May 11, 2008

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Danceaday -- Today, Boris has finished his year of Danceaday. To celebrate this, I have composed this 8bit minute in his honor.

Congratulaions, Boris! Your hard work and dedication to your art continue to motivate and inspire.

May 9, 2008

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Judson Church is my final danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Dance-A-Day will complete its year on Sunday. We've made 43 videos together over the last year. Wow.

In addition to scoring this final video, I also got to be the cameraman for the dancing. We were attending a show at Judson Church, an important venue in the dance world. Afterwards, Boris made this video (with some guest performers) so that he too could dance in Judson Church.

May 2, 2008

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Big Feet Birthday -- Today is my birthday. To celebrate I've dug up a recording that my uncle made for me on the occasion of my thirteenth birthday (twenty years ago...). As you will hear, he was very sensitive during my awkward teenage years :-)

Today is also my second-to-last danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Be sure to check out his video today, he managed to unearth an old(ish) photo of me from his personal archive...

Happy Birthday Me!

April 25, 2008

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Subway Break s this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. He sent me video of dancing in the NYC subway, so I added a little amen break just 'cause.

April 18, 2008

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Say What? is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. I found some vocalizations at The Freesound Projectand used them for this collaboration.

In case you haven't noticed yet, Boris will be finished with his Dance-A-Day podcast on May 11. Tune in while you still can...

attributions:
the sample-pack Dr Laura Turner by scuzzpuck
monkey-vox by lunarsight

April 11, 2008

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City Scene is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Yesterday he sent me a video of him dancing on the streets of Washington DC with a nice note about my move to NYC. I had a flash of inspiration to take 60x365 to the streets as well and make today's piece while riding on the subway this morning. All went well, except that I spent the day at a symposium without the ability to get online to post. So Boris has been forced to wait all day as well. (Sorry Boris!)

April 4, 2008

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MLK is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Boris marked this occasion with a dance at the future site of a memorial to King. I created this soundscape using a sample of King's voice, "Like anybody, I would like to live."

March 28, 2008

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Cherry Blossoms is today's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. A little celebration of Spring here in chilly Ohio.

March 14, 2008

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12345 is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. This was hard for me to make as musicians are good at counting to four....

March 7, 2008

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Where? - This morning Boris wrote me to remind me that I owed him a piece for this week's danceaday.com collaboration. I quickly made a little 8-bit jewel and sent it to him, but forgot to post it here... until now. Enjoy.

February 28, 2008

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Leap -- Today, 60x365 celebrates Leap Day, even though the rest of the world won't until tomorrow. Why, you ask. Well this is 60x365, not 60x366. There will be no new music tomorrow. Instead I will be posting some longer tracks that have been generated for performance situations based on earlier minutes.

This piece is also this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Cruise on over to his site tomorrow to see his dance.

February 22, 2008

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Blue is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis, continuing his series of dances for Black History Month. For today I decided to pay homage to the blues, that African-American form that is a cornerstone of our culture. This piece is a re-examination of a piano composition I composed several years ago, itself a re-examination of the blues. Enjoy.

February 15, 2008

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Riots is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. He is dancing this week at 14th and U (in Washington DC) where the riots broke out after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Boris noted that "In my lifetime the street has exploded in racial tension and now has White people soliciting votes for to elect a Black president."

This week's sound is built from one small sample of a speech by King.

February 8, 2008

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Fight is this week's danceaday.com collaboration, continuing Boris's series of dances for Black History Month. Today's piece samples from bassist/composer Charles Mingus's Haitian Fight Song. If you are unfamiliar with his work, I'd recommend that you start with these albums:

Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ Blues and Roots
Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ Mingus Ah Um

His autobiography, Beneath the Underdog is also well worth a look.

February 1, 2008

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SQ is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. To honor Black History Month Boris is doing a series of dances at black history sites around Washington DC. Today's takes place at the Mount Vernon slave quarters. I've scored this dance with samples from a recording of Berta, Berta by Branford Marsalis.

January 25, 2008

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One Inch:2 continues my series of Nine Inch Nails remixes. Today's song, Another Version of the Truth, also serves as this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis.

