Today Lydia and I had a quick look at what I've written so far with some of the electronics. The main point of today was to clarify bits of the score (mainly caused by my sketch handwriting!) and to see how it sounded with the electronics as well as a bit of experimentation. The samples below are of bit of the piece with the reverb just in stereo. It worked almost as I expected but not quite. The reverb time needs tweaked and the envelope following needs tweaked a bit more, it sounded like there was too much verb bleeding through when there shouldn't have been any and not enough when there should have been loads. Easy enough to do just change the maths about a little in the patch.
Lydia suggested some things which I hadn't thought of but work really well like ending the opening notes as sul pont. In my mind this blends really nicely with the harmonics later on so its definitely in. Also a few things came to light which I should have realised when I was writing (because I know the physics of it) but didn't, specifically glissing a harmonic trill doesn't work. What I mean by a harmonic trill is moving between the real note and the harmonic in the same position, basically changing the pressure of the left hand.
Overall everything worked nicely and its a positive start to the piece. I think we are going to make this Friday session a regular occurrence or at least as regular as possible to work through it. Hopefully I'll have another version with the edits we talked about today in it.
Cello sample 1 by mwhiteside
Cello sample 2 by mwhiteside
Friday, 21 January 2011
Sunday, 16 January 2011
Solo Cello music
I thought I would add a few links to some interesting solo cello and electronics. The first is 'The Room is the Resonator' by David Fennessy. It does what it says on the tin, it tries to make the room the resonator. I have been told it is amazing live and the video doesn't do it justice but you get the idea.
http://vimeo.com/5521797
The second are spotify links to Prés by Saariaho. Its also on naxos online music library as well.
http://open.spotify.com/track/5HJDIlLnIPdvigYRc12w9q
http://open.spotify.com/track/4ni8Af8Ls1GHvAPgU04qVT
http://open.spotify.com/track/0NTHjnUYYZdtaNd9w42vnE
The final link is Sept Papillons by Saariaho. Unfortunately youtube doesn't want to fit in the post width but its the music your after isn't it?
And finally Berio's sequenza 14 for solo cello
http://open.spotify.com/track/5dyaMFa1oiGWKTdSH0Xkar
I will try to keep adding more interesting examples as I come across them but I mentioned two of these last night so lets start with them.
http://vimeo.com/5521797
The second are spotify links to Prés by Saariaho. Its also on naxos online music library as well.
http://open.spotify.com/track/5HJDIlLnIPdvigYRc12w9q
http://open.spotify.com/track/4ni8Af8Ls1GHvAPgU04qVT
http://open.spotify.com/track/0NTHjnUYYZdtaNd9w42vnE
The final link is Sept Papillons by Saariaho. Unfortunately youtube doesn't want to fit in the post width but its the music your after isn't it?
And finally Berio's sequenza 14 for solo cello
http://open.spotify.com/track/5dyaMFa1oiGWKTdSH0Xkar
I will try to keep adding more interesting examples as I come across them but I mentioned two of these last night so lets start with them.
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Collaboration part 2
The first week of term is over and I failed to get the electronics started over Christmas but they are well and truly started now. I have decided that the piece is going to be for 6 or 8 speakers but I'm currently doing all the programming with the idea of 6. I have always been of the opinion that instrument plus tape does not work because it constrains the player too much. Watching a player looking at a watch to make sure they start at the right point just seems wrong. I am of the firm belief that players need freedom to play rather than be constrained to a click track because if they are constrained then there is no point performing if why not just sell a CD? Anyway, with that small rant out of the way I decided to make the electronics all triggered by the player using a foot pedal. The score will have trigger points to tell Lydia when to hit the pedal to tell the software where in the piece it is. With this in mind I've given myself the challenge of automating everything and only leaving the final mix up to a second person.
Currently the electronics are mostly based around reverb but not a straight version. The amount of verb will depend on the volume of the playing with the quieter the playing the more verb. This I've managed to do through envelope following and a little bit of maths. I'm thinking of setting different limits on the reverb depending on the frequencies so that a partial within the note of 570 hz will have a longer reverb than that of 300hz. I haven't looked into this yet so I dont know how feasible and effective it will be. There are also going to be more pre recorded samples and created sound but at the moment nothing is solid with that.
