Begun in 1995 this work changedand morhed to Dread; even the totle mprphed.

Many thanks to DrB

Dread

BostonSky1

An experiment with additive synthesis and a quarter of 666Hz.

Originally written as part of a challenge in the Csound community in 2007 to use a single simple instrument compensating with over 6200 notes in 283 seconds.

Csound input is in http://codemist.co.uk/jpff/ANotherQuarter.csd

A Nother Quarter

My first attempt to use Tim Halbert's directed algorithmic system STEVE.   Somehow still seems rather like my directly written pieces.   Still not sure how to control the ending.

STEVE was written for Windows but in what is also my first attempt to write python I have adapted it to Linux. 

Steve's Riff

This is a small experiment in "what hapens if..."  I wanted to explore some styles on minimalism and it sort of developed. It is a remix of a well-known hymn melody which I happened to have on my disk in digital form.   I have only heard it on small laptop speakers so am not sure if it sounds right, but thought  would seek comments.

Written  via a C program to drive a simple orchestra in Csound, April 2014. Clues are in the title

Ny100

I wrote this piece for a girl at school, Fabienne Thain, in about 1964, and in 1997 revised it.  I cannot play the piano really so this is synthesised in Csound

The orginal piece was written after I gave a short talk at scool on my hobby of composing, and Faye asked me for a piece. It is based on her name (F-A-B-....)

For Fabienne

Another attempt to deal with the number of the beast.  This is a remix of my "Half a Beast" from 1996 with additional material, but still 60 seconds long.


A Beastly Etude

(A stereo mixdown of a 2D ambisonic piece)

After being part of the rear guard at Gallipoli, my maternal
grandfather was at Beaumont Hamel in 1916; I have never discovered
what he was doing there but as a coal miner he may have had a part in
the Hawthorne Mine.

Unlike so many others he survived the Somme, and made it to
cease-fire, picking up a DCM on the way.  It clearly stayed with him
until his death in 1978, but he was forbidden to talk about it by
grandma.

This piece grew from hearing a string quartet by Laszlo Vidovszky, but
developed to something different.  It is discordant, may be disturbing
and has been described as the wailing of the dead trying to get to
paradise.  Or it is just this piece.

Remembering Corporal William Taylor DCM, Yorks & Lancs, 1887-1978,
and                     Private Albert Arthur Heath, Coldstream Guards, 1896-1915.

11 Nov 2016

In Memoriam: Beaumont Hamel 1916

In the 1914-18 Great War my wife's uncle Alf was too young to get
called up into the army, but he served as a civilian, as the assistant
butcher on the hospital ship Llandovery Castle.

On 27 June 1918 the Llandovery Castle was torpedoed by a German U-boat about 114 miles south west of Fastnet, Ireland, with the loss of 234 people, medical staff, sailors, inmates.  This number includes Alfred James Heath, aged 17

This piece is a companion piece to "In Memoriam: Beaumont Hamel 1916" which remembers Private Albert Arthur Heath, Coldstream Guards, 1896-1915.

Least we forget.

April 2018

114 miles south west of Fastnet (In Memoriam 1918)

This short piano prelude is an algorithmic composition, the third in the Drums and Different Cannons series, mapping chaotic equations into pitch and time. The first two were tape works, but this is the first designed for a live performer. In this case the equation is the Torus equation x" = K sin(x). To me the interest lies in the similar but non-identical repeating patterns, and sudden changes that form cannons.

MIDI version and Score are in http://cs.bath.ac.uk/jpff/DDC3.html

For Connie (Drums & Different Canons #3)

Algebraic forms have interested me since I was first introduced to them aged 9.  Recent fascination has been on the Henon equation and the complex patterns it makes.  The piece Universal Algebra uses samples from the HKUIST gamelan to highlight the patterns, with the
Bohlen-Pierce scale providing a harmonic framework.  To this is added a few components of Jhaptaal (10 beats), and in deference to my tabla teacher, Tapan Roy, it ends with a Tihai.


The fixing of cultures, Chinese, Indian and Western is why I call it Universal, although properly this is the study of algebraic structures themselves, not examples.

Note this is a 4-track surround sound piece.


Universal Algebra (Drums & Different Canons #6)

The world is oppressed by the domination of mechanical devices, which control so much of what we do, limit our actions and dictate what we may think.  This short tape piece, created in the dying days of the twentieth centuary using a short sample recorded in Berlin, and with
Csound to arrange and repeat the sounds, suggests that we can fight back -- we can dance.

Written in 2001 and performed in Havana that year as part of the "Door" Project.

Tanz Mechanisch

John ffitch was definitely born after WWII, in that part of the United Kingdom which is God's own county, certainly educated at an East Anglian university in the sixties, and despite his long hair and lengthening beard, and the uncertain spelling of his name, was never a hippie.  His entire professional career has been as an academic mathematician/computer scientist, and for most of that time he has held the Chair of Software Engineering at Bath, a subject about which he knows little.  His main interests have been in Relativity, Planetary Astronomy, Computer Algebra and LISP, but he has been known to dabble widely, for example in tank warfare, Latin poetry, Arabic linguistics, compilers, and company management, all with some lack of success.  Strangely enough he won the Adams Prize for Mathematics more than 25 years ago.  Hobbies include maintaining Csound, receiving e-mail and complaining about the web. 

Recently retired from my Chair and hoping for more time for music.

jpff

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