Jean-Francois Charles

I spent a couple of years with Ulrich Kreppein when we were in the Ph.D. program at the Harvard Music Department together. A great orchestral composer, Ulrich is also interested in writing opera and chamber music. Discover a part of his sonic world in the string trio Windinnres : Composers' Prize Ulrich Kreppein is one of the three recipients of the 2012 Composers' Prize, awarded by the famous Ernst von Siemens foundation . Congratulations, Ulrich! Of course, I do congratulate Ulrich's fellow composers: Luke Bedford & Zeynep Gedizlioglu !

The fourth session of my Electro-chamber music course was dedicated to Karlheinz Stockhausen 's classic Mantra . This composition for two pianos (with rind modulators, crotales, woodblock, and more) is a beautiful example of new soundscapes unveiled with live electronic music. It reminds as well that the artistic use of live electronic sound processing predates digital technology. Composing for a traditional instrument and live electronics During the class, the students explored crucial moments of the composition. In Mantra , Stockhausen found many great connections between the acoustic properties of the piano and the ring modulation process. For instance, at the top, the first piano's modulator frequency is set at 220Hz, the fundamental frequency of the A3 repeated in the melody ( musical formula , to use Stockhausen's lingo). With this setting, the piano sounds almost natural on the A3 note, and grows stranger and stranger the farther the note is from this central pitc...

During this month of December 2011, I spent some time learning more about Physical Computing and the related topic Embedded systems . Here are the two books I found great: The first is the reference in the domain of physical computing for artists: Physical computing: Sensing and Controlling the Physical World with Computers . It is a very good reading to get started with connecting sensors and actuators to multimedia computers. The second is a book about PIC micro-controllers: Designing embedded systems with PIC microcontrollers . It requires a little more scientific background, and is not specifically written for artists, but it is a thorough introduction to the world of micro-controllers. I am going to include more physical computing studies in the course I teach in the "Multimedia Master - Music & Sound track", at the University of Franche-Comté. I'll let you know about that, in 2012! Happy new year!

Young composers, get ready for Compos it , a new international summer music festival for composers. Dedicated to new music, this festival is staring, for its first edition (Summer of 2012), French "spectral" composers Joshua Fineberg & Tristan Murail . I wish all the best to this exciting project. Organizers include two dear friends of mine: Davide Ianni , who got a Ph.D. in music/composition from Boston University, and who is a very active music professional in the Boston area. Gabriele Vanoni , whom I studied with at Harvard University. If you are a young composer looking for a great experience in Italy next summer, make sure you visit the composit web site and get in touch with the organizers to get more details.

The second session of our Electro-chamber music class was dedicated to delays. We played with a great piece of gear: the Boss DD-7. It's a powerful compact digital delay pedal, complete with expression pedal input to continually vary the delay time for instance. But to fully understand what's going on when we're using such gear, knowing about the history of delay effects comes very handy. Analog tape delays That's why I introduced in class a couple of great musical examples featuring tape delays. Of course, two major actors in 20th century electronic music are mentioned: the group Pink Floyd and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Here are a few visuals: David Gilmour used a Binson Echorec extensively with Pink Floyd between 1968 and 1977.   The very first commercialized guitar delay was inside the Echosonic amplifier   Excerpt from Ray Butts' patent for the tape delay inside the Echosonic. Check out the recording head (REH) and the play head (PH).   O...

The 10 Max patches I designed for my workshop in Brooklyn on October 11th, 2011 are online. Download them from cycling74 : Live spectral processing . The set includes : 5 patches to have fun with audio freeze 4 variations on a phase vocoder a live machine learning tool - yes, machine learning we can use musically! Many thanks to Rob, from cycling74, who took the picture and sent it to me! Hope to see you again soon!

I got interested in Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker 's choreographic work when I was a student at Strasbourg Conservatory . Around 2003, Marie-Claude Ségard, head of the conservatory, organized a visit to the dance school lead by the choreographer : P.A.R.T.S , in Brussels - I was invited and it was a great experience. At the same time, I and a couple of friends were playing Thierry De Mey's music: we performed a Maximalist! program during the international contemporary music festival Musica . You can imagine my surprise when, on October 27th, aboard the Boston-NYC Chinatown bus, I came upon the following note in the People section of the New York Times: I must confess that, among all of the new music I've been listening to this year, Beyoncé's album 4 (sponsored link) ranks at the very top. Anchored in the tradition, she is also innovating, but as importantly, the production quality is up to high standards. I was glad to read that Beyoncé completely acknowledges havi...