January 18, 2008

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Dread (Cajun) -- for this week's danceaday.com collaboration, Boris sent me a video of people dancing at a social event. It's all nice and happy. I decided to see about adding a soundtrack to distort that perception....

January 11, 2008

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Loose Change is the sound of, well, loose change. It is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. Enjoy.

January 4, 2008

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Old Tape is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis, the first of 2008. I tried to make this sound like an old piece of audio tape that had been recorded on many times. It fits the mood and style of the video.

December 21, 2007

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Holiday Movie is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. The video he sent reminded me of old 35mm home movies, so I went with it.

December 14, 2007

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twenty five celebrates my 25th danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. We decided to emulate the collaborative process of John Cage and Merce Cunningham. We each created our own part separately, only combining them at the end. Any resulting correspondences in sound and movement are pure serendipity.

There are 25 sound segments of various lengths, arranged randomly. Some are repeated. Some are filtered using randomly selected filters with random parameter settings.


(For those of you anxiously awaiting more Christmas cheer, I will resume my 12 part holiday series on Sunday.)

[12.25.07: Boris has made another video using this music, check it out.]

December 7, 2007

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Dance no.1 is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. It's our 24th podcast. In preparation for next week's 25th collaboration, I revisited the music from our very first podcast. In case you've forgotten, you can find it here.

November 30, 2007

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Leaves -- 60x365 concludes Listener Appreciation Month with another danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. He sent me a video of himself rolling around in some leaves. I took the sound of the leaves, tweaked them a bit, and added some gentle guitar noodling. Enjoy.

Thank you to everyone who submitted an idea for November. I will continue to accept ideas throughout the rest of this project, so if you have one, don't hesitate to share it.

November 23, 2007

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Xma$$ale celebrates good ol' American capitalism with a trip to the mall on Black Friday. The idea for this piece comes from a suggestion by composer Alex Shapiro. She suggested I make an update of the passage in Charles Ives' "Three Places in New England" that layers different marching tunes on top of each other to simulate standing on a street corner as a parade passes. My version replaces the marching bands with canned Christmas music that you might hear at the mall during holiday shopping season.

I sent this along to Boris for this week's danceaday.com collaboration, and he took to the malls.

Check out Alex's blog - Notes From the Kelp.

November 16, 2007

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Relativity is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. The video he sent for this week shows him dancing on and around a statue of Albert Einstein in Washington DC. I did a quick search of "Einstein and music" that yielded this document.

One of Einstein's favorite composers was JS Bach. One of my favorite composers is also JS Bach. I particularly like Glenn Gould's interpretations of Bach's music. Today's piece samples Goulds recording of Bach's Two-Part Invention #2 in c minor. Enjoy.

November 9, 2007

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Soft Shoes is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. The soundscore comes from a suggestion by Lillian Gray. When I first announced Listener Appreciation Month she gave me a list of different sound sources for me to use. We'll be hearing from her again.

The source sounds come from The Freesound Project. They are StepDance_01.wav, StepDance_02.wav, StepDance_03.wav, StepDance_04.wav, and StepDance_05.wav. All by Ironi Alef.

November 2, 2007

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Shadowrock is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. For the sound I used parts of the intro to Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline. These ideas were originally developed for yesterday's piece, but ultimately didn't work there. I've also added some rock sounds I found at The Freesound Project. They are SPLASH by petenice and selections from the sample-pack Falling Rocks by Melak.

October 26, 2007

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Splinter is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis.

October 19, 2007

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Ginger Dances is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. It's one of my favorite videos so far. After you've watched the dance, check out Boris's interview on Voice of America.

October 9, 2007

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Birthday Boris -- Boris Willis of danceaday.com celebrates his birthday today. What music is appropriate for guy named Boris who is celebrating his birthday in October? Hmmm... this thing almost wrote itself. Tune in Friday to watch Boris dance to this abomination.

Happy Birthday Boris!


(Thanks to the Illegal Art collective for including a recording of Happy Birthday to You on their Copyright Infringement Advisory compilation.)

