Jean-Francois Charles

I just discovered that Jonathan Ruel posted great pictures of the Acquainted with the night concert. With singer Michael Barrett, we premiered my composition for voice, basset-horn, and live electronics. But as you may recall, four other premières took place during this musical evening. See all of the performers and composers on Jonathan's shots:

During the recent years, a number of musicians have been interested in my article A Tutorial on Spectral Sound Processing Using Max/MSP and Jitter . Great news if you desire to learn more on this topic: I'll be teaching a class on spectral sound processing with Max and Jitter during the Fall. It will be a few hours roughly each other week, and will be part of the composition curriculum in Montbéliard Conservatory. If you live in Paris, Strasbourg, Lyon, and you want to learn more about Max, don't hesitate to drop me an e-mail. Topics will include: Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) with Max and Jitter Filter and denoiser Audio freeze Extreme time stretching Graphically based sound processing Automatic sound slicing Anything related to the phase vocoder Max patches I made available on cycling 74's share page Your related questions & projects! (maybe you already use Audio freeze inside Max for Live , and want to know all about it...) Freeze 1.0, device for Max for Live by Egor...

Yesterday, I jotted down a few notes for a new composition: Benedictus , seventh part of my Arc-en-ciel cycle . It will be for soprano voice, clarinet (or soprano sax), double bass, percussion and live electronics. I have known for a long time that this piece will include latin words: Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini Hosanna in excelsis But I just decided they would be complemented by Charles Baudelaire's poem L'examen de minuit ( English translations ). When it's over, it will be interesting to see how much of this sketch remains in the final version!

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 ...

Harvard Music Building - picture by eileansiar During the Spring, the students in the music department met a number of candidates for a new position: professor in composition at Harvard. All of the students who met with candidates were asked to share their thoughts with the recruiting committee. Here is an excerpt from my letter to the committee. I was not completely clear on the type of profile the department was looking for (see the original announcement for this tenure position ), so I imagined a course that could be a great addition to the department's offering: an exciting Gen Ed class about 20th and 21st century music... ...A Gen Ed class that would show how great and influent have been creative artists such as (I'll name just a few from the top of my head, trying to keep in mind the American orientation) George Antheil Milton Babbitt John Cage George Crumb Miles Davis Duke Ellington Michael Jackson Scott Joplin Alan Parsons Les Paul Pink Floyd Steve Reich Buddy Rich Ka...