Jean-Francois Charles

2020 update: if you are looking for the Max for Live device, check out the post Max for Live: Extreme Time Stretching with Spectral Stretch . Using a phase vocoder is one way of stretching the length of a sound without transposing it. The following video is related to the free pdf article A Tutorial for Spectral Sound Processing with Max/MSP and Jitter , published in the Computer Music Journal, Fall 2008. It illustrates extreme time stretching and audio freeze. Your own Max/MSP/Jitter Phase Vocoder If you are using the Max/MSP/Jitter development environment to design audio & video interactive applications, make your own phase vocoder. In this series of Max/MSP/Jitter tutorial patches for sound processing in spectral domain (link updated 01/12/2010) , patches number 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8 are the most directly related to this video. Of course, the MSP Tutorial 25 and Tutorial 26 will be will get you started with the FFT inside Max/MSP, in case you are new to the spectral doma

The Graduate Music Forum at Harvard organizes a yearly Graduate Student Conference. Last Spring, the conference was entitled music & the urban . This year, the committee choose another exciting topic: Un-Music . Last week, composers Bert Van Herck, Hillary Zipper, and myself met with organizers Michael Heller and Ryan Banagale to discuss the participation of composers to the conference. We are all very eager to host a great musical conference during which we want to facilitate a natural flow between the fields of musicology, ethnomusicology, theory and composition. Are you a composer? Here is the official announcement, as it was recently published on the American Composers Forum : Call for Works: Un-Music, Harvard Graduate Music Forum Conference, March 7, 2009 In light of the pluralism, stylistic diversity, and incorporation of new sounds in contemporary performance, we invite you to re-examine our definition of music: what is music and what is "un-music," and wher

In May 2008, I announced the première of my series of three Bb clarinet studies . I'm happy to share with you the recording of this live performance, featuring two amazing musicians: Petra Stump and Heinz-Peter Linshalm . Petra and Heinz-Peter during their concert in Vienna (Austria) on June 13th, 2008. The first of these pedagogical miniatures is a very simple melody to play with just the clarinet mouthpiece , to whistle, and to sing and play at the same time. Here is the score for two clarinetists: the teacher and the student. Listen to 11/60 on last.fm Singing and playing at the same time is less common on the clarinet than for instance on the trombone or the flute. I strongly recommend to listen to composer and clarinetist Evan Zyporin's "Tsmindao Ghmerto" (look for the title on the page, you should be able to download a mp3 version). It's a written solo for bass clarinet, to be sung and played at the same time. A great piece in a recital. Beginning of

Aqua is a composition for solo double bass, aquaphone, clarinet, and live electronics. It is the 5th part of the Arc-en-ciel cycle. It was created by the Ensemble New Flore during our tour "Spirales" in the Fall of 2004, with Jean-Daniel Hégé - double bass, Brenda Ohana - aquaphone, Elsa Biston - live electronics, Amandine Grevoz - stage assistant, and myself - clarinet. Italian première anniversary The first Italian performance took place in Florence exactly 4 years ago, on December 10th, 2004. Time to share a few pictures . Thanks to photographer Eric Cordier! The piece was a joint commission by Montbéliard Music School and Centro Tempo Reale in Florence. I was invited to spend two weeks in the French Institute in Florence in July 2004, where I composed part of the work. Thanks to the Tempo Reale team for playing the live electronics, and to all the great musicians: Giulio Rubino - double bass, Joël Lorcerie - aquaphone, and Véronique Ngo Sach Hien - stage as

Here is the recording of Live Saturation , for flute and electronic music. Flutist Mario Caroli was recorded live on May 24th, 2008 in Paine Hall, Harvard Music Department . I already told you about my collaboration with poet Ruth Lepson for the production of the electronic music. That was a real pleasure to see her come not only to the concert, but also to a whole rehearsal. Read her texts on www.ruthlepson.org . Hit play to listen: 1-5/60 - Live Saturation by Jean-Francois Charles You will find on a previous post the program notes . The flute part The complete performance score is only 3 pages long. Cues from the electronic music part are rather easy to hear. As you can see (click on the pictures for more details), the degree of synchronization between the flute and the electronic music is left quite free. The performer must trust his/her ears and musical sense; by listening to t

