Daniel Corral, friend in LA, recently found this interview I did with James Tenney, back in 1987, at the New Music America festival in Philadelphia. We did the interview in his hotel room, while Chinese New Year was exploding in the streets around us. I'd totally forgotten that the I'd done this interview - I might have done it for the ABC, or for 3MBS or 3PBS, I can't remember now. But Philip Blackburn, from Innova records, posted it to the web for people to hear, so here it is.
Listening back, I'm pretty pleased with it. Usually, when I listen to old interviews, I'm cringing in anticipation of having said something really dumb, but this one seems quite good - Jim's answers are clear, concise and to the point. Worth a listen after 33 years!
Jeremy Yeo, graduate from our Masters program at Box Hill, did a concert in Singapore recently, and in the concert he included videos of me, and other folks from Box Hill 2 years ago - Ren Walters, Troy Rainbow, Rebecca Hart and Max Posthoorn. Here's a link to the video. It's a thrill to be able to collaborate with Jeremy and his Singaporean friends. They look like a dynamite group. Maybe someday, when international travel is possible again, we'll be able to do something live. For the moment though, this video is pretty pleasing.
Thanks Jeremy for supplying this. MUCH appreciated.
Last month's Soundbytes came out and I've got two reviews in it.
First up is a review of a lovely sound modifyer from Sugarbytes. This is called Looperator, and it will allow you to modify a single sound source in wondrous and complex ways. It's for Mac, PC and iOS, and for iOS, since it's an AUv3 plugin, you can also have multiple instances of it, if you have a compatible framework, such as Cubasis or apeMatrix or AUM.
The second review is mostly about Surge, a FREE microtonal plugin synth for PC, or Mac. It's a wonderful synth, with lots of power to make all sorts of crunchy sounds. Also mentioned in the review are two new beta synths by the same folks, Tuning Workbench Synth, and a microtonal capable version of Dexed, the DX7 clone. Both free, and both with microtonality baked in by Jacky Ligon. By the way, the newer versions of these last two now work beautifully in the VST3 environment, so ignore the last paragraph of my review. The Tuning Workbench Synth also allows you to expand or compress the range of any scale to any degree. This is a capability that hasn't been this easily available before. I can see that there might be a whole new ccategory of tunings that could result from this.
In 1983, in my living room in North Carlton, which held most of my electronics, books, CDs, etc, I set up my synthesizer to play a multi-voiced patch. Inspired by John Cage and Lejaren Hiller's tapes for HPSCHD, I had each voice in a different tuning, timbre, pitch range, etc. I used Aardvarks IV, my electronic random information generating box, to control the Serge synthesizer, and put the output of the Serge into four small loudspeakers placed around the room. I also took a circuit-bent Bullwinkle Radio (a present from my late artist friend, Richard Williams), which I had modified to produce semi-predictable cheeping sounds, and placed it on a chair in the middle of the room. Then, once this installation was going full tilt, I walked through the room with my Super 8 camera, documenting the room and the music in it. My wandering through the room formed the shaping of the piece for the camera. It was kind of dim in the room, but I thought that the lighting would be effective, anyway. I don't think I ever publicly showed the film (I might be wrong there), and for 37 years, it just sat on my shelf, and, like the super 8 film of Snodger in the Square, it occasionally glared at me, demanding to be converted to video and made a bit brighter. Finally in March 2020, I found a place to convert the film and had the money to pay for the conversion. I then took the conversion of the pretty dim film and treating it in Vegas, was able to adjust the contrast and brightness so that things were indeed visible. The amazing thing for me, on seeing the film 37 years later, is the interesting autobiographical documentary nature of the film. Things like the two Ian Robertson posters on my wall, the St Theresa of Avila text (found by Ned Sublette, caligraphed by Ernie Althoff) on another wall, the various records, cassettes lying around, (which shows what I was listening to at the time), the many Bullwinkle tchotchkes that were all over the room, and the electronic instruments, both playing (Serge and Aardvarks IV) and not playing (like the Aim-65 computer) for this piece. Reviving this piece almost 4 decades later, I'm delighted. It combines so many of my interests at the time, and I think it sounds great, in its own lo-fi way, and is visually a lot of fun. Maybe you'll like it too. In any case, I now offer it (as Martha Graham would have said, quoting Emily Dickinson) as a "letter to the world," and hope that there are folks out there who will appreciate seeing this 1983 slice-o-art-n-life.
For Moomba 1981 (Melbourne's Autumn Festival), we were commissioned to put on a live show in Melbourne City Square. As part of that show, Chris Mann, myself (Warren Burt) and Chris Wyatt performed a piece live and projected on the City Square Video Screen. This was a very large brown and yellow (as opposed to black and white) video screen usually used for ads, mounted high over Swanston Street. Chris Mann recited his poem Snodger Lip Lap, which was designed for live voice and computer modified voice recording (computer by Jim Sosnin). In addition, words from the poem were projected on the screen. The video was processed through an EMS Spectre Video Synthesizer operated by myself. Spectre patterns, Chris Mann's word graphics, and feedback all made up the lively graphics. Music was a mix of the Chris Mann computer voice recording, and electronic sound from, if memory serves me correctly, a computer controlled Casio synthesizer keyboard, programmed by Chris Wyatt. The whole thing was documented on Super 8 film. We needed a camera person. Arthur Cantrill, one of Australia's finest film-makers, was there. I asked him if he'd like to operate the camera, he said sure, and filmed the performance. The super 8 film was shown a few times, and then it lay in my archives for 39 years. I would occasionally see it on the shelf, and it was glaring at me - glaring because of it's lack of use. Finally in March 2020, I managed to find a place to convert the film, and actually had enough spare money to pay for it. The result you see here. Seeing the piece after 39 years, I'm amazed at how aggressive and complex it is. A BLAST from the past, indeed. I hope other folks like it, as well. Chris Mann is no longer with us, but I'm hoping that he would have liked this - or at least be embarrassed enough by it that somewhere in the afterlife he's happily smiling.
Thursday, June 11, 2020 at 12:06PM 