Jean-Francois Charles

Music Hackspace is an online hub to learn hands-on how to work with art & technology. On Saturday, I was invited to give a workshop on the topic Max 9 - Get a better sound in Max using ABL objects . It was a great pleasure to meet musicians and share with them some of my experience with Max. If you are interested, there is a workshop on February 8 on a very close topic: Max 9: Adaptive audio fx systems with ABL and preset mixing . Although the technical concepts in Jordan Tyler Munson's and my workshop are almost the same, I'm sure we are presenting them in a different way. With Max, there's always another way of getting to the same goal, or a different way of using the same objects!

Update: check out the Jamshid Jam album, featuring Ramin Roshandel on setār and Jean-François Charles on live electronics . A Form By Which To Be Possessed is an exhibition of new works by the BOLT artist-in-residence Maryam Taghavi . You are invited to the closing reception: Saturday, November 13, 6 pm Chicago Artists Coalition, 2130 W. Fulton St, Chicago, IL 60612 Ramin Roshandel and I are going to perform a duet setar & live electronics. We are going to respond to the art, and perform with Shams Asna (voice & spoken text). We hope to see you there!

This summer, the Prisma group of composers & music technologists met online instead of at Ircam . The meetings took place every day from July 6 to July 9, in four different time zones: 6-8pm in Paris, Berlin & Vienna 12-2pm in Boston/Cambridge 11am-1pm in Winnipeg & Iowa City 9-11am in Los Angeles We had a great set of presentations: Hans Tutschku: Composing with Large Sound Collections Jacopo Baboni Schilingi: Le Temps de l'Écho Johannes Kretz: creative (mis)understandings Johannes Kretz: Experiences with Live-Electronics – completely on iPad and (almost) completely wireless Orjan Sandred & Julien Vincenot: Cluster Engine from PWGL into Max as part of MOZlib Orjan Sandred: Creative projects Jean-François Charles: Spectral envelopes: gaussian blur, cepstral cross-synthesis, and historical pattern recognition As per usual, the presentations touched on topics ranging from aesthetics to art & technology. We all learnt a lot. We hop...

After we could not play Petrified during the 2020 Electrocution Festival , I arranged a new version of the piece for baritone saxophone & live electronics . As soon as I sent it to saxophonist extraordinaire Stéphane Sordet , he was onboard to make a recording! Stéphane recorded the saxophone part in Brest, while I adjusted and recorded the live electronics in Iowa City. After I sent him a mixed version he added video: I'm humbled by the amount of work Stéphane put in this project. I'm looking forward to having the opportunity to perform it live with him! The live electronics may be performed in different ways: a musician performs live electronics as designed and provided by the composer, or a variation thereof, in a duet with the saxophonist. a musician performs improvised live electronics in a duet with the saxophonist. the saxophonist performs by themselves using the live electronics as designed and provided by the composer, or a variation thereof. the saxophon...

Petrified is a composition for double bass and live electronics. Bassist Will Yager premiered the piece during our Spring 2019 Laptop Orchestra concert . In this first version, I performed the live electronic processing live. Will asked me to prepare a standalone version that he could take on the road. Here is a screenshot of the live audio processing interface: In this work, the electronics consist of two layers: live spectral processing of the double bass, including pitch shifting, frequency shifting, noise shaping, etc. multi-playhead sampler, applied to sound sampled at different points during the piece. These sonic layers are also mixed with the direct sound of the instrument, and sent to a delay and two reverb lines. Tonight, Will is performing Petrified with the standalone live electronics, during the Electronic Music Studio concert, Stark Studio, Voxman Building, 7:30. Update: the score and Max patch for Petrified, version for double bass & live electronics , a...

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com On Monday, November 17th, I'll be performing in Helsinki, in the beautiful "Black Box" space at the Sibelius Academy, during the MuteFest'14 electronic music festival . Information is also available here, in Finnish . I'm looking forward to meeting the academy's dynamic artistic community, as well as cellist Émilie Girard-Charest, who is performing on Monday, too . Program notes I'm going to première Electroclarinet 6 , for bass clarinet & live electronics, and perform Electroclarinet 5 , as well. Tentative program notes: Electroclarinet 5 is a composition for clarinet & live electronics, and an homage to Igor Stravinsky . The score is built around four motives directly inspired by Stravinsky's Three Pieces for Clarinet solo and Piano-Rag-Music . The performer plays around the score, following paths of her/his choice, or adventuring out of the suggested paths. The live electroni...