Women in Art, Literature, and Music
This is a project I recently completed for my Women in Art, Literature, and Music class. Throughout the course we talked about early feminist artists that explored what it means to be a woman. I wanted to create a piece that could go through the process of finding itself, and stay "feminine" in both form and content. This piece was made using a PureData patch I built last fall that plays sound clips randomly. I really wanted the computer to be composing the music because creation has always been associated with femininity, and by giving the computer/random chance the power to create the piece flows more organically than a straight composition. I chose to use words that I found in the novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. The words I plucked from the pages have very strong emotional ties with first wave feminism, and also the struggle that the characters in the novel were going through as they tried to hold on to their traditional beliefs as they relocated to the U.S.
The sounds in this piece were made from recordings of the characters names in the book, text to speech software, and a bass guitar.
Memory Banks
Found this guy hiding in my computer, a recording that some friends and I made in my friend's barn back in high school.
Intruments: me
Drums: Matt Metzger
Vocals: Cj
Bass is done!!
Here it is, it plays great and sounds like bulldozer...very happy!!
Final Product
I got into 60×60!!!
I recently submitted a one minute excerpt of my "Computer Music" piece to a collaborative electronic new music presentation called 360 degrees of 60x60. Totally got accepted, which means that my work will be feature along side other artists from all over the world at this years International Computer Music Conference (ICMC). This work takes 60 applicants and plays their 60 second clips back to back to make a one hour long piece of new music. My work was placed into the "Scarlet Mix" which has 10-15 concerts at the ICMC with different composers, venues, and formats every time. I am super excited because 60x60 has air time on Tv and radio, and other concerts throughout the year that take place around the world!!!
Building a Bass 2
I finished cutting it out, contouring the sides, and started staining. Its gonna be great.
Rough cut
Mid Carving
Bass Environments
I have always wanted to do an improv bass recording but make it more of a sonic art piece rather than just your ordinary section of music. I wanted to make something that had a lot of movement back and forth, but also has a sense of depth so you can just close your eyes and feel like you are inside the work rather than just listening to it. It ended up being around 16 minutes, so this recording is just a small 6 minute excerpt of the original.
This piece was designed for a surround sound environment, but if you don't have that, a high quality set of headphones will work fine.
Apophysis?
I recently downloaded a computer program called Apophysis, which is a Freeware fractal flame editor for Windows that anyone can download and use for free. You should get it, its neat. I just started playing with it a couple days ago and its a really easy to use program that can make some cool looking images. A sample:
Building a bass
I just got the block of wood I ordered from Warmoth.com, its a big chunk of Alder which I picked because it has a really light weight and a nice full thick sound. I have it routed for a single coil pbass in the neck and a humbucker at the bridge, which I am real excited for. I haven't yet decided what shape I want this one, but I think eventually its gonna come together and make one helluva bass. This will be the 5th bass that I've built, and the 3rd that I have designed and cut. Super pumped.
Chunk of wood
Minimalism
This is a selection of Minimalist pieces that I created. Minimalism is defined as movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is stripped down to its most fundamental features. I only recently started to delve into this style of music and creating and to me these pieces are about creating the most interesting content you can with only one or two variables, for example, music with only one instrument or sonic art pieces created using only a few sound files.
These works are explorations into minimalism through my variation of improvisational trance music.
Open
This is a piece that I created using only 4 short sounds, a truck horn, a door latch, a beep, and an amp tube buzzing.
