Music in Motion at the Luggage Store Gallery

I will be attending and participating in this performance tonight at the Luggage Store Gallery. The evening will unfold as an interaction among Laurie Amat, the Cornelius Cardew Choir and the Free Reed Vibrating Society. The two ensembles will trade off pieces, with Laurie Amat performing a solo in between.

In between performances by the Cardew Choir I may be live tweeting @catsynth. As long as it doesn’t seem too tacky.


The Luggage Store Gallery
1007 Market Street @ 6th
San Francisco, CA

Music in Motion focuses on the ongoing dialogue between space and sound. The sound helps define the space. The space helps define the sound.

Space/Sound investigators are:
Laurie Amat – solo voice and movement

Cornelius Cardew Choir
Tom Bickley – director and co-founder
Eric Theise, Sarah Rose Stiles, Dean Santomieri
Nathan Rosquist, Kalonica McQuesten, Marianne McDonald
Bob Marsh (co-founder), Cathryn Hrudicka, Ryk Groetchen
Tom Duff, Amar Chaudhary, Diane Caudillo, Nancy Beckman
Anne O’Rourke

Free Reed Vibrating Society
Bob Marsh – president, melodica
Sandra Yolles – melodica
Rent Romus – accordion
CJ Borosque – melodica
Melissa Margolis – accordion
David Slusser – accordion
Diane Caudillo – melodica
Juliayn Coleman – harmonica
Suki O’Kane – accordion, melodica
Michael Zelner – harmonica
Tom Bickley – melodica
Jim Ryan – melodica

Preparing for March 4 Concert, Part 2

On Tuesday, I went to the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) in order to continue preparing for the Regent’s Lecture concert on March 4.  I brought most of the setup with me, at least the electronic gear:

Several pieces are going to feature the iPad (yes, the old pre-March 2 version) running TouchOSC controlling Open Sound World on the Macbook.  I worked on several new control configurations after trying out some of the sound elements I will be working with.  Of course, I have the monome as well, mostly to control sample-looping sections of various pieces.

One of the main reasons for spending time on site is to work directly with the sound system, which features an 8-channel surround speaker configuration.  Below are five of the eight speakers.


One of the new pieces is designed specifically for this space – and to also utilize a 12-channel dodecahedron speaker developed at CNMAT.  I will also be adapting older pieces and performance elements for the space, including a multichannel version of  Charmer:Firmament.  In addition to the multichannel, I made changes to the iPad control based on the experience from last Saturday’s performance at Rooz Cafe in Oakland.  It now is far more expressive and closer to the original.

I also broke out the newly acquired Wicks Looper on the sound system.  It sounded great!

The performance information (yet again) is below.


Friday, March 4, 8PM
Center For New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT)
1750 Arch St., Berkeley, CA

CNMAT and the UC Berkeley Regents’ Lecturer program present and evening of music by Amar Chaudhary.

The concert will feature a variety of new and existing pieces based on Amar’s deep experience and dual identity in technology and the arts. He draws upon diverse sources as jazz standards, Indian music, film scores and his past research work, notably the Open Sound World environment for real-time music applications. The program includes performances with instruments on laptop, iPhone and iPad, acoustic grand piano, do-it-yourself analog electronics and Indian and Chinese folk instruments. He will also premier a new piece that utilizes CNMAT’s unique sound spatialization resources.

The concert will include a guest appearance by my friend and frequent collaborator Polly Moller. We will be doing a duo with Polly on flutes and myself on Smule Ocarina and other wind-inspired software instruments – I call it “Real Flutes Versus Fake Flutes.”

The Regents’ Lecturer series features several research and technical talks in addition to this concert. Visit http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu for more information.

Some preparation for March 4 concert

A late evening preparing for the upcoming Regents’ Lecture concert, with an assist from Luna:

Here Luna poses with TouchOSC on the iPad, which is becoming one of the main control surfaces I will be using to control Open Sound World.  Last night I was building the synthesis infrastructure for the new piece, a combination of drum sampling and spatialized additive synthesis – at least four separate additive synthesis models that are algorithmically generated based on input from the iPad.  Against this will be electronic drum sounds and an Afro-Cuban rhythm detail.  I really won’t know the exact shape of this piece until I work with CNMAT’s speaker array.

I also learned from the Saturday’s performance in Oakland that I will need to refine the control on TouchOSC for the new implementation of my piece Charmer:Firmament.  It was very well received, with descriptions like “beautiful” and “meditative”, but it was difficult to control compared to the Wacom graphics tablet.  I will try a different mix of controls on the iPad to see if it works better.

