Category Archives: Areophone

A buzzed-lips kind of instrument

Nice to See You

[play]Nice to See You by No More Twist (2008)

No More Twist is a new duo of Polly Moller and I. We played this improvised set live on KFJC on 17 July 2008. She was on flute(s) and noisemakers and I played a live sampling application (written in SuperCollider). We were featured to promote the Edgetone New Music Summit. We will be playing there on Wednesday (23 July 2008), where we will be premiering a piece called “Inquisition.” It’s going to have Polly hooked up to a lie detector that I built and I’ll be interpreting her biometric data as she answers questions posed by the audience.

This piece here, however, has text from a long spam email and uses the latest iteration of my SC program SimpleSample.

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Shorts #25: Untitled

[play] Shorts: #25 Untitled (2007)

Commissioned and (un)titled by Scott Wilson

I talked today about whether or not he wanted to give me a title, and Scott noted that the piece has a “flatuent quality,” but it would be better to resist referencing that in a title.

To make this piece, I recorded myself playing a bovine signaling horn and a didjeridu, both of which I ran through a Sherman filterbank to use as FX. There’s also a little bit of feedback, especially the very last sounds. Processing a didgeridu turns out to be much more straightforward and easy than processing a cow horn. Something to keep in mind.

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She’s Not There (2008)

[play] She’s Not There (2008)

I picked up my sousaphone this afternoon, with the idea that I could improve my chops and work out some angst. As I lifted it, the spit valve fell off. As I played it, several other bits rattled loose. Alas. So I put the headphone part of a usb headset around the part of the bell just above the bolts and started recording.

My voice has been changing. It’s more or less stable now, but I only have good control of it for about the bottom fifth of the main octave. After I sing some warmups, it feels tired. This process of learning to sing again in a lower pitch reminds me very much of switching from playing trumpet to tuba. Vocal cords and buzzing lips use the same physics, so it’s about the same idea. This is the first recording I’ve made of my voice since it began to change.

I found the last recording I made before it started to change and discovered I’d used the words “boys” and “girls” in a longer text. So I grabbed those two words and stretched them out a bit. It’s very very strange to me that’s no longer my voice. My voice now is the voice of a stranger. I wouldn’t recognize it in a recording.

I overdubbed some low frequencies from my MOTM synthesizer to make up for the headset’s inadequacies – it doesn’t have good frequency response in the tuba range.

The title of the piece is from a book by Jennifer Finney Boylan, She’s Not There: A Life In Two Genders. She talks about how she chose to keep her old voice. I can’t keep mine. It will never return. I feel a profound sense of loss for an attachment I never knew that I had. This is an elegy for my old voice. It was never lovely, but it was mine. No longer. It’s also an introduction to my new voice. The new instrument I’m just learning to play.

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Èlègie

[play] Élégie (2006)

Cornetto and Computer / Cornet à bouquin et ordinateur

Cette pièce a un caractère mélancolique. Les notes sont instables, basculent de l’équilibre au deséquilibre, comme la vie vers la mort. C’est à la mémoire des proches qui m’ont quittés.

A piece with unstable notes. They glissando from equilibrium to precarity as life slides into death. This is a remembrance of my deceased mother and foremothers.

Recorded at CCMIX on 12 juin 2006. Played by Solène RIOT and I. / Joué par Solène RIOT et moi.

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