Picture for poster after Jazz by Geoff Coe. Friday, December 5th at 8:45 p.m. Dudley House's Main Dining Room (Harvard Yard). Refreshments will be served. If you live in the Boston area, get ready for a hot Jazz night in Dudley House , even if it's cold outside! Combo Our Combo will play swinging arrangements in different styles, from jazz waltz to rhythm'n blues. Alan Lenarcic has lead the rehearsals with brio, and the tunes will be: James P. Johnson's 1921 Carolina Shout , arranged by Karim Al-Zand. PeeWee Ellis & Jaco Pastorius's The Chicken Wayne Shorter's Infant Eyes Chick Corea's Times Lie Donald Fagen & Walter Becker's My Old School Creation As during each concert since last Fall, new music will be created: this time, the big-band's lead trombonist Ethan Fenn composed a new piece for a cool ensemble of winds, bass and drums. Looking forward to this world première! Big Band Repertoire: from 1937 to 1991 Our full big ban

Rêver is a composition for dancing clarinetist and singing dancer. It is the result of a great collaboration with choreographer and dancer Alice Gervais-Ragu. Enjoy the video (2004, Spirales tour of the Ensemble New Flore ): Karlheinz Stockhausen and Johann Sebastian Bach Rêver is the green piece from the Arc-en-ciel cycle . This pas de deux is of course influenced by the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen . Indeed, performing In Freundschaft was my first contact with a composition for moving musician. As a composer, Stockhausen is unique by the different ways in which he incorporated movement in his work. He asked several dancers to work with him (notably Michèle Noiret and Alain Louafi ), and notated movement in his musical scores. But I really composed Rêver as an homage to Johann Sebastian Bach . The piece is both a "Canon Contrarium Stricte Reversum" and a "Canon Cancrizans". It is a retrograde (or "crab") canon in contrary motion, that references

I took the picture on the left during the dress rehearsal for the premiere of Bleu 3 . The mug is used to play glissandi in the piano part, as you can see on this excerpt: Bleu 3 is a quartet for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, linked in several ways to Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time . In June 2008, it was awarded the George Arthur Knight Prize by the Harvard Music Department . Students who recently received the prize include: Ashley Fure : Susurrus , 2007 Lei Liang : Serashi Fragments , 2006 José-Luis Hurtado : De relieve doble , 2005 Dominique Schafer : Fluchtpunkte , 2004 José Luis Hurtado: Of Green and Gray , 2003 Christopher Honett: Three Deaths in a Cambridge Museum , 2002 Christopher Trapani : History by Moonlight , 2002 Erik Spangler : Gut Matrix , 2001 Helen Lee: Strands , 2000 Lansing McLoskey : Tinted , 1999 Christoph Neidhofer : Nach Innen , 1998 Purchase the score of Bleu 3 on amazon.com . Listen to Bleu 3 on last.fm .

In April 2008, I was invited by composers Eric Chasalow and Maxwell Dulaney to give a 2-day seminar on spectral sound processing techniques at Brandeis University Music Department . A topic the music students particularly enjoyed was the frozen sound , the audio equivalent of the cinematic " freeze frame shot ". I taught the nuts and bold of the real-time stochastic spectral freeze technique (the stochastic component is aimed at breaking the ice - with the audience). On this video , discover 5 variations on a Max/MSP/Jitter freeze tool: Downloads Note: the Max patches available here have been completely revamped since this article & video were initially published. New Spectral Freeze Max MSP Jitter patches (link updated Nov. 2019) A Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing with Max/MSP and Jitter: Computer Music Journal, Fall 2008 Syllabus The program for just two 3-hour workshops was quite ambitious! April 14th Overview of the topic : “ Spectral processing

One week ago, on Monday, October 13th, the outstanding violist Garth Knox was the guest of the Harvard Group for New Music . Repertoire survey First, he talked about the history of the viola and its techniques , while constantly playing examples. Quite a great survey of the viola repertoire: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Berlioz (did you know that Paganini asked Berlioz to write for the viola ?), Hindemith, Bartok, Stravinsky, Ligeti, Xenakis, James Dillan, Murail, Grisey, Kurtag, Berio, and Sciarrino. Finally, he presented eight fun études: Viola Spaces . He composed them to help teach contemporary techniques. Recording session In the afternoon, we had a chance to record Garth Knox in the Huseac Studios : Edgar Barroso and myself seized the unique opportunity. Here is the score I had written for the occasion: I also asked him to play in reaction to these four propositions: Play the spectrum of this flower Violet Picture GNU license by fi:Käyttäjä:kompak Play th

On Friday, Edgar Barroso and myself received seven 13-year old composers in the Huseac Studios . We let them know about some ways we've been composing. And they described their own work in electronic music: they have been using Apple GarageBand to compose, after recording their own sound material. That sounds like a great introduction to composition. All the best to the professor and the students: you share an exciting project! I hope we'll get to hear your works! Picture and organization by Lesley Bannatyne.

