1/60 - Aria

Do you remember the 60/60 composition project?

I am thrilled to dedicate the first minute to Katherine Lee, who chose in the original list the CD Bach: The Goldberg Variations 1955 Performance: Zenph Re-performance.

Here is my composition, titled Aria. Click play to listen:

  Creative Commons License

Music, humans, and machines

Zenph Bach Gould CD In the CD that Katherine offered me, the version of the Goldberg Variations raises many questions. The piano plays by itself: it is a Yamaha Disklavier Pro. The Zenph team prepared a high resolution MIDI version of Glenn Gould's famous 1955 interpretation, and recorded the electronically driven piano. They even produced a concert during which the piano played by itself Glenn Gould's interpretation.
But the best is here: what do you think about this quote from the booklet?

"In effect, a long-dead pianist can now give live performances or make recordings of interpretations that are still recognizably his."

Speaking about humans and machines making music, you have to watch Toyota's Partner Robot playing trumpet. Yes, it is a real robot playing a real trumpet!
Here is a picture of a whole Toyota band performing at 2005 World Expo in Japan:

robots toyota trumpet trombone

Update on the 60/60 project

First of all, let me thank all of you who have taken part to this exciting project! Today, January 13th, I have received 10 presents, and it is a real treat to be surprised and challenged by your choices and comments. I will compose the next minutes for flute, a recorded poem, electroacoustic music, and maybe live electronics. More on that later...

To participate, visit the 60/60 composition project FAQs.

Attribution

Did you hear the Boston T, the Seoul railway station, the Erhu, and the Indian bus? It's the first time I use samples under a Creative Commons license. All samples come from The Freesound project, and here is the attribution list. Feel free to click to hear the original sounds, and learn more about them.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJanuary 13, 2008 at 3:54 PM

    i love this, jean-francois! thank you so much for composing the aria! i'm honored to be part of this project. looking forward to hearing the rest!

    -katherine

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Max for Live: Extreme Time Stretching with Spectral Stretch

Image
There are many ways to achieve audio time stretching without transposition . Some time-based methods build on Pierre Schaefer 's Phonogène . Another approach consists in processing the sound in spectral domain, using a phase vocoder . In this case, the audio samples are converted to spectral data through a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT). Then, even if we focus on extreme time stretching, the details of the phase vocoder implementation have important consequences on the sound quality and the tool's flexibility for live usage. Before introducing the Max for Live device Spectral Stretch, let's have a look at a selection of four possible algorithms: Paulstretch Max Live Phase Vocoder Interpolation between recorded spectra Stochastic Re-synthesis from a recorded sonogram Paulstretch Paul's Extreme Sound Stretch , also known as Paulstretch , is an algorithm designed by Paul Nasca for extreme time stretching. You might have heard one application already: to this date,
Read more

GroundSwell 2020 Emerging Composers Competition

Image
Groundswell is a wonderful organization dedicated to the development of new music in Winnipeg and the Province of Manitoba, Canada. I've been invited to serve as a member of the committee for their first electroacoustic music competition, along with composer Margaret Schedel and composer William Brunson . It's been a fun and quite interesting adventure. We listened to more than two dozen compositions. I wish we could have included more than 5 finalists: there were a number of atypical nice compositions. To listen, head to the competition page . You'll find links to the finalists' music.
Read more

A Free Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing Using Max/MSP and Jitter

Image
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
Read more