Over Christmas and this week I decided that the piece would be roughly 18 mins long with three movements 5, 8 and 5 mins in a roughly arch form idea. The first movement will be charecterised by reverb and building a spectral field (using edited samples of cello sounds to move the cello away from a straight cello sound). The second movement will be a lot faster and ideas based around shepard tones both sampled and live before the final movement returning to a similar sound world as the first but concentrating more on the electronic element. This is my rough plan for the moment and obviously its open to change.
I have embedded the first two drafts of the first movement, they are about about 4min 30 long. The top line is the cello while the bottom refers to the electronics. The solid line represents where in the space of the room the reverb will be coming from, top of the stave = front, bottom = back. Any notes on the bottom line refer to samples. Unfortunately I use A3 paper and only have an A4 scanner but it should be ok.
Cello + Electro Mk 1
Cello + Electro Mk 2
Currently the electronics are mostly based around reverb but not a straight version. The amount of verb will depend on the volume of the playing with the quieter the playing the more verb. This I've managed to do through envelope following and a little bit of maths. I'm thinking of setting different limits on the reverb depending on the frequencies so that a partial within the note of 570 hz will have a longer reverb than that of 300hz. I haven't looked into this yet so I dont know how feasible and effective it will be. There are also going to be more pre recorded samples and created sound but at the moment nothing is solid with that.
Over Christmas and this week I decided that the piece would be roughly 18 mins long with three movements 5, 8 and 5 mins in a roughly arch form idea. The first movement will be charecterised by reverb and building a spectral field (using edited samples of cello sounds to move the cello away from a straight cello sound). The second movement will be a lot faster and ideas based around shepard tones both sampled and live before the final movement returning to a similar sound world as the first but concentrating more on the electronic element. This is my rough plan for the moment and obviously its open to change.
I have embedded the first two drafts of the first movement, they are about about 4min 30 long. The top line is the cello while the bottom refers to the electronics. The solid line represents where in the space of the room the reverb will be coming from, top of the stave = front, bottom = back. Any notes on the bottom line refer to samples. Unfortunately I use A3 paper and only have an A4 scanner but it should be ok.
Cello + Electro Mk 1
Cello + Electro Mk 2
Collaboration part 1
This post is a bit of a catchup with what has happened so far before the more frequent updates.
15/11/2010
We decided on the length of the piece (about 15-20 mins) and that it would more than likely be multiple movements rather than one long one. I've always wanted to use instrument and electronics but have never felt I had the knowledge and the opportunity to but I feel I am better equipped now. Though the idea of doing it was rather imposing.
I suggested to Lydia to have a look over my piece for solo cello '41111' to get an idea of my style and also to have a listen to Kaija Saariaho's solo cello music.
The logic for this suggestion was she has written a piece for solo cello and electronics Prés (Petals) and others for solo cello such as Sept Papillons. Both these pieces I feel are amazing pieces but also have been notated exceptionally clearly (a feeling shared by another cellist I know) and use extended techniques (though can they really be called extended any more?) artistically, because of this I have made the decision to use Saariaho's scores as a textbook for cello notation.
6/12/10
We agreed upon a timescale with the electronics being ready for the first week back after Christmas to try ideas out, by week 4 (around 1st feb) the piece should be almost ready at least in draft form.
After having had a look over 41111 Lydia said she liked certain sections and techniques used, specifically the opening, the strumming, the cello body tap and the humming.
Embedded in this post is the score to 41111. As a side note this piece is being played in Dublin's National Concert hall on 23rd February.
41111
15/11/2010
We decided on the length of the piece (about 15-20 mins) and that it would more than likely be multiple movements rather than one long one. I've always wanted to use instrument and electronics but have never felt I had the knowledge and the opportunity to but I feel I am better equipped now. Though the idea of doing it was rather imposing.
