what if James Tenney's Chromatic Canon but it's the Amen Break

Okay okay fine. I took the structure of Tenney's canon and applied it to the Amen Break. Instead of 12 chromatic pitches, it uses 12 beats from the break. It starts out with 2 against 3, then 3 against 4, etc., until all 12 beats are used. Then the process goes in reverse, with beats being subtracted from the beginning of the pattern.

I used bar 3 and the first half of bar 4 from the break because they're the most interesting imo. I also omitted the first and last bars of Tenney's structure so it's not quite an exact canon. If this bothers you, you can loop the track for an eternal perfect canon.

Break Canon

every time I leave the house
I feel like I'm forgetting something
even when I know I'm not
I feel like I'm forgetting something
there's not much I can do about it
I don't want to think about
every single thing
I forgot to bring
but there's not much I can do about it

Every Time I Leave the House

Somniloquy for flute and electronics (2014)
Kelly Sulick, flute

Somniloquy gets its title from a fancy word for sleeptalking. The flute's subdued unconscious mumblings eventually give way to more loquacious and labyrinthine figures. This sleeper goes through many stages, exploring both complex, breathy sounds and pure, unfiltered tones. In the electronics, a chorus of unstable sounds bubbles up to the surface, beyond the control of the sleeper.

Somniloquy was commissioned by Kelly Sulick and premiered at the Mid-Atlantic Flute Fair on February 24th, 2014.

Somniloquy for flute and electronics (2014)

Premiered Sunday, March 29, 2015 by gnarwhallaby
Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church of Pasadena

gnarwhallaby is:
Matt Barbier, trombone
Derek Stein, cello
Richard Valitutto, piano
Brian Walsh, clarinet

Sad Trombone (featuring gnarwhallaby)

More cellular automata. Now with pitch content!

Destroying Angel

Isolated vocal track from Van Halen's "Runnin' with the Devil" converted to MIDI and back to audio. Originally done in 2009.

Runnin' with the Devil (vocal) - mp3 to MIDI

with apologies to John Williams and Vince Guaraldi

It's a New Hope, Charlie Brown

lookin around at all of you
you hardworkin iowa families
you farm families
teachers and teamsters
cops and cooks
trump and his uh uh his trumpeters
right-wingin bitter-clingin
proud clingers of our guns our god our
we are mad
and we've been had
they need to get used to it
so no we're not gonna chill
we're gonna drill baby drill down
and hold these folks accountable
yes the status quo has got to go
it can't be salvaged
it must be savaged

Sarah Palin Is Terrifying

Friction Quartet
Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church of Pasadena
Saturday, March 12, 2016, 8pm

Kevin Rogers, violin
Otis Harriel, violin
Taija Warbelow, viola
Doug Machiz, cello

Presented by People Inside Electronics

Hagiography

Drone of the Day #1: Klavier

Drone of the Day #2: Clipper

Drone of the Day #3: Rumbler

Drone of the Day #4: Pyramid

Drone of the Day #5: Ringer

rtfkt

Written for TempWerks
Dedicated to Arthur Jarvinen
Premiered Saturday, September 22, 2012 at Beyond Baroque, Los Angeles, CA

Notes:

In preparation for performing this piece, each player collects field recordings of ambient noise from seven different rooms. Each room must have a hum or noise profile that is at least vaguely pitched, and distinct from the other rooms. During recording, each room must be empty and intermittent types of noise (people talking, foot traffic, animal sounds, etc.) should be avoided if possible. Each recording must be at least seven minutes.

In performance, each player must be equipped with some method of sample playback (laptop, mixer, etc.) that allows the player to fade recordings in and out, to immediately start and stop their sound at two different volume levels (full and half), and to crossfade between two different recordings.

During the course of the piece, the combined room ambiences eventually become melodic and harmonic ingredients. Toward the end, the performers must be quite virtuosic with their electronic setups.

Song from 28 Rooms

A Feeling

text by Jillian Burcar

Alexandra Loutsion, soprano
USC Thornton Contemporary Music Ensemble
Donald Crockett, conductor

With Such Teeth

Aron Kallay and Vicki Ray, pianos
Scott Worthington, bass
Isaac Schankler, electronics

Because Patterns/Deep State (excerpt)

DOWNLOAD THE FREE APP: https://show.co/21pQFyq

on bandcamp:
https://isaacschankler.bandcamp.com/track/the-moonlight-sonata-but-the-bass-is-a-bar-late-and-the-melody-is-a-bar-early

sheet music:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/22sq0p19lundped/moonlate12102018.pdf?dl=0

Download

The Moonlight Sonata but the bass is a bar late and the melody is a bar early

Jolene but it keeps going up

Using machine learning (MelGAN-VC) to add aphextwinesque drums to Bach (E major fugue from WTC I). Feels like cheating.

bafx

Isolation Canon was written a million years ago in March 2020, for Cal Poly Pomona's New Music Ensemble. Originally, it was designed to be played using software (Reaper/Ninjam) that creates a fixed latency between geographically distant performers, allowing them to “jam” together in real time. Usually this is used with regular, repeating chord progressions, but it occurred to me that this could also be used for canons and other imitative forms. Isolation Canon is one such piece, in which multiple performers all play the same part, which then unfolds into 3-part harmony.

The vocal part also has an optional text by my partner, Amanda K. Davidson. A line from her writing had been stuck in my head for many months: “For a long time it was just me.” During the pandemic this line took on new resonances that I could no longer ignore.

-

Isolation Canon can be played by any combination of 3 or more pitched instruments in any octave. Octave displacements of individual notes or sections are also okay, as long as the general shape of the melody is maintained. Performers who need to breathe can breathe as needed. Articulation should be legato throughout.

Isolation Canon (2020)

WWYJLMD is based on a phrase from Story 2 by the band clipping. Originally intended to be a Very Serious process piece about machine learning, in which Daveed Diggs's voice would gradually emerge from neural network noise. The universe had other ideas.

Using the deep-learning text-to-speech tool 15.ai, WWYJLMD features the voices of Steven Universe, the Tenth Doctor, Carl Brutananadilewski, Jane Lane, Daria Morgendorffer, the Administrator, Spongebob Squarepants, HAL 9000, and GLaDOS.

WWYJLMD

Isaac Schankler (pronouns: they/them) is a composer, accordionist, and electronic musician living in Los Angeles.

http://isaacschankler.com

Isaac Schankler

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