Jean-Francois Charles

A friend of mine just sent me a link to this NPR program: The Mad Musical Scientist Of Burbank, Calif. It turns out to be a short portrait of composer and sound designer Diego Stocco . His work is very interesting: he is really at the crossroads of several musical traditions. Trained as a violinist, and still a bass player, he acquired valuable classical musician skills. But he is also a heir of Pierre Schaeffer : he is a true Musique concrète living composer. As in many cases, the traditions collide to make him a great creative artist! For instance, check out this 5 minute video showing parts of the creative process for a sound signature: A funny thing is that I just mentioned Diego Stocco as an inspiring person when I was asked a few questions by Cycling '74, in prevision of the workshop I'm giving during Expo '74. Read this short interview before this live spectral processing workshop with Max . And keep in mind that nobody needs any computer or any software tools t...

A new option at the Montbéliard Conservatory In French conservatories, some music students prepare the Diplôme d'études musicales (DEM) , a diploma most often with a major in instrumental performance, with an academic level corresponding to a high school diploma. In addition to developing their performance and interpretation skills, they take additional courses in Culture musicale . Next week, I'm giving the first class of a new course counting for such a Culture musicale credit. I entitled it Electro-chamber music (or, to be precise, Électro-musique de chambre ): The electric guitar revolutionized the course of music history by revealing previously unexplored sonic colors. Is it possible to further expand the range of possibilities by integrating our classical music intruments with electronic and computer technologies? All technologies are at our fingertips today, but how best can we use them to serve music? Such are the topics explored throughout this course. Each studen...

I'm delighted to read the new features in Sibelius 7, but I'm also very excited cause I just received my first noligraph! Sibelius 7's exciting features Well, I'm quite happy with especially 2 features in Sibelius 7 that make it a more professional program. First, it can now import and export Music XML files. It seems like a minor update, but for many users it will be a very useful one, and it just makes sense that one of the leaders in music notation be able to communicate easily with many formats, especially the most open ones. Second, I love seeing the possibility to import natively SVG graphic files into Sibelius. It means that one can now generate a pdf out of Sibelius that can include the full vector based quality of graphics, for instance generated with Adobe Illustrator or other similar tools. It is no trivial function, but one proving that Avid has not forgotten serious music notators after integrating Sibelius to their teams. But what is a noligraph? The nol...