Zygomatic is a composition for voice and live electronics. It is part of the Arc-en-ciel cycle . The premiere took place on June 17th, 2005, in Le Palot, Montbéliard, France. The wonderful singer was Isabelle Jost, while I was performing the live electronics. Listen to the concert recording here (click the play button) or there: Zygomatic on last.fm (download is also possible). A personalized sonorous score During the first part of the recording, you will hear only the voice, no electronic music. This is normal! The live electronics generate in real time a personalized sonorous score. The score is sonorous : the singer hears the score (a kind of electronic music) thanks to a wireless in-ear monitor. The score is personalized : it is generated live by transformations of the first 10 seconds of the voice part. But what does it mean, to interpret a sonorous score? Here is the text I wrote in the score, in 2005: " Interpréter une partition sonore, c’est orienter son écoute dans

After four seasons, Demolicious is calling it a day. I have been invited to perform for the occasion at Pierre Menard Gallery in Harvard Square (10 Arrow Street). The performance takes place this Sunday, Oct. 5 at 3pm. Program and Artists Poetry from Christina Strong Fiction from Vanessa Place Video from Jonas Mekas and Peter Pizzi Music and live electronics from Jean-Francois Charles I will play Lina for contrabass clarinet and give an interactive presentation of my current work with live electronics. I look forward to meeting the great artists who will be there tomorrow. And of course, to seeing you there, too!

I just received an e-mail from Didier Breuque, a friend and clarinet player in the Orchestre Lyrique de Région Avignon Provence (OLRAP) . He calls for help because the orchestra is in a very difficult financial situation and is in need of more support by French cultural institutions, sponsors or patrons. The call was also relayed by the Cahiers de la Musique Classique . The OLRAP is more than a lyric orchestra : the versatility, curiosity, and involvement of the musicians has enabled them to perform a wide repertoire, from baroque to symphonic repertoire to contemporary creation . They notably performed the premières of two works of mine: Nigritella nigra for clarinet and string quartet (in 1998) and Helianthus musca for ensemble (in 1999). The current musical director is the American conductor Jonathan Schiffman . I'm sure they would appreciate your help: you need only sign the on-line petition Save the Orchestre Lyrique Région Avignon-Provence (French only). Amazon.com W

The Hot Club de Lyon is celebrating its 60th birthday from September 19th to October 1st. See the complete program on citizenjazz and most importantly, go to the concerts! In 1997, we performed there with the Insa Big Band . Great musicians were in the band, and we invited Maurice Merle for a special concert. On the left, you can see the musical battle that took place between Maurice Merle and Alex Desenfant during my composition Sonatine pour des enfants .

I just made available this Max/MSP/Jitter patch (a computer program) aimed at performance-time automatic segmentation of sounds. Listen to the music with the player at the bottom on this page. Noise hits are played at segmentation points. Discover the under-the-hood details in my recent article " A Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing Using Max/MSP and Jitter ". If you are a Max/MSP user, feel free to download this patch . Going through the series of patches is highly recommended! This is the ninth and most advanced one for the moment. In case you want to give it a try, download Max/MSP and Jitter 30-day demo on cycling 74 web site .

Ken Ueno is a great musician, an outstanding composer, and an amazing educator. I am thrilled to announce that the 14th minute of the composition project 60/60 is dedicated to him. Thank you Ken for your participation to the project, and for your great gift: Derek Bailey 's book Improvisation - Its Nature and Practice in Music . An active Composer in Red Sneakers , Ken Ueno is now Assistant Professor at University of California, Berkeley . The miniature 14/60 is called Alive Hic ; you can listen to it and download the file on last.fm . The performers are Vincent Daoud and Yuji Noguchi , two members of the group Hic and nunc . They were recorded in Lausanne, Switzerland. The composition process went like that: I sent the performers a sonorous score based on an improvisation night Ken and I (a.o.) had around Boston. Vincent and Yuji played imitations and reactions to the sonorous score. Finally, the quick editing and sound processing was my first attempt at using and learning

