WARREN BURT - Journal

Last Thursday, as part of the Performance Seminar Series at Box Hill Institute, I performed 3 pieces, two solo and one duet with Craig Schneider. I had the presence of mind to get them videoed, and enough spare memory cells to remember to bring the camera (!) so we got them recorded. Here they are for you listening and viewing pleasure, complete with the notes to them I put on YouTube.

LETTRIST FANTASY

A live performance for alphabet beads, iPhone and iPad, both with Jorg Piringer's abcedefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz app, voice, and small loudspeakers mounted on my belt. I draw random letters from the alphabeads, then load those into the iOS devices, and use that as a score for an improvisation with letter sounds to accompany the electronic (German) phonemes. I first performed this piece at La Mama Theatre in Carlton, Melbourne in March 2013. This performance was given as part of the Performance Seminar Series at Box Hill Institute on May 9, 2013.

MORNING ON PRINCES PIER

A live electronic performance. With my left hand, I'm performing an iPad with the app SoundSquares by Mark Verstraete. My right hand is performing an Alesis Air F/X, an effects unit with uses hand motion to change the settings of the selected effect. There are four sections to the piece. In each section I'm performing notes from 6 different 7-note scales derived from Ervin Wilson's "Mt. Meru" scales. (www.anaphoria.com/wilson.html‎) With this piece, I'm trying to get beyond the notion of live electronic music performance happening behind a laptop or a keyboard, and make the performance more physical, and body-based. Looking at the video, it's clear that I probably need both a director, to make me stand up straighter, and some refresher Alexander Technique lessons, to get me moving with more ease. Losing 10 kilos wouldn't hurt either. Then again, this performance is a start in a direction I want to go further with. Performed as part of the Performance Seminar Series at Box Hill Institute on Thursday, May 9, 2013 by Warren Burt. Camera by Tim Opie, and many thanks to Tim for doing that. And if you're in Melbourne, do take a trip to Princes Pier in Port Melbourne - it's a very unique and really beautiful environment.

WITHOUT GLUE

Warren Burt: computer programming and live electronics; Craig Schneider, piano. A performance where Craig responds to a score generated by a computer in real time, while Warren plays a computer program that delays and modifies the piano sound live. The score program, for the piano, is written with ArtWonk by John Dunn. It generates a series of jazz changes. The pianist sees instructions such as "Bb min9 13 seconds" or "C Lydian 5 seconds" and improvises with that harmony or scale for the given duration. What the next change will be is not predictable by the pianist, so while working with their improvisational skills, they also have to be truly spontaneous and respond to the unpredictable score on the spot. Meanwhile, the electronics player changes the effects the piano is processed through and changes the settings of the effect live. In this performance, Craig and I achieved a real sense of interplay, throwing aspects of the music back and forth at each other. This was unexpected, but a delight to us both. Given what might be seen as a dystopic situation - having to follow a score out of our control - we not only managed to create beauty with it, but actually have fun. The sound modification used an ASUS netbook computer running AudioMulch (by Ross Bencina) (and note - I'm also premiering my AudioMulch T-Shirt (!) during this performance), and the Glitch 2 plugin (by Kieran Foster). This is controlled by a Korg NanoKontrol processed by John Dunn's ArtWonk. The audio interface is a Roland UA4. This performance took place as part of the Performance Seminar Series at Box Hill Institute, Melbourne, on May 9, 2013. Video camera by Tim Opie - many thanks Tim!