State of the Union Fugue
This is technically a fugue using a section of Clinton’s 1998 State of the Union Address. Different entrances are introduced pitch shifted up and down, then time shifted, then with varying degrees of harmonic feedback.
Travis Hunts for Snarks
This is a sound collage utilizing spatialization, formant filtration, and tempo alteration. It was assembled using ProTools, C-Sound, and Sound Hack.
It hovers in a fantasy world somewhere between Travis Bickle’s NYC and Lewis Carroll’s Snark Hunt.
The perhaps sad, but true, motivation for the piece was Tom Erbe’s Advanced Sound Design Final Exam.
Hanon Human Impulse Response – Snake Oil
Story Behind the Song
A composition for MIDI Player Piano and Macintosh SE Computer.
Mockery of the Artificial Intelligence trends in computer music. The installation was exhibited at CalArts with the Integrated Media program installation in Spring, 1999.
“Now that the student has practiced this entire volume, he is
acquainted with the chief mechanical difficulties; but, if he would
enjoy the fruit of his toil, and become a real virtuoso, he ought to
play this entire book through every day for a certain time; only in this way can he familiarize himself with these great difficulties. An hour is required to play the book through.”“The greatest artists find it necessary to repeat daily exercises for several hours, merely to ‘keep up their playing.’ We should not, therefore, be accused of
exaggerating the matter when we require of a student aspiring to
true virtuosity, that he should play these exercises through every
day.”
— Hanon, The Virtuoso Pianist, Book III
Much as an impulse response can be used to measure the frequency character of a room, this piece measures the playing characteristics of the player who input the notes. This information is then “practiced” by the computer and piano. The frequency of “practice” gives the software player “tendencies” which will be realized in an improvisational context with the computerized improviser. This information will be used by an artificial intelligence program which applies probabilistic statistical algorithms in determining the likelihood that the player would play a musical pattern, based on the number of times that it has been practiced.
– please do not touch the piano or computer –