When I discovered electronic music during the Centre Acanthes 2000/Ircam , my favorite topic was real time sound processing in frequency domain. Hans Tutschku taught the wonders of AudioSculpt in Avignon, before Benjamin Thigpen taught Max/MSP in Helsinki. Now, the Computer Music Journal just published an article I wrote about spectral sound processing in real time and performance time ( whereas real-time treatments are applied on a live sound stream, performance-time treatments are transformations of sound files that are generated during a performance ). If you are interested in graphical sound synthesis, phase vocoder , and sonograms (or spectrograms) , I hope you will enjoy this tutorial. The great news is that you can download the article for free on the page of the Computer Music Journal, Issue 32, Volume 3 . Max/MSP/Jitter patches You can readily apply the described techniques in the development environment Max/MSP/Jitter . For a hands-on approach, make sure you download t

Bagict is a duet for clarinet and saxophone. I am thrilled to dedicate this work to two friends, musicians, and scholars: Ryan Raul Banagale (have a look at amusicology.com ) and Michael Scott Cuthbert . Both of them are participants in the project 60/60. Because they joined the creation almost at the same time, I decided to pair them. The piece is called Bagict : hear a little magic and a little Babbitt (it's related to the presents each of them chose - more on that another time). Here is the current version of the first page of the score: Announcement We are very lucky: the work will be premiered next week by Vincent Daoud and Yuji Noguchi , wonderful performers of the ensemble Hic Et Nunc . An excerpt of the tasteful invitation I received - original version, of course: Freitag, 15. August 2008, ab 19.00 Uhr Théâtre de Poche, Brunngasse 1, 2502 Biel ( http://map.search.ch/biel-bienne/brunngasse-1 ) Programm: ab 19.00 Uhr     Eintreffen der Gäste 19.15     Uhr Kurzvo

A sonogram (also called spectrogram ) represents graphically the distribution of energy of a sound through frequencies, in function of time. It may be funny or useful to transform the data graphically before resynthesizing the sound. This is made easy by a development environment like Max/MSP/Jitter, which allows to work in real time with sound and video. In this video , I show a few graphical treatments one can apply to a sonogram: If you wish to realize similar sound processing, here are Max/MSP/Jitter patches for spectral sound processing . Update: Computer Music Journal Tutorial on Graphical Spectral Sound Synthesis Read more explanations about this type of graphical sound synthesis in the free pdf article: A Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing with Max/MSP & Jitter .

In 2001, I composed the Arc-en-ciel Formula . It is both a musical work for Bb clarinet and double bass, and a "musical formula" on which I have based the Arc-en-ciel cycle. Here is the score: Page 1: red, orange, yellow Page 2: green, blue, indigo, purple A cycle in seven parts The Arc-en-ciel cycle is based upon the above formula. At the time, I was very interested in the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and in his technique of Formula Composition , as well as in Fractals (Formula Composition is an application of fractal thinking to musical composition). Red Magma for contrabass clarinet, stones, and live electronics (2003) Orange Wu jú sè for clarinet, percussion (5 chinese gongs), double bass, and dance (2002) Yellow Zygomatic for voice and live electronics (2005) Risorius for six voices (2005-2006) Green Rêver for singing dancer and dancing clarinetist (2004) Blue Aqua for solo double bass, aquaphon, clarinet, and live electronics (2004) Aqua Solo

I am just back from Montbéliard, France, where I took part in the July 2008 Prisma Meeting. Prisma is an international group of composers and researchers founded in 2001 at the initiative of Jacopo Baboni Schilingi . Prisma stands for " International Pedagogy and Research on Assisted Musical Systems ." I joined in 2003 at the invitation of Jacopo Baboni and Hans Tutschku . The group meet regularly to exchange and build musical knowledge. This time, the schedule looked like this (original untranslated program): Saturday 07/05 Générations musicales temps-réels de populations d'agents neuromimétiques ( Frédéric Voisin ) Rules for controlling Energy Profiles ( Orjan Sandred ) First steps towards Klangpilot3, a realtime system for learning sound synthesis ( Johannes Kretz ) Six hermeneutical models ( Jacopo Baboni Schilingi ) Sunday 07/06 PWGL - News (Mikael Laurson, Mika Kuuskankare , and Kilian Sprotte ) More PWGL News (Jacopo Baboni Schilingi and Orjan Sandr

