10/60 - Mind Your Graphical Trouble

I am excited to introduce several friends of mine to you today. Mind Your Graphical Trouble is the 10th minute of the 60/60 project, dedicated to Éric and Christelle Simon. Éric plays trombone with the New Orleans Jazz band Jazz Tico. He is also an amazing school teacher and director: he and his primary school pupils won a price for their scientific experiments with a stratospheric balloon.

The performer you will hear is Danny Mekonnen, here on alto sax. I took the picture on the left in the Huseac studios, after our recording session on February 9th. More than a saxophonist, Danny is a complete musician, leader of the Debo band, educator, and more. He is also a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at Harvard University. Read the Boston Herald's article about Danny and his band Debo and make sure you check out the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and their brand new CD!

The graphical score

Jean-Francois Charles Mind your graphical trouble Score

This score uses graphic notation, we could say "in a traditional way." Click on the play button to listen to Danny Mekonnen's interpretation:

  Creative Commons License

Composition process

First, I listened to the 60/60 present for this composition:

Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Ruth Brown

I especially liked the arrangement of Trouble in Mind. I made a spectrum analysis of the beginning of the recording. To get a sound's sonogram, you can use many software tools, including Ircam's Audiosculpt or the development environment Max/MSP/Jitter. Here, I used Apple Soundtrack, part of Apple Logic Studio.

sonogram

Last step, I translated this sonogram into the graphical score, playing with the Live Trace function of Adobe Illustrator.

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