Senza Misura

Wait - Galway Kinnell

2012-01-22T11:42:00.001-08:00

Wait

     Wait, for now.
     Distrust everything, if you have to.
     But trust the hours.  Haven't they
     carried you everywhere, up to now?
     Personal events will become interesting again.
     Hair will become interesting.
     Pain will become interesting.
     Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
     Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
     their memories are what give them
     the need for other hands.  And the desolation
     of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
     carved out of such tiny beings as we are
     asks to be filled; the need
     for the new love _is_ faithfulness to the old.
     
     Wait.
     Don't go too early.
     You're tired. But everyone's tired.
     But no one is tired enough.
     Only wait a while and listen.
     Music of hair,
     Music of pain,
     music of looms weaving all our loves again.
     Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
     most of all to hear,
     the flute of your whole existence,
     rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.
     
                                 -- Galway Kinnell

2011-11-20T12:34:00.001-08:00

Does sound prevail?
itself a mere illusion of form.
As these words are written
so are they the source of confusion
your words are not your own.

Persuasion

2011-10-30T09:42:00.000-07:00

"We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in memory. And we shall do so if we establish similitudes as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but active (imagines agentes); if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we ornament some of them, as with crowns or purple cloaks, so that the similitude may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily."

- Cicero

Ad Herennium

Music, a means of delusion

2010-11-13T22:09:00.000-08:00

music
the means of delusion
twisting thoughts
through tacit illusion

2010-08-27T21:43:00.000-07:00

The rejection of rejection

To renounce the need to renounce

Distil the Preamble

...

anti-social music

2010-06-06T16:58:00.000-07:00

Does music have to be socialized? Do we have to define music according to social categories or even analyse music through a social lens? By placing music within a social structure, do you automatically negate music? Music is much more than national, more than sexual, more than queer or heterosexual, more than feminist, masculine, more than post-colonialist, beyond economic cultures of wealthy and poor, classes of elite and low brow, sacred, and secular. Perhaps, by defining music within these social structures you actually begin to negate music. Music is beyond its definition.

this chain

2010-03-17T20:27:00.000-07:00

From freedom

(we are always free)
from inhibition
(there were never any)
From
spirit to
mind to
hand to
pen to
paper to
eye to
mind to
hand to
sound to
ear to
mind to
(what spirit there is?)
this chain
to you

nominalizing

2010-02-14T20:19:00.000-08:00

engendering

formalizing

flocking
agglomerating
dispersing
conversing
emerging
dilating
contextualizing
convoluting
streaming
arresting
sustaining
prolonging
internalizing
harmonizing
diffusing
stratifying
streaming
overlapping
composing

Figure...

2010-01-21T20:02:00.000-08:00

The creative process is so strange. I have been struggling with the last movement of this two piano and percussion work for the past month. I've been going in circles, writing and rewriting. Nothing seems to fit. Everything I wrote seemed trivial, and cliché. Looking through my sketches I discover a short little musical figure that I had written down in my sketchbook 4 months ago. I had completely forgotten about it and suddenly, it hit me... The first 3 minutes came out in two hours...

One little musical figure can hold so much. I must believe, the piece is already finished. I see it it, in my mind... and I merely have to write it down.

Poser

2009-12-24T19:46:00.000-08:00

Hello, well it has been almost a year since my last post. I guess I am not so great at this blogging phenom, but hey, my new year's resolution is to connect more with others, even if it is by the disembodied medium of the internet.

So, here is a brief update of my past year: Finished the Masters degree, went to the National Arts Program in Ottawa, studied music in Paris and rested in Lyon for the summer, had music presented at the International Computer Music Conference, started a PhD, taught two courses - musicianship and Digital Studio Composition, and tried to fit in composing and numerous trips to New York.

Ok, so my current thoughts relate to postures. I'm writing a work for the MusiMars New Music Festival whose theme this year is gesture. While I find that gesture has become a catch phrase in contemporary music, probably because of the lack of any cognitively accessible features, I find the one concept missing, is postures. Postures, are static gestures. Postures, convey meaning, such as in Yoga, and are symbolic such as kneeling during prayer. Postures can have line, force, energy, and weight. So how do I convey postures musically? I've explored it in the studies I did in Paris this past summer, but now I am trying to develop this concept further. How can the concept of posture be applied to musical/sound parameters such as harmony, rhythm, form, and timbre?

As always, I'm always questioning, not always satisfied with the result, but it's always worth a try.

Talk soon.

Onwards

2009-01-01T12:49:00.001-08:00

It has been a while since my last blog entry. I have finished the percussion quartet and an excerpt of it can be heard with the player. It's called "Then Time Killed the Wind". I'm generally pleased with the result. However, I have realized that just because you utilize a certain metaphor as the basis for your musical composition, it does not necessarily change the way your music sounds. For example, as I was dealing with biological rhythms and genetic sequencing with my percussion piece, it did not make the piece sound "biological" - if that is even possible. What is more important, I feel, is how one represents their metaphor. In the end, composition is all about choices.

