A hydraulophone is a tonal acoustic musical instrument played by direct physical contact with water (sometimes other fluids) where sound is generated or affected hydraulically.[1][2] Typically sound is produced by the same hydraulic fluid in contact with the player’s fingers.[3] The term also refers to an acoustic sound-producing mechanism used as an interface or input device involving the monitoring of fluid flow. Examples include hydraulophones for fluid-flow monitoring and measurement applications, such as building automation, equipment monitoring, and the like (for example, determining which faucet or toilet in a building is operating and how much water it is consuming).[4] The hydraulophone in the first sense was invented and named by Steve Mann.
Earlier this month I performed >Chris Chafe’s Electrode with the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLORK). The setup for the piece was rather interesting. I had a Jam Link, mixer, and microphone in my living room on the East Coast. Through the Jam Link I received live audio cues and sent sounds from my saxophone back to the stage in California. Basically, Chris would send the satellite performers sounds from his daxophone, which we would imitate and respond to. It was a lot of fun and definitely a unique experience playing a live concert some 3,000 miles away.
The San Francisco Chronicle has a neat article about SLORK.
An homage to the great Alvin Lucier, this piece explores the ‘photocopy effect’, where upon repeated copies the object begin to accumulate the idiosyncrasies of the medium doing the copying. Full words:
I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice as well as the image of myself, and I am going to upload it to YouTube, rip it from YouTube, and upload it again and again, until the original characteristics of both my voice and my image are destroyed. What you will see and hear, then, are the artifacts inherent in the video codec of both YouTube and the mp4 format I convert it to on my computer. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a digital fact, but more as a way to eliminate all human qualities my speech and image might have.
Sean Cunningham and I will be performing (via the internet) in a concert at Stanford University on June 2nd. Organized by Chris Chafe, the performance will be based on improvised reactions to live samples from Stanford. We will be using Musician Link’s Jam Link device to send our audio signal to the stage and hear sounds sent from there. Its strange, but a lot of fun to use. Though, the best part may be that I get to perform from my living room, haha.
DJ JFB and drummer Will Clark perform with Beardyman holograms. From the Musion website:
Musion Eyeliner uses a specially developed foil that reflects images from high definition video projectors, making it possible to produce virtual holographic images of variable sizes and incredible clarity, using industry standard software. Infinitely configurable, the virtual hologram appears within a stage set.
Here’s a fun music video for Sour’s “Hibi no Neiro”. From the YouTube page:
This music video was shot for Sour’s ‘Hibi no Neiro’ (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album ‘Water Flavor EP’. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed purely via webcam.
This (awesome) video has been making the rounds on the internet. From the YouTube page:
Miro Markus, an elementary school student from Berlin, narrated the text for the performance: Youth as a hope for the older generation.
The Austrian composer Peter Ablinger transferred the frequency spectrom of the childs voice to his computer controlled mechanical piano.
Peter Ablinger: I break down this phonography, meaning a recording of something the voice, in this case -, in individual pixels, one can say. And if I have the possibility of a rendering in a fairly high resolution (and that I only get with a mechanical piano), then I in fact restore some kind of continuity. Therefore, with a little practice, or help or subtitling, we actually can hear a human voice in a piano sound.
In Bb 2.0 is a webpage/project that puts a modern spin on Terry Riley’s In C. Created by Darren Solomon and Science for Girls, the project uses 20 YouTube videos (triggered by the you of course) as parts for a single piece. I love the simple directions they provide: “play these together, some or all, start them at any time, in any order.”
Thanks to the wonder that is the internet, there is now a version of Arnold Schoenberg’s Drei Klavierstücke edited together from cat-on-piano videos. The creator of the video has a webpage with tons of information on the project, including a direct comparison of the finale result to a reference Glenn Gould recording.
You can hear the actual piano version of this movement on YouTube.
Contour Lines explores the landscape of contemporary saxophone, presenting commissioned works by Benjamin Taylor, Paul Leary, and Victoria Cheah alongside pieces by Gérard Grisey, Fabien Lévy, JacobTV, Kati Agócs, and Katarina Miljkovic.
East Coast mini tour is complete!
Once last performance:
May 17 - On The Cusp (Jersey City, NJ)
1st Construction:
Check out my new trio's recent performance of Come Down Heavy! by Evan Chambers.
Emerging Voices Project:
Over the past year Elisabeth Halliday and I have fundraised, commissioned, recorded, and premiered new music for voice and sax. The result is our new CD, Emerging Vocies, available at my store.