I suggested to Lydia to have a look over my piece for solo cello '41111' to get an idea of my style and also to have a listen to Kaija Saariaho's solo cello music.
The logic for this suggestion was she has written a piece for solo cello and electronics Prés (Petals) and others for solo cello such as Sept Papillons. Both these pieces I feel are amazing pieces but also have been notated exceptionally clearly (a feeling shared by another cellist I know) and use extended techniques (though can they really be called extended any more?) artistically, because of this I have made the decision to use Saariaho's scores as a textbook for cello notation.
6/12/10
We agreed upon a timescale with the electronics being ready for the first week back after Christmas to try ideas out, by week 4 (around 1st feb) the piece should be almost ready at least in draft form.
After having had a look over 41111 Lydia said she liked certain sections and techniques used, specifically the opening, the strumming, the cello body tap and the humming.
Embedded in this post is the score to 41111. As a side note this piece is being played in Dublin's National Concert hall on 23rd February.
41111
Collabration introduction
For the next month or two I'm going to turn this under used into a public record of my collaboration with a cellist, Lydia Whittingham, to create a piece for solo cello and electronics. The reason for this documentation is that as part of my masters course I have to do a documentation project which I can document in any way. I first of all thought of keeping it private but then changed my mind. What I'm planning to put on here is summaries of meetings with Lydia, drafts of the score, versions of the electronics and possibly rough recordings by her of the piece so far. All this is with the goal of the premier being in Glasgow City Halls on the 16th of March. This may end up being a little bit of an other ambitious time scale but hey, I like a challenge. Plus she has booked studio time to record it around then anyway.
Saturday, 1 January 2011
My pieces 2010
Pieces
41111 for solo cello - 11min
Chordal Relations for chamber orchestra - 5min
Echo for wind quintet, mezzo soprano and piano - 8min
Fish and Chips for string quartet - 12min
Fitzwilliam Rag for solo piano - 5min
for Matt Mattera for solo trumpet - 5min
It Just Is for brass quartet - 11min
Laya for piano quartet - 9min
Organic Construct for tape - 9min
Prevalence for percussion quartet - 8 min
Rain for guitar and soprano - 7min
Relations for large orchestra - 13min
Sssh! for flute and guitar - 13min
as yet untitled for chamber orchestra - 12min
Subtle Clarity for solo bass clarinet - 8min
The Wavering Gorge for violin and cello - 6min
Unresolved for solo piano - 3min
Wondering, Wavering, Willing for guitar and violin - 6 min
Youth for tape - 10 min
Total - 161min
Awards
Honourable Mention by International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition
for Wondering, Wavering, Willing
May Turtle Scholarship
Hamilton Harty travel Scholarship
PRSF/Bliss foundation Scholarship
RSAMD Scholarship 2010-2011
RSAMD Scholarship 2011-2012
41111 for solo cello - 11min
Chordal Relations for chamber orchestra - 5min
Echo for wind quintet, mezzo soprano and piano - 8min
Fish and Chips for string quartet - 12min
Fitzwilliam Rag for solo piano - 5min
for Matt Mattera for solo trumpet - 5min
It Just Is for brass quartet - 11min
Laya for piano quartet - 9min
Organic Construct for tape - 9min
Prevalence for percussion quartet - 8 min
Rain for guitar and soprano - 7min
Relations for large orchestra - 13min
Sssh! for flute and guitar - 13min
as yet untitled for chamber orchestra - 12min
Subtle Clarity for solo bass clarinet - 8min
The Wavering Gorge for violin and cello - 6min
Unresolved for solo piano - 3min
Wondering, Wavering, Willing for guitar and violin - 6 min
Youth for tape - 10 min
Total - 161min
Awards
Honourable Mention by International Music Prize for Excellence in Composition
for Wondering, Wavering, Willing
May Turtle Scholarship
Hamilton Harty travel Scholarship
PRSF/Bliss foundation Scholarship
RSAMD Scholarship 2010-2011
RSAMD Scholarship 2011-2012
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
BBC Proms 2010 Prom 46
I’m just back from my first time at the proms and feel the need to write something about them more than just being a great experience.
