Jean-Francois Charles

Dr. Yannatos passed away yesterday, October 19th, 2011. I have been his teaching assistant the last semester he taught orchestral conducting at Harvard University, in the Spring of 2009. I remember his sharp humor. His great experience was very valuable to the undergraduates who were taking his class. The Harvard Music Department has not yet announced the news on their web site, but I guess they are going to plan a celebration concert. Besides being a great musician and a charismatic conductor, he was a true educator. Published in 1978, his book Explorations in musical materials: A working approach to making music was written while Dr. Yannatos was teaching elementary composition to students with little musical training. Just a quote from the preface: When teachers reexamine the elements of music with the fresh perspective and perceptions of their students, they can better organize their own understanding of basic musical elements - no matter what period of music they specializ...

This is the list of patches I designed for the Max workshop I'm giving on Sunday in Brooklyn, New-York . It includes 5 "audio freeze" patches, 4 "phase vocoder" patches, as well as a surprise: a "live machine learning" patch. Stay tuned: I'm going to make all of these patches available online shortly after Expo '74 is over.

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...

Expo' 74 , the second conference organized by Cycling' 74, is taking place in New-York City on October 14-16. The main product developed by the innovative music software company is Max , an environment to create interactive music, art, and much more. I'm looking forward to learning plenty of fun things there, meeting old & new friends, discovering Max 6 , and attending conferences & workshops. Among the community-driven workshops, I'm gonna check out the video-game prototyping in Max , lead by Ben Houge . I'm sure sopme of this knowledge would be helpful to the students in the Master "Multimedia Products & Services" where I teach a few classes. This Expo will be an inspiring event: expect more news about it in the coming months.

Concerto cadenzas may be written or improvised. Today, the performer of a classical concerto often plays standard cadenzas, composed in the style or transcribed from earlier performances. As we are going to see today, there are also more adventurous approaches. Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote cadenzas for Mozart's clarinet concerto & flute concerto No. 1, and for Haydn's trumpet concerto. The recording is available: Stockhausen conducts Haydn & Mozart (with his own cadenzas) . Beethoven improvises for Mozart... (details at the Beethoven Gateway ) For Harvard professor Robert Levin , himself an amazing improviser, a cadenza to a classical concerto is a real one only when it is improvised. And he is a master at re-creating the magic of improvisation within a given style. The new cadenza: modern, composed & improvised, with live electronics, too! The approach pianist Seda Röder took for Beethoven's Emperor concerto inherits from both the composer's and the i...