rhythmic elements), the sequence and folding of amino acids that compose the virus spike structure, as well as interwoven melodies - forming counterpoint music - reflecting the complex hierarchical intersecting geometry of the protein [2].

Scientific references:

[1] Wrapp et al., "Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the prefusion conformation," Science, 2020, DOI: 10.1126/science.abb2507

[2] Buehler et al., "A Self-Consistent Sonification Method to Translate Amino Acid Sequences into Musical Compositions and Application in Protein Design Using Artificial Intelligence," ACS Nano, 2019, DOI: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b02180

Viral counterpoint of the coronavirus spike protein (2019-nCoV)

Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV)

Are you nervous about starting a new project? Don’t worry; so is everyone else, including your sound design hero, Randy Thom… Talking through the edit, scene by scene gives the director, the composer and the rest of the editorial team the chance to sort out out technical issues and determine the direction and shape the soundtrack is going to take… Randy joins us to talk about about what kind of attitude, questions and objectives he brings to the spotting sessions for new movie projects.

See our site

131 - Randy Thom On Getting The Most Out Of Spotting Sessions

Plundered Lumber is a 52 minute album comprising 13 tracks using mostly bass guitar and metal percussion. It's a return of sorts to a form of composing last used about 20 years ago, where an emphasis on rhythmic interactions and melodic interplay was the main driver. I've used little or no processing (apart from some delay and reverb) and no field recordings. Some delays were added after, some used during recording, as a phantom rhythmic element to play against.

The percussion comes from my store of found metals gathered sporadically over the last 35 years (much less in recent years with more restricted access due to municipal recycling – a weird irony !). I've always loved the idea of creating things from discarded materials, building from scratch, and exploring the unique sound colours and textures of industrial materials, a lot of which are richly resonant. 

Untrained, I play bass entirely by ear. I'm under no illusions that I possess any particular skills necessarily, but simply work from the point of view of what sounds good to me and improvise in the moment. I would never describe myself as a 'bass player', and my timing might be a bit fluid at times, but at least I can keep the bass in tune with a handy phone app. At the same time, I wouldn't go as far as Brian Eno and describe myself as a 'non-musician'. I've always loved bass though, and think it's a beautiful instrument; earthy, sensuous and sinuous, infusing the music with a pulsing blood warmth. I'm reminded of what Shellac's bassist Bob Weston said when asked at a Dublin gig in 2017 what he liked most about the bass - “It sounds awesome.” Over the years, certain bassists have really made an impression: Holger Czukay, Tony Levin, Jah Wobble, Barry Adamson, Mike Watt.

I wanted to keep things fairly simple with these compositions, structurally and melodically, leave space and maintain a sense of clarity; create clean, uncluttered arrangements. Sometimes I did build things up, but generally ended up stripping them back. I also wanted to keep them short. I had made initial forays into this in 2012/13, but only got as far as a handful of multi-tracked bass riffs that I wasn't sure what to do with, so they got shelved until I decided where they could fit.

These were used as the starting point for some of the pieces, most were built anew. One of the earlier pieces, Astral Indices, which also had percussion and was more complete, is left untouched as I felt it needed no further elaboration. The other untouched piece from that time, Uncurl An Edge, is my approach to creating a very simple composition but in long form with subtle changes over its duration, a regularity which is gently altered and disrupted, much in the manner of Morton Feldman - an industrial version, using mostly sliced beer barrels and bass. The higher pitched sound that occasionally flits back and forth is a plucked egg slicer.

The album title existed in a notebook I keep for potential track and album titles but, though I never make obviously illustrative titles, this one was unusually suitable in that I was partly raiding my archive to create new work, making good use of things left lying around; dusted down and pressed into service and galvanised with additional material.

In terms of revisiting older methodologies, I decided to spray paint original artwork onto the CDs themselves rather than print onto them. I've used some of the metals employed in the compositions – which creates a nice bit of conceptual continuity – sawblades whose serrated edges make graphically strong images. No repetition occurs across the edition, all are unique.

Dying

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