Monthly Archive for November, 2007

COMPUTING SYNESTHESIA

Published on November 13, 2007 in Musical Endeavors, Present and Visual Music. 9 Comments Tags: , , , , .

snapshot.jpg

Speaking of visual and con­cep­tual rela­tion­ships, I’ve been enjoy­ing some strange trips from using a unique soft­ware called RGB MusicLab. It was clev­erly designed by Kenji Kojima who explains it quite well by saying,

RGB MusicLab con­verts RGB (Red, Green and Blue) value of an image to chro­matic scale sounds. The pro­gram reads RGB value of pix­els from the top left to the bot­tom right of an image. One pixel makes a har­mony of three note of RGB value, and the length of note is deter­mined by bright­ness of the pixel. RGB value 120 or 121 is the cen­ter C, and RGB value 122 or 123 is added a half steps of the scale that is C#. Pure black that is R=0, G=0, B=0 is no sounds.

It is not an impres­sion of paint­ings or pho­tographs of a com­poser. It reads a score from an image data directly.

So, as l recall one of the most influ­en­tial exhibits I’ve ever expe­ri­enced, here a few pieces I’ve come up with.

kit ans saw wave.jpg

Duration: 0:30
Tempo: 183
Instrumentation: 2 elec­tronic kits (right and left chan­nels), 1 saw wave (center)

hmm…an inter­est­ing start

dark.jpg

Duration: 2:09
Tempo: 440
Instrumentation: Choir (left), atmos­phere (cen­ter), orches­tral harp (right)

notice how dark the image is in rela­tion to the pitch

whoa.jpg

Duration: 1:05
Tempo: 470
Instrumentation: celesta (left), pizzi­cato strings (cen­ter), slap bass (right)

this one moves quite quick but is full of color

bigsurdriftwoodshack.jpg

Duration: 1:15
Tempo: 190
Instrumentation: music box (left), gui­tar har­mon­ics (cen­ter), wood­block (right)

sim­i­lar color through­out, crazy ending(?)

bachseal.jpg

Duration: 2:02
Tempo: 600
Instrumentation: harpsichord

Keep in mind, this is Bach’s seal in which he signed his music

dontfuckwithmechopin.jpg

Duration: 3:51
Tempo: 137
Instrumentation: Electric Piano (left), Car Engine (cen­ter), Electric Piano (right)

Spastic, yet rich and full

flush.jpg

Duration: 0:29
Tempo: 80
Instrumentation: Tubular Bells (left), Rain (cen­ter), Tubular Bells (right)

The flu­id­ity of this pic­ture seems to bring out an actual “song”

crazyassorange.jpg

Duration: 0:31
Tempo: 600
Instrumentation: Celesta (left), Dulcimer (cen­ter), Celesta (right)

I absolutely love this inter­pre­ta­tion, it is mad and fits the mood completely

princeofpeace.jpg

Duration: 1:27
Tempo: 309
Instrumentation: Timpani (left), Reverse Cymbal (cen­ter), Electric Piano (right)

Totally rad and con­ve­niently weird — a true stare.

marriageloft.jpg

Duration: 1:20
Tempo: 151
Instrumentation: Percussive Organ (left), Contrabass (cen­ter), Bottle Blow (right)

Reminds me of the moth and it’s journey

THE SIOUX CITY SYMPHONY

Published on November 3, 2007 in Musical Endeavors and Present. 0 Comments

Although com­pleted in the spring of 2007, I have yet to show my first large-scale sym­phonic work, The Sioux City Symphony, to a wide audi­ence. I worked on it for about a year, orig­i­nally as a self-commissioned goal of sub­mit­ting it to the 2007 APU Composition Competition and lately, still with­out feed­back, I have been revis­it­ing the piece to hear how my ear has changed, for bet­ter or worse. A lot of time has passed since I fin­ished it and I had to take a big step back and let the work fer­ment. I still remem­ber going mad in my room with excite­ment and frus­tra­tion, often work­ing on it for hours late into the early morn­ing and leav­ing my eyes strained and the mark of head­phones embed­ded into my hair.

I real­ize there is a lot I could tell you about each move­ment, let alone the work as a whole. A state­ment of sorts. This is some­thing that I’ve been wrestling with ever since I started. Addressing that now, all I can say is that for the time being I’m not going to can’t say any­thing more than I already have. I will say that I’d like to share my feel­ings, as tedious and bor­ing as they might be, about dif­fer­ent sec­tions and move­ments, melodic lines, ideas, influ­ences, etc. in the future. I hope you understand.

I don’t expect a lot of feed­back and, to me, that is com­pletely jus­ti­fied. It is hardly acces­si­ble1 in many aspects, but I must show it to you! I must give it away! Keeping it hid­den2 would be much much worse, and self­ish. So I now present to you…

SCS cover art.jpg

1st Movement: Adagio (3:44)

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2nd Movement: Allegretto (2:31)

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3rd Movement: Andante con moto (3:59)

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1 I apol­o­gize for the MIDI ren­di­tion and hope it is not too much of a dis­trac­tion. What you’ll hear has very lit­tle to do with the sound. It’s all about the notes.
2Feel free to down­load a copy of the full score as well. (1st Movement — 2nd Movement — 3rd Movement) For me, read­ing scores has become very enjoy­able as well as a way to observe many more details and articulations.