My first impression of the hall itself was simply ‘wow’, it just seems right. Yes it is big but not too big, the misty blur that I get from large spaces (the Coliseum in Rome being the best example) didn’t happen, and because it is big I wasn’t expecting it to have such an acoustic. It took a few moments to get used to it but once I did it was perfect, quiet but perfect. When there I went to proms 45, 46 and 47 but am only going to comment on 46 in this entry and 47 on a subsequent one.
The opening to prom 46 with the Philharmonia Orchestra was Mosolov’s The Foundry (1927). Mosolov is a composer whom I have to admit I had never heard of but going on these 4 minutes of pounding industrial music. No don’t think Rammstein simply think the rhythm and sound of the machinery in a steel fabrication plant. There is no beginning to the piece, no tentative inroads on the silence that preceded it simply begins as if it has always been there grinding away or that someone has just hit ‘on’. The most spine tingling moments in the piece are when the 8 horns stand up (rather effective physical movement for the piece) and play a short melody over the incessant mechanical grinding of the rest of the orchestra. According to the programme notes by Andrew Huth The Foundry was meant as the opening to a now lost ballet consisting of a further three movements In Prison, At the Ball and In the Street. I can but hope that it is found at some point to hear what such music would lead into. Somehow I doubt it would be anything like the next piece of the concert, the UK premier and I believe only second performance of Arvo Pärt’s fourth symphony ‘Los Angeles’ (2008).
This piece is the reason I went to this prom and unfortunately it left me wanting and not in the way Pärt’s music usually does. For me Pärt’s music is the kind of music in which you sit in a darkened room, eyes closed letting it wash over you, ignoring everything. Kind of like lying on your back eyes closed in water and letting yourself drift. The piece is very typically Pärt, heavy on the strings, very slow and quite and uses his typical chord spacing to give a typical sound. Unfortunately that’s where it fell down on first listen; it was simply too typical. There was no sense of going anywhere yet no sense of languishing with intention it was caught somewhere in-between the two. Maybe on subsequent listens (at the moment its still available in BBC iplayer for 3 more days) it will be less tedious and I might pick up the drive behind the piece but for a first impression it wasn’t good.
The material did not seem to be strong enough to sustain the attention of the listener for such a long time and was in fact quite disjointed. The best example of this is after the opening section which is interrupted by the timpani comes a scale played in such a way to make me think it is a quote from a Philip Glass piece. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t but it seems so out of place with what has come before and what is still to come that it jars the ear and the mind. Even with this criticism there were moments of very beautiful music, specifically the warmth of the central section with pizzicato strings and marimba.
It was quite interesting to see Pärt pretty much run up to the stage, he is almost 75 yet he doesn’t seem like he is any older than 60 the way he moves!
The next piece was Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1929-30) played by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. Its an odd piece that builds from a contra bassoon solo to an orchestral tutti before half a piano comes in. The build up is such that you expect a chord in the highest and lowest registers of the piano but this is impossible because it is only written for the left hand. This lack of the ability to use 10 fingers is due to the commissioner, Paul Wittgenstein, had lost his right hand during the war. Ravel attempts to create the impression of such a chord though but unfortunately Bavouzet ruins it because in the opening flourishes there were quite a few missed notes, this was the impression I had on the night and after a little bit of research (ahh the joys of iplayer and spotify!) my firs impress was backed up. This set up the tone for the rest of the piece, it didn’t quite feel right. It seemed more of an argument between soloist and orchestra than conversation. The orchestra’s rendition of the piece I cannot fault and in fact was so good that the mistakes and problems with the soloist were forgotten about to leave me with a very good impression of the work.
Finally was Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy (1905-8), a piece that I knew existed but had never had the chance to listen to. Unfortunately I found it a little too romantic and long in its tendencies for my liking. This could have been because of the performance or the music itself but I felt it could have been a little shorter. That being said it was great to hear the great Albert Hall organ in the closing chords of the piece vibrating my seat even though I was in the circle which is an unbelievable feeling that cannot be reproduced by any recording.