Yesterday, I went to Strasburg and had a coffee with Armand Angster, my former clarinet teacher. He is an expert at many clarinets, including bass and contrabass. The first instrument I learnt with him, after Bb clarinet, was the basset-horn, to play a Pascal Dusapin work during Festival Musica in 2000. Last year, I put together a recital program both artistically engaging and pedagogically interesting. I played it twice:   - Bayridge Residence and Cultural Center, Boston, February 24th, 2007   - Harvard University Hall, Cambridge, March 1st, 2007 Program Suite / Ed , Armand Angster - bass clarinet Petite Fleur , Sydney Bechet (1897-1959) - Bb clarinet Sieben Lieder der Tage , Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) - basset-horn Episodes , Gunther Schuller (1925-) - Bb clarinet Clarinet Quintet - Larghetto , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) - A clarinet Lina , Jean-François Charles - contrabass clarinet God bless the child , Billie Holiday (1915-1959) and Arthur Herzog

Do you remember of the announce of the Dancers' Dozen show ? Here is the video of Ballade : Ballade is one of the " 12 Études for Clarinetist Dancer ." As written in my original plan, the piece includes several references: First, the form of the piece is modeled after the classical verse form ballade . It is therefore made of 3 eight-line stanzas and a final envoi. The opening clarinet phrase could be heard (and analyzed) as a variation on the solo overtures of Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune”, and Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps.” Similarly to the music, the choreography makes use of three sources of inspiration. During the first part ("stanza"), the dance builds upon movements from Nijinsky’s Prélude à l’après- midi d’un faune . In the second part, music and movement become more earthy. The dance is developed mainly after a cell from Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring . In the third part, I use gestures referencing François Villon ’s Ballade d

One of my on-going projects has been the composition of “ 12 Études for clarinetist dancer .” In the tradition of musical studies designed for the musician to improve his/her skills in a precise domain, each piece will actualize a different approach in terms of: musical composition technique choreographic style relation between music and dance proportion of written and improvised elements notation Here is the (provisional) May 2007 version of my plan for these 12 studies: I cleaned-up this plan to include it in my final presentation for a course I took in the Spring of 2007: Music and Movement Tomie Hahn is a singular artist. I quote the bio on her sweet website: Tomie Hahn is a performer and ethnologist whose activities span a wide range of topics including: Japanese traditional performing arts, Monster Truck rallies, issues of identity and creative expression of multiracial individuals, and relationships of technology and culture; interactive dance/movement performance;

Lionel Liebe was a clarinet student of mine, and I am doubly thrilled that he took part to the 60/60 interactive composition project . Thank you Lionel for your participation, and the really active part you played in this project. Thanks for the three presents, for the discussion, and for the music you made me discover! Premiere Concert Petra Stump and Heinz-Peter Linshalm will perform an amazing concert on June 13th, 2008 in Vienna. The event is entitled Short Cuts , and will feature short works by 27 living composers! I am honored that these two amazing clarinetists gave me the opportunity to take part to this project, and so glad that they will perform these duets. Remember, we played together in Karlheinz Stockhausen's Rechter Augenbrauentanz , his own excerpt/arrangement of Samstag aus Licht. Clarinet duets for teacher and student Play Along 1, 2, and 3 are three pedagogical pieces. After the premiere, I will make the parts available, so that clarinet teachers can use

Mario Caroli is a great flute player , a real virtuoso as well as a very enthusiastic musician. He authorized me to publish 25 flute samples on the Freesound Project , a collaborative database of sounds. Listen to and download the Mario Caroli Drum Kit . Each sound is unprocessed, as naturally played by Mario. As I described in a post about the recording session , this set of samples has been modeled after Logic Pro's "Classic Hip-Hop Remix Drum Kit", available in the drum machine Ultrabeat. 5/60 - Cell 2 A 6-second ringtone made with these samples. You can hear it around the end of Saturation . Hit play: Or listen to it on last.fm: 5/60 - Cell 2 . These flute samples are made available under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License : use them, and let us know about the music you produce!

Mario Caroli has been in Cambridge since Sunday, and we are in the middle of rehearsals to prepare this concert: Saturday, May 24th, 2008 - 8 p.m. Paine Hall - Harvard Music Department You will hear new music for flute, or flute and electronic music: Hillary Zipper : Point de neige for flute and live electronics Gabriele Vanoni : Space Oddities for solo flute Bert Van Herck : Articulations colorées for solo flute Dominique Schafer : Cendre for flute and live electronics Karola Obermüller : ...sibbern for bass flute Peter Gilbert : Elegie for flute and tape Jean-François Charles : Live Saturation for flute and electronic music Edgar Barroso : Kapsis for solo flute Premiere of Live Saturation I finished the program notes yesterday evening: Live Saturation is a musical setting of Ruth Lepson ’s poem Saturation (published in the literary review "Carve – poems" in August 2006.) Ruth Lepson is a poet & poet-in-residence at the New England Conservator