Tropes

A rough mix, work in progress, of a composition for actress/soprano, a poem with laptop accompaniment. Luciano Berio's VISAGE and Lewis Carroll's JABBERWOCKY are the inspiration for SIGNALS FROM A SMALL PLANET. The accompanist triggers musical clips stored in Laptop memory and plays laptop samples live using an M-Audio MIDI Keyboard. Live performance features the actress/soprano, Lily Taylor.

Signals from a Small Planet

Vocoder setting of major campaign themes excerpted from Donald Trump's presidential announcement speech of June 15, 2015 at Trump Tower, New York City.

D Trump

Going through old tapes I found an e-music collaboration with  Zon Vern Pyles recorded on September 30, 1985. Zon would bring his gear over to my house in Morgantown WV and we would rehearse head arrangements for the two live concerts we ever gave. Unfortunately we did not continue our professional collaboration as Zon left for a job in Arizona and I continued teaching counterpoint and musical analysis at WVU . If you would like to hear more, I have tapes.

Hope  Beyond by Zon Gil 9.30.85

Recorded on 9.30.1985 as we rehearsed for the two live concerts which we gave. Zon and Gil improvise on multiple synthesizers around  sequencer patterns with slow changing downbeats.

DaTura by Zon Vern Pyles and Gil Trythall

Zon Pyles and I composed this way back in 1985 in Morgantown WV. We used a lot of synthesizers in these head arrangements. For me, the most prominent is the big Moog IIIc. The IIIc had seven or maybe more oscillators, each with several different available wave shapes, white and pink noise generators, mixers, high. low and bandpass filters with feedback, a big sequencer, three or more envelope generators, all modules under voltage control by keyboards,  other control devices, and cross patching to produce amplitude and frequency modulation. An amazing synthe, far ahead of its time.

Anasazi by Gil & Zon

Luciano Berio's VISAGE and Lewis Carroll's JABBERWOCKY are the inspiration for SIGNALS FROM A SMALL PLANET. The accompanist interacts with the soprano in real time 'playing' the laptop,
triggering musical clips stored in Laptop memory.

Signals From a Small Planet: Lily Taylor and Gil

Xanthus uses the Moog IIIc synthesizer to explore quarter tone tuning (i.e. 24 steps to the octave)played from the Moog keyboard. The quarter steps are mostly melodic embellishments, but not always. Thanks to Ken Moore and Anvil creations for preserving this recording from the early 1980's.

Xanthus

Looped and mixed syllables slowly reveal the words: "Time flows in pulses, Little drops, Magnetized by experience, Flow deep ...".

Echospace

Time Flows

Classical electronic music from 1973 - l recorded the Moog synthesizer on a stereo Ampex tape recorder whose 1/4 inch tape was then led to a second Ampex stereo recorder whose playback outputs were led back to the first recorder for a continuous tape feedback loop reversing left and right signals.
Echospace has 13 sections each based on a combinatorial hexachord (see Milton Babbitt et. al.), basically theme and variations on six notes of the transposed  12 note row.
The recording was then edited with a splicing bar in classic electronic music studio practice. 
Recording was made at the Peabody College for Teachers School of Music, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. This copy made from a DAT copy of the original tape.

Recorded in the early 1980's on an Ampex 8 track one inch tape playing a Moog IIIc synthesizer and also a Micromoog sample and hold circuit, Luxikon II is in Rondo form.
The work was first performed with a laser accompaniment of Lissajous patterns driven by mirrors on left and right  audio speakers deflecting the laser beam vertically and horizontally- therefore the title: light icon.

Luxikon II

21 minutes of minimal, experimental electronic music recorded with a big Moog IIIc synthesizer (ca. 1972). Sine waves from 9 oscillators tuned to the fundamental and overtone frequencies of C 64 cycles were mixed, patched through filters, and recorded on a stereo Ampex, The recorded tape was led to another stereo Ampex which played the newly recorded signal and then mixed it with the new incoming signal from the Moog. This mix was  re-recorded on the first tape recorder. There is continual 'beating' of the partials as they shift in and out of phase. Additional Moog open and closing filtering applied at times. The final tape was edited with splicing bar.

Gil Trythall

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