Author: Prent Rodgers

Heads up! All composers – All videographers – a new call for works

Vox Novus is the brain child of Robert Voisey. He assembles CD’s and concerts of 60 second compositions by 60 different composers, called 60×60. Recently he worked with some dancers to accompany a 60×60 concert with 60 dances by 60 choreographers at theWinter Garden of the World Financial Center in NYC. A review in the NY Times was quite complementary.

Robert writes with a new call for works:

Did I forget to mention that there is another call for 60×60? Yes! With all the excitement I forgot to mention that there is a new call for 60 second works on recorded media. Here is the link: http://www.voxnovus.com/60×60/Call.htm

BUT WAIT! There’s more!

In conjunction with New Media New Music New England We are lookiing for video too! Visit the following for details: http://www.nmnmne.org/what_if.html

I contributed one piece that was accepted in a Pacific Rim 60×60 mix, and highly recommend others do the same. 60 seconds can really focus the mind. And to hear your work played next to someone else’s is fascinating.

PDF of liner notes

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This is a piece I put together in 2000. It’s the first of my “Fake but Accurate” pieces, based on samples, tuned to the Partch 43-tone tonality diamond. I used some restaurant samples and convolved it with a church, to make it sound like it was recorded live. There are restaurant noises to set the mood, and broken glass to punctuate the rhythm. It’s scored for Tuba, Piccolo, Guitar, Marimba, Bongos, Trumpets, Trombones, and assorted implements available to waiters in a Mexican restaurant in Ajijic around the turn of the century. It’s kind of an audio version of PhotoShop.

I wrote about it at the time, in 2000:

Omar and the Bandoleros are a band I first heard playing at a party in Ajijic, Mexico. Omar is the band’s leader, as well as their tuba player. His wife Angelina plays the piccolo. Omar is tall and thin and has a neatly trimmed mustache. Angelina has let her weight get away from her, and is pushing 120 kilos, easy. Every Friday night they play Mariachi music in the moonlight for the wealthy retired Americans in Ajijic at the Posada. But on Saturday nights they move to the school gym off the town square and step up the tempo. Earlier, on the night these recordings were made, Angelina and Omar had been fighting over something. Enrique, the first trumpeter said it was over Omar loosing money at the cock fights. Roberto, the bongo player, felt that Angelina was angry over Omar spending all Friday afternoon helping the new guitar player, Rosa, learn the new changes. Angelina felt the new changes were not all for the good, if you know what I mean.

Omar wanted to diffuse the situation by playing some romantic music with Angelina, and that is how this tune starts. Francesco the marimba player begins the tune with a gently rocking ostinato in C major otonality. Omar entices Angelina to join in with a sweet bass line on his tuba. Hector and his trombone section join in to complement the sound. When Rosa joins in on guitar, the pace quickens rapidly. Pretty soon the tempo and the heat rise as it becomes clear Angelina wants more than sweet music from Omar. The group is rocking through some bizarre changes at 150 bpm.

After this recording was made, Omar left the stage with Angelina, and the remainder of the band finished out the set without them. Rosa was asked to leave the band the next day, and has been hanging out in Colorado with a guy named Nelson in Durango, driving a Suburban into town every day to pick up her mail and her royalty checks. Omar continues to lead the band every weekend, but Angelina is thinking of quitting to join the Guadalajara Philharmonic. She says she is going to be the next latin jazz piccolo legend … with or without Omar.

I’m not sure where the group first learned to tune their marimba to the Partch 43 tone scale. Rosa the guitarist found her axe in a dumpster outside Peteluma and quickly fell in love with the big chords made possible with the otonality. Omar just likes the chance to show off his embrochure, if you know what I mean.

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This is a work in progress…

I have adjusted the tuning a bit. The Bb is now a 4:3 above the F, which makes sense. The B at the end has been updated to an 11:8 over the F, giving the last note a bit more bite. Both changes were only a single step in the 53 TET tuning, but they make a big difference.

Here is a graph of the function table I use to make the finger piano have a more robust sustain. It attenuates the attack, and increases the strength of the later parts of the sound.

More work to do on this.

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This is a work in progress…

I love this piece by John Cage. Especially the versions on piano by Stephen Drury and a version for American Gamelan by Gamelan Pacifica.

I’ve been thinking of what it would sound like on finger piano. Today I put the first ten measures down and it sounds ok. But it needs some work. Done with Csound and some finger piano samples from an instrument I made in 1978. I definitely need to work on the tuning. I picked a C overtone series, but the piece seems to be in D minor?

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This is a work in progress…

I’ve been taking 4 passes through each of the pieces, and then listening to them to see which one has the best presentation of the key ideas. I’ve grown fond of take 3 in tonights walk through the Mercer Island forest. Damp, swampy, cold. Not at all like the desert. But this take captures the key focus. The sun is the short bent springs. The percussion is the relentless footsteps. The long springs are the threats that will not go away.

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The next piece is to be used as the backdrop for crossing the Great Salt Lake Desert. From the Wiki, we can read:

* August 30, 1846: The Donner Party reaches Redlum Spring, the last source of water before the dry drive begins, then sets out to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert.

* September 1, 1846 (?): On the third day in the desert, the water runs out. That night, the Reeds’ thirsty oxen run off, never to be found; the Reeds take a few things and set out on foot.

* September 3, 1846 (?): The emigrants finish the five-day journey across the eighty-mile desert, which Hastings had said was half as wide. They have lost 36 head of cattle, half of them Reed’s, and four wagons have to be abandoned. They spend the next week at the foot of Pilot Peak recuperating from their ordeal, hunting for cattle, and caching their possessions.

It was very dry out there, I’m sure. This piece is scored for bent piano wires of various dimensions and appearance, amplified by magnetic transducers and sampled; my contact microphone wooden dry percussion board; a few orchestral cymbals; and samples from Jay C. Batzner’s Mancala Samples. They’re the ones that sound like a rattlesnake of sorts. The tuning is based on the utonality, but the samples are so enharmonic as to render the tuning moot.

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This is a work in progress…

Today’s work is in support of the scene when the Donner’s are told that they basically have to hack their own path through the Wasatch Mountains. The Hastings Cutoff is bogus, and they are told to send someone ahead for further instructions.

The music is more like space lounge music, with little resemblance to the scene of the movie. Oh well. It’s based on the utonality to the 15 limit, modulating to new keys by steps of the otonality. In the chart at the right (click it to enlarge), the utonality goes up and to the left, the otonality up and to the right.

We start in the bottom row C Ab F D+ B- Gb E- D-, then move up to E, then G, then Bb.

The piece is scored for Alto Flute, Vibraphone, Finger Piano, Tuba, French Horns, Trombones, dry spring percussion, and some other percussion samples. Enjoy the utonalicious triademonium.

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This is a work in progress…

Alto Flute, Vibraphone, Tuba, Finger Piano in a minor key, going in opposite directions.

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This is a work in progress…

August 6, 1846: The Donner Party stops at the mouth of Echo Canyon; Hastings has left a note for them, warning them that the road ahead is impassable and instructing them to send someone ahead to get instructions. James Reed and two others set out following the wagons tracks of Hastings’ group.