My first impression of the hall itself was simply ‘wow’, it just seems right. Yes it is big but not too big, the misty blur that I get from large spaces (the Coliseum in Rome being the best example) didn’t happen, and because it is big I wasn’t expecting it to have such an acoustic. It took a few moments to get used to it but once I did it was perfect, quiet but perfect. When there I went to proms 45, 46 and 47 but am only going to comment on 46 in this entry and 47 on a subsequent one.
The opening to prom 46 with the Philharmonia Orchestra was Mosolov’s The Foundry (1927). Mosolov is a composer whom I have to admit I had never heard of but going on these 4 minutes of pounding industrial music. No don’t think Rammstein simply think the rhythm and sound of the machinery in a steel fabrication plant. There is no beginning to the piece, no tentative inroads on the silence that preceded it simply begins as if it has always been there grinding away or that someone has just hit ‘on’. The most spine tingling moments in the piece are when the 8 horns stand up (rather effective physical movement for the piece) and play a short melody over the incessant mechanical grinding of the rest of the orchestra. According to the programme notes by Andrew Huth The Foundry was meant as the opening to a now lost ballet consisting of a further three movements In Prison, At the Ball and In the Street. I can but hope that it is found at some point to hear what such music would lead into. Somehow I doubt it would be anything like the next piece of the concert, the UK premier and I believe only second performance of Arvo Pärt’s fourth symphony ‘Los Angeles’ (2008).
This piece is the reason I went to this prom and unfortunately it left me wanting and not in the way Pärt’s music usually does. For me Pärt’s music is the kind of music in which you sit in a darkened room, eyes closed letting it wash over you, ignoring everything. Kind of like lying on your back eyes closed in water and letting yourself drift. The piece is very typically Pärt, heavy on the strings, very slow and quite and uses his typical chord spacing to give a typical sound. Unfortunately that’s where it fell down on first listen; it was simply too typical. There was no sense of going anywhere yet no sense of languishing with intention it was caught somewhere in-between the two. Maybe on subsequent listens (at the moment its still available in BBC iplayer for 3 more days) it will be less tedious and I might pick up the drive behind the piece but for a first impression it wasn’t good.
The material did not seem to be strong enough to sustain the attention of the listener for such a long time and was in fact quite disjointed. The best example of this is after the opening section which is interrupted by the timpani comes a scale played in such a way to make me think it is a quote from a Philip Glass piece. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t but it seems so out of place with what has come before and what is still to come that it jars the ear and the mind. Even with this criticism there were moments of very beautiful music, specifically the warmth of the central section with pizzicato strings and marimba.
It was quite interesting to see Pärt pretty much run up to the stage, he is almost 75 yet he doesn’t seem like he is any older than 60 the way he moves!
The next piece was Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (1929-30) played by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. Its an odd piece that builds from a contra bassoon solo to an orchestral tutti before half a piano comes in. The build up is such that you expect a chord in the highest and lowest registers of the piano but this is impossible because it is only written for the left hand. This lack of the ability to use 10 fingers is due to the commissioner, Paul Wittgenstein, had lost his right hand during the war. Ravel attempts to create the impression of such a chord though but unfortunately Bavouzet ruins it because in the opening flourishes there were quite a few missed notes, this was the impression I had on the night and after a little bit of research (ahh the joys of iplayer and spotify!) my firs impress was backed up. This set up the tone for the rest of the piece, it didn’t quite feel right. It seemed more of an argument between soloist and orchestra than conversation. The orchestra’s rendition of the piece I cannot fault and in fact was so good that the mistakes and problems with the soloist were forgotten about to leave me with a very good impression of the work.
Finally was Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy (1905-8), a piece that I knew existed but had never had the chance to listen to. Unfortunately I found it a little too romantic and long in its tendencies for my liking. This could have been because of the performance or the music itself but I felt it could have been a little shorter. That being said it was great to hear the great Albert Hall organ in the closing chords of the piece vibrating my seat even though I was in the circle which is an unbelievable feeling that cannot be reproduced by any recording.
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