Seven Pieces for Gestrument Pro - Warren Burt - December 2018

7 Screengrabs from an iPad Pro running Jesper Nordin and Jonatan Liljedahl's marvelous new program Gestrument Pro.  I explore many different microtonal scales, different timbres and different kinds of rhythmic gestures and moods in these pieces.  This is only just scratching the surface with what this wonderful program will produce.  Since getting the program about 10 days ago, I've done little else other than explore its possibilities.  I had a great time making this video and I hope you enjoy yourself watching it.

For this video, by the way, I recommend headphones or good loudspeakers, and watching on YouTube, on full screen.

Peter Fraser and Warren Burt performance at "The Secret Life of Cecil" - farewell performances at Cecil St Studio, Dec 8, 2018

As part of the weekend of performances, "The Secret Life of Cecil," given at Cecil St Studios in Fitzroy, Melbourne, on Dec 8-9, 2018, Peter Fraser and I did a performance, "Sounds of Cecil St" which revealed some of the sonic history of Cecil St dance studio. Originally built in the early 1950s, as a factory for making sporting goods and clothing, it morphed into a dance studio and community arts centre in 1997-98. The performance involved Peter performing on his sewing machine, and me performing sounds of the building recorded and placed on an iPad using Launchpad software. Additionally, we both performed sound-oriented movement activities. The video is by Catherine Schieve. Cecil St Studio is now being sold and redeveloped into inner-city condos. Considering the overheated state of the Fitzroy real estate market, it's probably a miracle it survived as a studio for 21 years. But all good things must come to an end, so for one magical weekend, many of the artists involved with Cecil St gave celebratory performances, ours among them.

Andrew Ford interviews WB about Chris Mann, the American Experimental Music Traditions, and Catherine Schieve for ABC-Radio "The Music Show," Dec 2, 2018

For ABC Radio National's "The Music Show" on December 2, at 11:30 am (Australian Eastern Time), Andrew Ford will be interviewing me about Chris Mann and our work together, the American Experimental Music Traditions, what I think a "composer" is, and Catherine Schieve and our work together.  You'll hear brief excerpts from my Almond Bread Harmonies (1985), "of course" by Chris Mann and me, (1988), a bit of a solo reading by Chris, a fragment of HPSCHD by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller, and part of the 2017 performance of Catherine Schieve's "Repentistas" (2003) for electronics, viola and toy piano, performed by Catherine on electronics, me on viola, and Ian Parsons on toy piano.  More info on the Repentistas performance can be found here: http://www.warrenburt.com/journal/2017/7/23/catherine-schieves-repentistas-2003-updated.html

For those who won't be near an Australian AM Radio on Sunday morning, you can listen to the interview anytime on the ABC website.  Here's the link:
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/musicshow/warren-burt-experimental-music-text-chris-mann-john-cage/10517624

Thanks to Andrew Ford for coming to Daylesford and interviewing me, and to Penny Lomax for producing the show.  Enjoy!

VCV Rack now hosts external VST plugins!

The latest development in Andrew Belt's VCV-Rack project is VCV Host, which enables VST plugins to work within the VCV-Rack environment.  It was released this morning, and I immediately bought it ($30 US, such a deal!), and tried it out.  The result is shown above.  In this patch, the UVI Falcon workstation is hosting the UVI Orchestral Bells (tuned to a microtonal scale, of course!), which are then processed by the GRM Tools Reson Filter.  Both of these are controlled by multiple copies of the metaAARDVARK module designed by Antonio Tuzzi based on my designs from the 70s. Thanks to Andrew Belt for his ongoing work on the VCV-Rack Project, and to Antonio Tuzzi for his work on his NYSTHI modules, which are becoming essential to my musical work.  Click here to either download or listen to what 2 minutes of this patch sounds like.  Enjoy!

November 2018's New Articles in soundbytesmag.net

Three new reviews in soundbytesmag.net this issue.

First a review of Audio Damage's Quanta - a superb granulator for both PCs (and Macs) and iOS tablets:

http://soundbytesmag.net/music-for-tablets-quanta-from-audio-damage/

Then, we have a review of William K's wonderfully upgraded Wusik Station, now up to Version 9:

http://soundbytesmag.net/review-wusik-station-v-9/

And finally, from the good folks at AmpleSound in Beijing, a review of their marvelous China Pipa sample set:

http://soundbytesmag.net/review-china-pipa-from-amplesound/

Hope you enjoy the reading, and even, perhaps, trying out the software!