I have also recently returned from Hamburg, Germany, where my cello and electronics work was just performed by the Ensemble Moderne Academy. It was an amazing experience. Although I was not there for very long it was awesome to experience German culture for a little bit.

I'm currently in the process of finishing my second work that utilizes the genetic time grid that I have been working with. This piece is for Violin, Ondes Martenot samples and Live Electronics. It's being written for Donovan Seidle of the Rubbing Stone Ensemble in Calgary. The performance is in three weeks so I don't have much time to develop the electronics. But what else is new...

A biological metaphor of live electronics

2008-09-05T18:24:00.000-07:00

The relationship between an organism and their external environment may serve as a model for live-electronics in musical composition. An environment is something that surrounds and encircles, but for there to be a surrounding there must be something to be surrounded. An organism and their environment are not autonomous. An environment is determined by the activities of the organism. Organisms actively construct a world around them. An example could be as small as the layer of warm air that is generated and surrounds our bodies. As well, an organism's environment is constantly altered. Energy is constantly being transformed. The most simple example would be the transfer of water to air. In live electronics. the instrumentalist(s) determines the effects of the particular Digital Signal Processing. The result of which could be considered an electronic sonic environment that surrounds the instrumentalist(s). Finally, acoustic energy from the performer is transformed, or in musical terms "processed" by the electronic component and transforms it to another form of energy.

Inverted repeat

2008-09-01T19:38:00.000-07:00

As I have written before, I am writing a percussion quartet with electronics. In this piece I am attempting to develop a rhythmic syntax using a genetically influenced rule system. So far the work has been extremely time consuming and frustrating. However, in the course of my research I have realized how weak I am at musical rhythm. I feel that most of my training has been focused on harmony and pitch and yet rhythm seems to be somewhat of an afterthought in my music. Well, I think I opened up a pandora's box as I have suddenly become aware the importance of rhythmic process - both at a local level and at the level of form... It never ends does it? This endless creative development...

Methods of musical evolution

2008-07-31T22:04:00.000-07:00

In evolutionary biology there existed two theories for the process of evolution. The first being the transformational model in which every organism within a population changes simultaneously to a common goal. The second model was the variational model. In this process, each organism changes individually, but the changes that are beneficial to an organism relative to their environment and to their population produce offspring that have a better chance of survival. Thus over time, the individuals that have this trait overtake a population.

It was the latter model that was proven to be right. I think that most composers actually use the first model, the transformational model, as a means from going from one musical idea to the next whereby selected musical material changes towards a common goal. But in this work I am trying to use the variational model and I'm sleepless right now. How do I do this?

Always questioning

2008-06-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to articulate silence?

...then time killed the wind...

2008-05-31T15:37:00.000-07:00

My current project is a work for percussion quartet and electronics. It's for the McGill percussion Ensemble of which I've been granted a composer residency. This piece has taken my compositional path full circle. Meaning, I'm being drawn to ideas and concepts that I learned from when I was studying genetics. I'm trying to apply biochronology concepts such as circadian rhythms and entrainment to musical processes. As well as use genetic concepts such as crossover mutations and the assignment of rhythmic modules to genetic sequences.

There have been composers before me who have mapped musical tones to genetic sequences and the results I find to musically uninteresting. Mostly because the approach was too linear or merely served as an educational tool. There was something missing in their musical result. The use of genetic algorithms has also been widely researched. However, I personally feel that no mathematical or computational model may successively emulate any organic process. We must remember that science itself is a metaphorical language because it tries to explain concepts that we have no way of experiencing directly ie. crossover mutations, genetic blueprint. In other words, humans may be a machine, but we are not just a machine...

You may ask, why does this interest me? Well, I feel that most music is really about time. Genetic material has a fascinating time metaphor within it. The information contained in our genes comes from our heredity, our past, but our genes are something physical in the present. Yet their expression and their resulting physical manifestation happens in the future. Thus our genetic material literally contains three separate time frames.

My fascination with this is much like Bartok's or Vivier's fascination with the Fibonacci series. Because this series is found so much in nature, it might lend a "natural" feeling to ones musical structures. My intention is the same with genetic material. Think about it, all the biodiversity within our world is based on the patterns of four DNA molecules which is common to every biological organism on this planet. Musical pieces are much like biological organisms. There is a definite information structure that a composer works with similar to genetic information processes. I hope that by the use of these biological metaphors I will discover a unique organicism for my music. Ok let's begin...

Questions of science, progress and music

2008-05-30T07:04:00.001-07:00

The conditions necessary for progress at one stage in history become bars to further progress in another. For example, in evolutionary biology, Darwin brought the focus of evolution to within; to internal mechanical processes. Presently, the time has come when further progress in our understanding of nature, requires that we consider the relationship between the external and the internal - the organism within the environment. In musical terms, we must consider not only the internal theoretical processes applied within a musical composition but also its external, sensory world, physical response. How does your music sound within this world and within the mind of the listener...?