Jean-Francois Charles

The LOUi musicians are thrilled to perform tomorrow during the University of Iowa Computing Conference ! We are going to play with special guest Ryan Wedoff, who is not only the President of the UI ACM Student Chapter , but also a great jazz trumpet player. For the occasion, we came up with a very special program, including a brand new version of Duke Ellington's In a Sentimental Mood , for trumpet, jazz guitar, acoustic guitar, synthesizer, alto saxophone, and four computers:

I had the pleasure of meeting excellent musicians at the University of Iowa School of Music . Among them is bassoonist Benjamin Coelho , with whom we just performed together on Sunday, February 19th: we were invited to introduce the University of Iowa's 34th Presidential Lecture , given by Professor Gregory Carmichael. We performed a new piece: Scratch , for melodic instrument and live electronics, an homage to Karlheinz Stockhausen and Grandmaster Flash . I like a lot working with Ben: not only for the music, but also for his sense of humour! I hope you can make it to our next performance: Friday, February 24th: I Hear IC, Java House, Iowa City, event starts at 7:30 p.m.

I'm thrilled to take part in July to the Composit Music Festival & Summer Course 2017 . The new Composit Live Electronics Ensemble, CLEE, will get started this year. Following Composit 2016 's improvisation sessions with instruments, laptops, and analog electronics, we will include regular ensemble workshops in the July 2017 schedule. The students will play in the ensemble, mixing acoustic & electronic music. The ensemble will work on improvisation and on compositions by the group members. Of course, there will be a public performance in beautiful Rieti! Apply to the composition program to get your piece performed by great new music specialists, and to work closely with composers Pierluigi Billone and Davide Ianni . Or apply to the Sound Augmented program, get live electronics and advanced Max lessons, discover the axoloti music making platform, take part to CLEE, maybe work on an installation project, and get feedback from artist and composer Peter Ablinger . Don...

This Friday,January 27th, I'll be presenting the movie at the invitation of the University of Iowa's Department of Cinematic Arts and Film Studies Colloquium. After a short introduction (including words from other members of the team), we will screen the film, and have time for Questions & Answers. I hope to see you there: it's at 3:30 p.m. in E105, Adler Journalism and Mass Communication Building. More information: Eleventh Year's movie trailer

You liked the trailer ? Enjoy now Dziga Vertov 's 1928 movie with its brand new soundtrack! Dziga Vertov's The Eleventh Year on youtube . (youtube movie updated January 29th, 2017) Close-up of faces in The Eleventh Year , from Lev Manovich's Vizualizing Vertov article.

For a long time, this wonderful collection of recordings was available only on a set of 3 CDs, coming with a detailed booklet. Great news: the Centre de Recherche en Ethno-musicologie du CNRS now makes the files accessible online, including a pdf of the booklet: Les voix du monde, une anthologie des expressions vocales ( Voices of the World, an Anthology of Vocal Expression ) I use these sounds regularly when teaching: for instance, the beetle-propelled Papua New Guinea melody #33 on CD #2 is very interesting when discussing formants. More generally, it is a well organized and documented collection of recordings dedicated to voices, and focusing on: Solo Voice Techniques: from calls to breath, from spoken voice to harmonic singing, from timbre to ornamentation. Polyphonic Techniques: from heterophony to chords, from drones to counterpoint. I also occasionally found there some inspiration when composing: I wrote the coda for Risorius for six singers after listening to this gi...

During the Thanksgiving break, I watched on PBS the whole Soundbreaking series. This great show, subtitled Stories From The Cutting Edge Of Recorded Music , sheds light on the process of record and music making, through eight episodes: The Art of Recording Painting with Sound The Human Instrument Going Electric Four on the Floor The World is Yours Sound and Vision I Am My Music Here is the official trailer: Precisions about the Talk Box I found just one piece of incorrect information in the series, when the great Ben Harper describes how the Talk Box works. I have been teaching a course called The Spectral Nature of Sound at the University of Iowa, and I love to introduce the students to the Talkbox before studying other voice-processing machines such as the analog vocoder, the phase vocoder, a.o. In the episode about Voice, the Human Instrument , Ben Harper shows a great Roger Troutman excerpt, and says that the box sends electrical current down the throat of th...