Jean-Francois Charles

Looking for the studio album? Visit www.electroclarinet.com Here is the live recording of Electroclarinet 4 , performed with Andrew Bentley on December 1st: Messiaen Synthesizer You can see on a previous post the schematics for the synthesizer : it is building on the tradition of the no-input mixer . I call it the Messiaen Synth not just because the piece is an homage to Olivier Messiaen: the synth itself is related to some of Messiaen's visions - it creates music out of thin air, and with two ring modulators, it is more about symmetrical harmony than about root-based harmony.

Double-bell trumpets have a long history, dating back to the 18th century. I've been interested in this instrument for a while, until I decided to use it in a composition. I'll let you know more about this new piece soon... Schiller Instruments' version of a double bell trumpet. Musical examples Herb Alpert playing It's Only a Paper Moon : In the United States, the double bell trumpet may be called a Shewhorn, at least when you are talking about Bobby Shew 's horn: More recently, Matthias Höfs creates a piece with extended symphony orchestra: Trumpeter Marco Blaauw performs the music of Georg Friedrich Haas : Below, Marco Blaauw presents his instrument: not only a double-bell, but also a quarter-tone trumpet. P.S. : on this page about the history of brass instruments during the romantic period , you will see a picture of Adolphe Sax's 7-bell instrument!

Rehearsed yesterday with my new percussion stand. Here are a couple of pictures: Not far from the blueprint ...

On Thursday, November 30th, took place the School of Music Audition Day, when High School students visit and audit to enter the School in next August. For the occasion, we performed with our guest Andrew Bentley and doctoral students Carlos Toro-Tobon and Carlos Cotallo-Solares. Here are excerpts from our Audition Quartet : Instruments Andrew Bentley plays a synthesizer made of guitar pedals (including the discontinued Pigtronix Mothership and Way Huge Ringworm ). The three other instruments have been built by the musicians around the axoloti DSP platform . Carlos Toro-Tobon's recycled guitar pick-up can be played with a drill: Carlos Cotallo-Sorales and I worked on the guitar pedal format:

Coming up on Friday: New Musical Instruments Concert with special guest Andrew Bentley, Professor of Music Technology at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki University. This will be Concert #10 in the Center for New Music Season . Event takes place at 7:30 p.m. in the Voxman Recital Hall, University of Iowa. Synths-in-Bottles One of the projects the students worked on consisted in building a synth using a glass jar. Here is a preview of the instruments in their October version: Electroclarinet 4 Among the new pieces, we are going to perform my composition Electroclarinet 4 , for Eb clarinet & analog synthesizer. The synthesizer is akin to a non-input mixer, made with guitar pedals. Andrew Bentley will be performing on this instrument. The circuit includes several levels of feedback: Program Metal Choir (collective installation) Electroclarinet 4 (Jean-François Charles) Focus (Andrew Novitskiy) Synths-in-Bottles (collective creation) Songs of Tomorrow (Mauricio Da Silva)...

Deanne Wortman is the Program Manager of the Virginia A. Myers NEXUS of Engineering and the Arts at the University of Iowa's School of Engineering. She is an a print-making artist, and passionate about collaborative art. She has been taking care of an old piano in her office, until it became... something else. This "new" instrument inspired Alexander Toth (from the New Musical Instruments course ) to compose a new piece using live feedback. We are thrilled to invite you to the première performance of the piece: November 29, 2:30pm NEXUS office, 2313 Seamans Center University of Iowa, College of Engineering Decomposition: artist statement Decomposition is a musical work that strives to strip down the teleological implications of a traditional musical instrument and the roles of musician and composer through augmentation of a disassembled piano by means of a contact microphone and a transducer. The artist explores the sonic capabilities of the piano’s base elements ...

I've been working on a new composition featuring metal percussion instruments. To properly experiment and perform, I need a percussion stand. With Ensemble New Flore , I already used DIY percussion stands: see them on this picture of the Nowa muzyka program, with Édith LeRôle and Jean-Daniel Hégé: I explored several options for my new projects, including steel bars. Finally, after talking with specialists at the Machine Shop at the School of Engineering , I studied the 8020 line of products . I've been seduced by the flexibility of this approach, and I've always loved Legos . Here is my sketch for part of the stand, I'll let you know when I'll have built it: