Jean-Francois Charles

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com Clarinetist and clarinet teacher Rebecca Pourchot will be performing Electroclarinet 1 during a concert in Montbéliard on Friday, February 4th. She did a great job at performing both the Bb clarinet and the live electronics. One of the main ideas behind the Electroclarinet is to have the performer play as organically as possible both the clarinet and the sound processing, as electric guitar players are used to doing so well! An excerpt of the draft score: Concert is at 8:30 p.m. in the "Palot" concert hall. Hope to see you there! You'll also hear music by composers Daniele Segre Amar & Lorenzo Bianchi, and by students of the conservatory composition program.

Music composers are continuously playing with an audience's expectations . As soon as the music starts, the composer has already created expectations in the audience minds. Whether the listeners will get 100%, 50%, or 0% of the expected sounds, whether they will get them at the expected moment or later, all of this is part of the artist's choice. Here is a beautiful video featuring the great Bobby McFerrin . He doesn't need many words to show alive musical expectations: ( link to youtube video - Bobby McFerrin & expectations ) ( Bobby McFerrin on amazon.com )

For many musicians, January is the month of the NAMM show. Although NAMM means National Association of Music Merchants, they also call themselves the International Music Products Association, and the trade show is really an international event. Let's start the year 2011 with a cool synth, the OMG-1: This synth was built and presented by Eric Persing . It won't be a commercial product, but a prize in a competition to be announced. The instrument features true analog synthesis (a Moog Little Phatty), digital synths (a Mac mini is inside the case), keyboards and touch surfaces (here, 2 iPads and 2 iPods): there is little doubt that more than a musician will work with some kind of similar set-up in 2011!

Granular synthesis is a fundamental sound synthesis or rather sound processing method. Working on a new composition, Electroclarinet 3 for basset-horn and live electronics , I've been studying Native Instruments Reaktor 's take on granulation. When teaching sound granulation , I like to use two engines based in cycling74's Max MSP: granularized , available in the Max examples Nobuyasu Sakonda's granular synthesis patch Granularized, a Max MSP example The interesting approach in Reaktor's Grainstates FX consists in eight "scenes" that can be recalled at will, and in the presence of a rotating buffer easy to freeze. The main adaptation I needed to do was to increase the buffer size from 8 to 60 seconds to record my whole "theme" when it's first played. But I'll let you know more about the composition next year (coming soon!) Grainstates, one of Reaktor's granular instruments. If you want to know and experiment more, one of the referenc...

Armand Angster is my clarinet master. Listen to him talk (in French!) about his ensemble Accroche Note , improvisation, and working with composers. He was the guest of Anne Montaron in the program Le Portrait (France Musique radio) on November 22nd. You can stream the half hour program until December 22nd: Armand Angster on France Musique . Armand Angster and his contrabass clarinet

My friend Michael Heller is the new leader of the Harvard Dudley House Jazz Bands . He is brilliant both as an ethnomusicologist and as a musician. I am thrilled to announce the wonderful program he created for this winter concert: the big band is performing Mary Lou Williams's Zodiac Suite on December 17th at 8 p.m. in Harvard's Paine Hall ( Harvard Music Building ). This is the first large ensemble performance of the work in 65 years: I hope you can attend! More details on the Dudley House web site .

At the beginning of November, I told you almost everything about the multiphonic sounds in Electroclarinet 1 . Here are two excerpts of the score, far easier to read than my manuscript ! It starts like this: On the following excerpt, the framed melodies are turned into chords, harmonies: Well, given the recent weather in France, it makes sense that I speak about frozen sounds.