June 24, 2008

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Rock-Gut -- I found out last Thursday that NPR wants to do a story about 60x365 on All Things Considered. Very exciting. So today I went to the NPR studio here in New York to tape an interview with Robert Siegel. It was a lot of fun, he's very gracious and patient. The experience was extremely surreal. He was in the studio in DC so I only heard him. Since he speaks very naturally on air there's no perceptible difference in his voice between when he's making small talk and when he's conducting the interview. It was very much like having a conversation with my radio. (Even stranger was getting to sit next to Jason Bateman in the reception area before being interviewed.)

The point to this story is that I've been extremely nervous for the past two days. More than your basic nervous, a real stressed-out-rock-in-my-gut kind of nervous. So for today's piece I wanted to celebrate not feeling that way anymore by making music that sounds like it.

(Right now my interview is scheduled to air on Monday, June 30. And no, I don't know when Jason Bateman's interview will air...)

June 22, 2008

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Swept -- Lillian , good friend of 60x365, made final suggestion for a piece built from wind sounds. It's more sliced than I imagined it would be when I started, but that happens here sometimes.

attributions:
wind.wav by jaimedaniel
whislingwind.WAV by stomachache
Wind in the trees-2.wav by laurent

June 16, 2008

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Rhymes with Trucker -- Our former landlords were lazy, incompetent, and more than a bit sleazy. I mention this only because we're still dealing with them, and they still manage to make me angry. Oh well.

June 7, 2008

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Robot Dream -- is there such a thing?

June 2, 2008

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String Riff -- Three looping string sounds from Apple, carefully arranged in time, can produce complex results.

June 1, 2008

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Bang -- Well here we are, month 12. This year is almost over. Be sure to tune in everyday to experience 60x365 "live" while you still can.

May 27, 2008

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Blip -- Like rain on a roof...

May 25, 2008

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klyk -- late night fm-ing.

May 23, 2008

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Old School -- My standard answer when asked about how I began composing goes something like this:

"In high school, our drama club only had enough funding to produce a musical every other year. During the off years we would instead produce a play, but everyone always preferred to do a musical. So one year, the music teacher who advised the club found a play called "Voices From the High School" which allowed for the addition of music (either found or original). She decided to recruit students to create music for the production and a friend of mine and I ended being the only two to take up this challenge. Under the very patient guidance of this teacher we created a score for the play. The experience of presenting our music in public was enough to hook me and I've been composing ever since."

That teacher's name is Connie Zweifel and she started something that changed the course of my life.

Tthe problem with the way that I tell the story is that the friend in it had, in fact, composed before. When we worked out the music, especially the initial pieces, he was guiding and training me too. So now, publicly, I'd like to acknowledge Peter Lamos for his influence on my early craft. As best as I can remember the two maxims I gleaned from him were:

1. You can never have too much trombone


2. When in doubt, insert a drum solo

Today's piece is a collage of the very first piece we wrote for that very first show. Enjoy.

May 21, 2008

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Slip -- no words today.

May 16, 2008

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Techno(logy) -- technology transforms, baby!


(I think the cinnamon gum I'm chewing is responsible...)

May 8, 2008

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eieio -- my third installment in this little series of pieces using an old family cassette recording.

May 7, 2008

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Row Your What is another piece made sampling from an old cassette recording of my uncle, my brother and me, made years ago when I was only 5 or 6.

We were not able to sing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" as a round, so I've layered the recording to add that effect. Enjoy.

April 29, 2008

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Unequal explores the effectiveness of using loops of unequal length.

April 21, 2008

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Save Some -- For the past couple of days I have been working on a new dance piece with Emily Lawrence at Kenyon College. We needed some additional sounds, so today we recorded Emily making some vocalizations for me to build with. In between takes, some little incidental sounds and comments were captured. I've used those for today's piece so that they won't go to waste.

April 20, 2008

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Loopy -- some loops for a Sunday evening.

April 16, 2008

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Shuffled Bits is another experiment with algorithmic composition (which is a fancy way of describing the act of creating a program that in turn creates the music). I began by building some 8-bit loops in Cbasicore64 (a favorite of mine). I then fed these loops into MaxMSP and recorded the results. After a couple of tries, I ended up with today's minute. Enjoy.

April 15, 2008

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Tax Day -- This music has nothing in particular to do with the filing of taxes, but I had to call it something... ;-)

April 12, 2008

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Tonight -- Thinking about time and about the number 60 led me to this source audio...

April 5, 2008

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Rollin -- Greetings from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. We are in the middle of moving to NYC. I took a little break from driving the truck to make this minute. Enjoy.

April 3, 2008

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Ready-Made is an exploration of the organ loops that come with Apple's Garageband software.

