Jean-Francois Charles

In March, I announced the creation concert "Acquainted with the night" , during which we premièred five new musical compositions on Robert Frost's poem . I just posted the live recording. It features singer Michael Barrett (I was playing the basset-horn and live electronics).

On July 4th at Ircam in Paris, during the July 2010 Prisma meeting , I included in my presentation a few sonograms of clarinet "multiphonic" sounds, these sounds in which one can hear more than one pitch at the same time. Sonograms I recorded these rough multiphonic clarinet sounds in Cambridge on Friday, June 19th, 2010. The four sound files are available on freesound: Clarinet multiphonics . bb-clarinet-01-split.aif This is the sonogram of a rich multiphonic sound, commonly called a split tone . Here, it's played on a low fingered E (concert D), the lowest note of the Bb clarinet. The clarinet player can emphasize different harmonic regions. This is what Iannis Xenakis is calling for in his 1971 composition Charisma for clarinet and cello , when he writes Harm. Zone I, II, III, and IV . To achieve this effect, the clarinet player modulates the air pressure and changes the shape of his/her vocal cavities. We see on the sonogram that this selective reinforcement of h...

Prisma stands for International Pedagogy and Research on Assisted Musical Systems. This summer, this group of composers, musicians, and software developers is meeting from July 2nd to 5th at Ircam in Paris. Participants include: Guilherme Carvalho Michele Tadini Mikael Laurson Hans Tutschku Jacopo Baboni Schilingi Johannes Kretz Örjan Sandred Julien Vincenot Ircam in the back of the Stravinsky fountain. My talk this year: the Physics of Music & Sound Last year, my talk was entitled Ableton Live for Live Electronics . I compared Ableton Live to Max 5 , highlighting what was easier to realize using one or the other piece of software, in the context of composing for classical instruments and live electronic music. I also talked about Logic Pro, since most of the "live electronic music" capabilities used by many composers are also implemented inside Logic Pro's environment. This year, I'm going to present several dimensions of the Harvard course The Physics of ...