Back-and-forth with Sam Alden

Sam Alden and I sent some music and images back and forth... he'd draw something and I'd make a little song based on it; I'd make a little song, and he'd draw something based on it it, etc.  It started with this:

longerloop1

which became this:

which became this (since I thought the rich textures in the image deserved some music that was more vibrant):

Jungle Night Explorer

The rest are more straightforward 1:1 pairs. Sam drew these, and I responded with the music:

1234567890

evening planet

Then I recorded these, and Sam responded with the drawings:

auulos

ngiit

Graphic score realizations: A Day Diffracted, Shape Play, etc.

My friend Marc Evans is a composer, mostly of traditionally (/Western) notated music. Recently he has done a few experiments (and more) with more "open" form scores, which give players freedoms that can't be adequately represented using western notation. I've made "realizations" of two of his graphic scores, which follow:

A Day Diffracted (Jan. 2011)

Rules: the piece was to be constructed out of samples from this zip file (great sounds there!). I had to use the recording of Marc playing the first movement of a Beethoven piano sonata, Op. 109; I also had to consider the piece's title before working; beyond that, I was allowed to do whatever.

page 1

page 2

page 3

**Also, as a kind of footnote to this piece... while I was working on putting it together, my friend Iris Alden (who has done loaaads of wonderful album art for me) posted this watercolor image on her blog, which seemed to me to be somehow a kind of continuation/deconstruction of the visual ideas I was in the process of responding to... so I did a "realization" of it, too (though adhering to its form less strictly)--again using the Beethoven-via-Marc samples that I used throughout A Day Diffracted.

inksplash

Shape Play (Oct. 2010)

Marc sent this to me back in October. It doesn't have any rules (though I do try to follow the shapes). The image below is just the first page--follow along with a pdf of the whole score here.

Shape Play

Homo neanderthalensis

Just finished a very short, linear game made with Josh Bothun (who I also made the music toy "ada" with) about ancient man... Unfortunately, only for PC right now, and also sorry if it takes a while to load! (do stick it out, though--should work eventually).

Download

We worked together on all the art, design and music. Here's a loop from the soundtrack:

dream loop 1

kyletapes

kyletape 1

kyletape 2

both sample a melodica/mini-marimba jam I had with Kyle Cotler a few weeks ago

portrait

found the photo hanging on a bush and made this grunge ballad for its subjects:

portrait

also, I installed the Yahoo Media Player (see the little play button to the left of all mp3 links), which I think makes for easier listening/browsing. Downloading is still possible by right-clicking, etc.

see green

seegreen.mp3

samples "Sea Green and Cyan (v. 2)" by Greg Davis