April 1, 2008

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Happy April Fools!

March 24, 2008

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Bursting -- Today's piece is made entirely from pre-made loops provided with Apple's Garageband program. I wanted to try building something new out of these building blocks, without using any filters or distortions, only subtle time shifts and variations in length. Enjoy.

March 23, 2008

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Easter Eggs -- Happy Easter, everybody!

March 19, 2008

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Nervous Energy
my mind races in circles
round and round and round

March 9, 2008

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Seen Memory -- Thursday night I had an awesome performance with Esther Palmer (Seen Performance) and Amiti Perry. I mixed some loops and found sounds into a meditative soundscape. It was a lot of fun. Today, I celebrate that performance with this minute of remembering.

March 4, 2008

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Autodial celebrates Primary Day in Ohio with a collage from recent messages on my answering machine.

March 3, 2008

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Seen is a one-minute version of some music I'm playing for a new piece with Seen Performance this Thursday in NYC (minus the rain sounds...) If you're in the area stop by and say hi.

http://seenperformance.org/shows.html

March 1, 2008

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Lions and Lambs - 60x365 enters March, and we all know that old saying.

sample attributions:
20070407.lambs.kids.WAV by dobroide
Lions Roar at Lincoln Park Zoo.wav by Terwelp

February 27, 2008

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Are Many -- Day 2 of the 2008 Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts is beginning. Last night I got to hear several great bands perform, including Beatrix*Jar. They describe their work as "fuzzy sound collage" and it consists of tight beats layered with samples and circuit bent instruments. After the show I picked up one of their CD's. This morning I remixed a few measures from their Ready to Rock track for your listening pleasure. Enjoy.

(If you like this music, there's more on their siteÔø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡http://beatrixjar.com/Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡and on their myspace profileÔø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡http://www.myspace.com/beatrixjars)

February 24, 2008

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Cutting - don't run with this music. ;-)

February 20, 2008

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Shimmer -- I used the same sound source to make this piece as well. Fascinating, no?

February 14, 2008

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VD -- Happy February 14th!

February 7, 2008

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thatyoudont -- just some grainy looping for a rainy Thursday.

January 31, 2008

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Cut
sound of scissors, looped.
notes hang in arpeggios.
torn fabric textures.

January 30, 2008

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One Inch:3 continues my series of Nine Inch Nails remixes. Today's piece comes from the track Meet Your Master.

January 29, 2008

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Perk -- just some random, looping drums for this dreary Tuesday afternoon...

January 27, 2008

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Techno~Sin(e) combines my recent explorations of MaxMSP's techno~ object with my earlier "Simple Sin(e)" series. Enjoy the glitchy goodness.

January 23, 2008

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Techno~ Redux -- Today is another etude exploring the techno~ object in MaxMSP.

Basically, the techno~ object is a very accurate sequencer (with a couple of its own quirky additions) that allows easy synchronization with other versions of itself . Today's piece takes advantage of this fact by creating a series of gradually changing loops, one divided into 7 parts (the high notes) and the other divided into 11 parts (the bass notes).

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 16, 2008

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Rockin' Piano -- my favorite moments from Johnny Rivers' recording of Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu were always the piano fills.

January 15, 2008

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Modem Music -- Today I celebrate our upgrade to a DSL connection to the internet. No more modem for us!

January 12, 2008

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Horsies -- Today's piece is a leftover listener suggestion. My sister pointed me to this site with singing horses, so I sampled and looped them.

Check out the original site: http://svt.se/hogafflahage/hogafflaHage_site/Kor/hestekor.swf

January 9, 2008

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Tar - a little mid-weak drummin' to relieve the dreary....

January 6, 2008

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ing danc and -- Scrambed sounds for this Sunday afternoon.

December 18, 2007

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Christmaas -- Do you ever feel like this at the holidays?

December 6, 2007

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00010000

blazing 8-bit loops
pouring out of my Gameboy
dance, Mario, dance


***
If you're in the Columbus area you can come hear me live. I will be playing my Gameboy this weekend at the Colmbus Dance Theater. Read all about it.
***

November 4, 2007

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Toy Story -- Today's listener suggestion comes from my wife JoLayne. Last year at a White Elephant gift exchange she received four iZ toys from a certain fast food chain. These toys play little loops that can be manipulated by twisting their ears.

For today's piece JoLayne and I performed a little iZ concert, which I recorded with my laptop's internal microphone. Enjoy.

October 30, 2007

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Scanner uses a set of samples found at The Freesound Project. This collection is by Noisecollector and is called Scanner. Enjoy.

October 29, 2007

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Words and La la la -- One persistent challenge of doing this daily podcast is a shortage of ideas. Every new day brings with it the need for another new piece, and many times the only idea I have is so-so at best. Today is one of those days.