October 5, 2007

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GMU Invader -- For this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis, he made a video retracing his route to class across the campus of George Mason University. I scored it with a little 8bit tune created using Cbasicore64. Enjoy.

September 28, 2007

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Big DeLaToh is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. I used an acapella track of The Beastie Boys' Triple Trouble. After slicing and shuffling the syllables, the phrase "big delatoh" emerged and I knew that I was on to something....

September 21, 2007

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Show & Prove is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. When he sent me this video, Boris said:

I was a part of Holly Bass' performance art piece Show and Prove at Transformer Gallery. Anyone could ask her to dance and she put music on her iPod and a earpiece in my ear and we danced for a song. It was somethings slow with a woman's voice about love. I keep thinking it was billie holiday singing the man I love but it was not that song.

I think it's interesting to see how many people will walk by Boris when he's dancing in public without giving him a second glance (many of his posts demonstrate this behavior). I tried to capture that in my scoring by buring an old scratchy recording underneath subtly looping crowd sounds. Enjoy.

September 14, 2007

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Teledrone is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. It was my turn to go first, so on Monday I pointed my browser to The Freesound Project and grabbed the "Random Sample of the Day", which was telefon-piep.wav by barb. That is the only sound for this piece.

September 7, 2007

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Prayer is today's danceaday.com collaboration.

August 31, 2007

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Pants Dance is today's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. A coworker introduced me to the band Clutch. When I heard The Mob Goes Wild I knew that needed to use the song's intro to make something fun for Boris.

August 24, 2007

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Today's piece is called Phantom. Can you guess why?

(hint: Today's danceaday.com collaboration takes place on the steps of the Kennedy Center, where a famous musical just closed...)

August 17, 2007

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bff is this week's danceaday.com collaboration with Boris Willis. It was a creative challenge from me to himÔø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡see what you can do with the sounds of these bff's Britney and Paris.


I don't know why I do these things....I just can't help myself.

August 10, 2007

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Diba Dances -- for today's danceaday.com collaboration Jessica DiBattista (Diba) danced for Boris's camera. I accompanied her performance with a deconstructed guitar riff.

August 3, 2007

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Holy Sonar Batman! It's another Dance-a-Day collaboration. Watch it @ http://danceaday.com

July 27, 2007

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Midday is this week's collaboration with Boris Willis of danceaday.com. After making a dance to last week's track, Late Night, he created this response. Same location, different time of day.


Freesound Project Sample attributions
heatwave.wavby laurent
Park_insects-02.wavby jakeharries

July 20, 2007

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late night is this week's collaboration with Boris Willis of danceaday.com.

darkness. crickets sing.
a moaning wind moves the trees.
distant tv sounds.

July 13, 2007

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Hare Christna is the third collaboration with Boris Willis of Dance-A-Day. I took the original audio from his video, cleaned it up a little and added some new loops and layers.

Bonus #1: Mother Daughter

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One of the inspirations for 60x365 is a similar project called Dance-A-Day by Boris Willis. As the name implies, this is a podcast where a new dance video is posted every day. These are wonderfully varied and embrace the act of creation without worrying about whether a masterpiece is being created. Boris describes this motivation in his Pre-Futurist Manifesto:

Performance happens now, it does not have to secure funding, book a theater or advertise in newspapers. It does not need rehearsal space. It does not need a concept. It does not need to last for more than a second. It does not need to be ephemeral. It does not need flowy pants, tight tops or bare feet. It does not need previews, reviews or even to be seen at all.

We've agreed to collaborate regularly on his posts, exchanging music and video, and taking turns in the lead. All of the music I create for these collaborations will also appear here. In cases where the video being scored is longer than a minute, the music will be classified as a bonus track so as not to upset the 60-second imperative I've laid out for myself.

The first collaboration, Mother Daughter, can be seen here.

July 2, 2007

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OTC #1 explores the uses of ready-made loops available with programs like Apple's GarageBand. These programs ship with scores of loops that enable any user to feel like a real producer. Here I cut apart a single bass loop and rearrange the slices into new patterns that degrade over the course of the piece. It is also the second weekly collaboration with Boris Willis of danceaday.com.