Blog post #1

As a jazz pianist and producer, a youtube musician that has been really inspiring to me recently is Anomalie.  In his videos, he combines live performance on keyboard and synth, and plays over a beat that he alters throughout the performance.  There is also a huge element of improvisation, which is something that I've been implementing in a lot of my compositions lately, as a great moment of improv is something I believe should be captured and utilized.



For a collaboration in this class I am very open to try new things and experiment.  This video of Radiohead performing Bloom live is definitely something that interests me, and loosely embodies something I would want to create in a collaboration.  I'm definitely very interested in combining elements of songwriting and live instrumental performance with electronic music elements, live manipulation of sound, instrument design, and improvisation.

Blog 1 - Kate Derringer

I have been delving into combining live instrumental performance with live electronics. I have a lot of respect for Shigeto, as he integrates drums and electronic music together so seamlessly. I observe his performances and take mental notes about how I can improve my performances.

Lately, I have been getting really into Detroit techno and I would like to incorporate some elements of that into a performance in combination with live instruments. I would also like to experiment with interactive visuals through jitter or the like.

Blog Assignment #1 - Jacob Rogers

The first time I was in the class, I worked on a soundscape project with Jonathan Mashburn and Mac Porter called Hogback. This ended up being a pretty fruitful collaboration for me because, after having worked together once, Jonathan commissioned me to write a percussion quartet for his new group Up/Down Percussion. They did a nice studio recording of the whole thing, and the video just came out a couple weeks ago.




As for a type of collaboration I'm interested in, I recently saw a set by the band Quicksails. Their live shows involve structured improvs with electronics, and live synthesized/processed visual displays. I've been increasingly interested in film as a medium lately (both live generated and precomposed) and would be very interested, to whatever degree, in working with that medium. Here's one of their music videos, a bit more clearly structured than their live material but equally effective.

Blog Post Assignment #1

DISCLAIMER: This video is like 1/2 an hour long, but you'll get the gist of it if you watch like 5 minutes. This type of a collaboration interests me a lot because many aspects of it are improvisational (Nicolas Jaar's manipulation of various parameter's on the electronic side of the performance) but the overall structure is predetermined. I would enjoy being on either side of this duo, working with Ableton or playing the guitar--Though I have far less experience with live electronic music than I do with guitar-playing.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UaB2Rp8x_zstpTc5GHBDGiDP9aAnSty5

[I wasn't able to upload this video to the blog--it was too large, but if you paste the above link into your browser, you should be able to see it. Let me know if you aren't able to view it. This isn't the actual video for the song, I just slapped one of my photos in imovie and bounced the sound file in so it would appear in video format..perhaps there was a better way to go about doing this...]

ANYWAY, this is an unfinished song I'm working on right now tentatively titled "Comin' Back Down". On it, I perform drums, guitar, bass guitar, and vocals. I'm into a lot of psychedelic rock and funk/r&b music and it seems to show through a bit in this clip--hope you like it! 

The first link (which actually cannot be embedded, apologies) is a solo excerpt from a ~20 minute performance I did last semester with composer Rachel Epperly and percussionist Griffin Harvey that was based on the life cycles of mushrooms. In this section I played guitar and projected a Jitter patch that interacted with the signal from my guitar.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/zloNLwLHAoxiJxJo2

I am struggling to find a specific topic that I am interested in pursuing but I think it would be cool to incorporate some elements of dance music/rock/minimalism/hip hop in a multimedia performance. One project that I think emulates some of these musical styles that I continually come back to (and is one of my favorite albums for traveling) is Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92.

2 Videos- Ben Balas

Hey all! I have a couple videos to share with you this week. The first is from a club I am involved with, called Project Music. The mission of this club is to design and build experimental musical instruments, like our current project, a bicycle-powered Hurdy-Gurdy. The video I am showing you is from last year's project, an electric violin. Built out of acrylic, the effects are processed onboard using a raspberry pi. There is also a gyroscopic sensor that controls the amount of distortion applied, based on the angle the violinist is playing at.

The second video is from a "silent rave" where each participant is given a set of wireless headphones, and they are able to change the music they are hearing to different genres. The actual room is mostly quiet, because there is no music playing in the room. I'm not especially interested in throwing a silent rave in the Davis studio, but I am really interested in exploring the concept that everyone in the room is hearing a different thing, and goes home with a completely different experience of the event. Here's the video:

Blog Assignment #1 - Ryan Cox

Last semester, I really didn't really get much of a chance to really work on many personal projects. A lot of my focus was dedicated to juggling my classes, and improving on my abilities as a recording and mixing engineer. However, I have had some ideas in mind for projects, and have been testing out these ideas.

In the past, I've really enjoyed minimalism, and its influence on music today. One of my favorite groups to sort of incorporate this style is the post-rock duo El Ten Eleven. Over the past summer, I started to mess around with music like this (along with some DIY/Punk demos). The incorporation of looping ideas, repeating harmonic textures, and familiar intervals was something I really enjoyed about the instrumental duo, and something I really tried to emulate.


One of my other projects over the summer was starting to 'electrify' my saxophone. I still haven't come close to perfecting it, but I think I'm getting there. Colin Stetson (an alumnus of the U of M saxophone studio) has been someone whose work I keep finding myself going back to for inspiration. This piece is a favorite of mine, not necessarily because of the instrumentation, but because of the sense of space it creates. I really love how he creates these wide, expansive, colorful soundscapes.
 

Blog assignment #1

Due Friday January 12, 2018 at 11:59pm 

Post 2 videos or audio recordings:

1. Something representative of your current creative / technical practice (Could be something you have done recently, but not necessarily.)
2. Something collaborative that is representative of something you’d love to do (e.g., in this class) but don’t know how or haven’t had the opportunity?

Write 1-2 sentences about each of your videos highlighting why you chose them.

After Friday at midnight:
Watch all of the videos before class next week. Comment freely. Recall that discussion guidelines apply to online discussion as well as in-person.

Winter 2018: Table Setting

Here's a piece to set the table for the semester:

Table Setting: Vooruit from Ali Momeni on Vimeo.