I've recently reread parts of Paul Morleys' Words and Music, which tells a history of pop music by looking for the connection between Kylie Minogue's Can't Get You Out of My Head and Alvin Lucier's I am Sitting in a Room. I wondered if putting the sounds of their voices together would help illuminate that connection, it doesn't. But I've already made it, so here it is.

Do have an idea for a piece I should do? Let me hear it. I'm looking for listener suggestions for November. Read more about it.

October 28, 2007

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Orange Cheese is made using more sounds I sampled from a CD titled Scary Sounds of Halloween. The guy who made the original called his track Scary Invitation. It's so corny, I love it...

October 27, 2007

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Scrub explores digital imperfection in all its glitchy goodness.

October 20, 2007

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Spooky is made using sounds I sampled from a CD titled Scary Sounds of Halloween. I picked it up at a certain French department store for only $1. The CD was made by this guy.

October 18, 2007

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Entropy -- another drum and bass deconstruction.

October 17, 2007

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Joyful Noise 3

Joyful Noise fading
backwards into memory,
distant vibrations

October 16, 2007

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Joyful Noise 2 -- here's another collage made using an old cassette recording of a music group I helped create while in college. In addition to the sentimental attachment I have to this piece of sound, I am drawn to the lo-fi nature of the recording. The tape hisses and warbles, the instruments are unbalanced, odd background noises creep into the sound.

We live in a world that often seeks the highest fidelity in recorded sound, trying to achieve the effect of having the band right there in the room with you. To me, an old recording like this gains from its imperfections, transporting the listener to the time and place where it was made -- we are now in the room where the band once played.

October 15, 2007

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Joyful Noise 1 -- In college my room-mate and I formed a four-piece music ensemble with some friends that travelled to local churches to play music for their services. We called ourselves Joyful Noise. Because of our peculiar instrumentation (voice/piano, clarinet, trombone, and tuba) there was no music available commercially for us to use. I had the opportunity to develop all of our arrangements, which turns out to have been good experience and preparation for the life of a professional composer.

Recently, an old cassette recording of our group was rediscovered. I'm planning to sample from it for a few postings this week.

Joyful Noise was: Erin Beute (voice/piano), Barbara Lovely (clarinet), David Morneau (trombone), and Jonathan Schnicke (tuba).

October 14, 2007

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Club Nodal

more fun with Nodal
graphic loops of music beats
less cheese tomorrow

October 13, 2007

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Pulsing was made using a new piece of software I've been playing around with. It's called Nodal and it's a midi event generator that uses a graph to create sequences and loops rather than using a traditional music notation scheme. It's challenging (and fun) to work in the context of a different visual metaphor to make music.

October 2, 2007

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Haunted Loops is the first Halloween themed post of the month. I used some electric piano samples and some haunted house sounds I found online at the Freesound Project (Electricity.wav, Heartbeat.wav, Moan.wav, and Owl.wav, all created by Johnc)

October 1, 2007

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Twitch Ôø‡Ôø‡Ôø‡ I chose to begin this month by going to the Freesound Project, grabbing the Random Sound of the Day, and using only that to build a new composition. It was a drum loop called IllumHats 2.wav by John Scott. My slicing edits create a jittery little piece. 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 27, 2007

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RoundRound - I've been listening to The Who Boy's mash-up album Tales of Townsend & Wilson a lot lately. It inspired me to find this old Beach Boys track for today's minute.

September 23, 2007

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More Cowbell - another collage of Spike Jones. The tracks I used for yesterday and today's pieces are: Morpheus, The Sheik of Araby, Barney Google, Black Bottom, Cocktails for Two, and Jones Polka. Enjoy.

September 20, 2007

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String Cheese - a couple of ready-made loops from Apple, plus the amen break, are melted for today's tasty minute.

September 9, 2007

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Haell
I found a recording of a sermon while searching for something else entirely. There's something about the preacher's cadence that caught my ear, so I used it for this.

August 30, 2007

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Posturing

noisy layered beats,
thumping bassline, screaming synths
mixed techno cocktail

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 6, 2007

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hacked bits Boop Boop Beep
interrupting Mario's
nightly mushroom dreams

August 1, 2007

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One month down, eleven to go.... We begin August with Anna's a Brat. My sister's name is Anna, and she really is a brat. If she were here she would tell you that I'm a geek, but she's not.

July 31, 2007

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Amen Broken ends the month with another vigorous deconstruction of the amen break.

July 28, 2007

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Dance Loop Haiku

slicing apple loops
fleeting dreams of music fame
broken drums remain

July 26, 2007

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big margarita.
bigger dinner. company.
afterwards--mellow

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.