Preparing for tonight’s performance

I will be performing tonight in Oakland at Rooz Cafe (1918 Park Blvd, Oakland, CA) at 7PM tonight. Details below:

A rescheduling of a an old date, remade in Rooz-y glory:

-Zeina Nasr
Emphatic, ethereal vocalisms

-Amar Chaudhary
(www.amarchaudhary.com/)
Complex, articulate solo work with an electronic aesthetic

-Karl Evangelista/Shaun Lowecki/Sean Peterson Trio
(www.karlevangelista.com)
(www.shaunlowecki.com)
-Animated, explosive inside/outside music

I have been busily preparing today with a small setup, similar to one I had planned for January 17:

Once again, I will have the monome controlling the MacBook, primarily for live sampling and looping today. I will be using the dotara, an Indian folk string instrument, as one of the live sample sources. I will also bring a bell and the prayer bowl as live sources. The iPad will be running Curtis, which gets more an more advanced with each upgrade and is becoming a true musical instrument. I will also be using TouchOSC to control Open Sound World, including a brand new implementation of my piece Charmer:Firmament for iPad, replacing the retired Wacom graphics tablet. This is a dry run for the big concert next Friday (March 4), so we’ll see out it goes.

I had been hoping a new contact mic would arrive today – I am considering that for March 4 as well – but of course FedEx showed up just while I was out at an important art-related meeting, so I missed it and they are the one courier that won’t leave things. So I will be using an ordinary mic once again for the live sampling/looping – maybe it’s for the best.

Update: Just as I finished posting this article, a package arrived.  Not the contact microphone, but it was an exciting new toy, the Wicks Looper.

You see previous CatSynth pics and videos with this and related devices via this link (the cat in most of these is also named Luna). I have been considering getting one these for a while, and the current run of performances provided the impetus.  Although I have not yet played it, I am seriously tempted to try it out for tonight’s set.  After all, what’s the worst that could happen?

UC Berkeley Regents’ Lecturer Concert at CNMAT, March 4

The next event in my UC Berkeley Regents’ Lecturer appointment is coming up soon! This time it is a full concert of my compositions, including at least one new one that I have promised to write.

Look for at least one “Preparing for upcoming performance” post over the next couple of weeks. If I plan ahead properly it won’t have to be a “Preparing for tonight’s performance”.


Friday, March 4, 8PM
Center For New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT)
1750 Arch St., Berkeley, CA

CNMAT and the UC Berkeley Regents’ Lecturer program present and evening of music by Amar Chaudhary.

The concert will feature a variety of new and existing pieces based on Amar’s deep experience and dual identity in technology and the arts. He draws upon diverse sources as jazz standards, Indian music, film scores and his past research work, notably the Open Sound World environment for real-time music applications. The program includes performances with instruments on laptop, iPhone and iPad, acoustic grand piano, do-it-yourself analog electronics and Indian and Chinese folk instruments. He will also premier a new piece that utilizes CNMAT’s unique sound spatialization resources.

The Regents’ Lecturer series features several research and technical talks in addition to this concert. Visit http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu for more information.


There is another performance coming up earlier than that, at Rooz Cafe in Oakaland on February 26. My upcoming performance schedule is always available here.

Zimoun and Jim Haynes at Swissnex

In mid-January, I had the opportunity to see a performance by Swiss artist and instrument-maker Zimoun and local artist Jim Haynes at Swissnex here in San Francisco.

Swissnex is tucked away on quiet block in a “neutral zone” between the FInancial District, Chinatown and North Beach (an area I enjoy passing through on some of my long walks). The space is very minimal and stark white, with bits of the structural architecture and industrial quality of the building present. Within this space, a large array of music-making machinery was set up. One one side was Zimoun’s very minimal instrumentation, and on the other the chaotic array of gear and elements that would make up Haynes’ performance.

Zimoun’s instrument was incredibly simple, a series of cardboard boxes on top of which were mounted ping-pong balls on motorized arms. The boxes served as resonant chambers for the excitation of the ping-ping balls.


[Click to enlarge.]

The performance unfolded as simply as the instrument itself. First, one of the five units began to vibrate, producing a low rumbling sound. Gradually the other ball+motor+box elements entered the mix, producing an odd harmony of machine noises. Out of this combination, I heard a higher-pitched metallic sound. I am not sure if this came directly from the machinery of the instrument, or was an acoustic artifact from the interaction of the different sounds. That is one of the interesting things about having such a minimal concept behind a piece, it allows one to focus on the output and explore minute details that would often be lost in a more complex performance. The piece continued as continuous sound, without much in the way of change or development, for about twenty minutes. The combination of the sound and visual environment allowed for a few minutes of peaceful detachment and I was able to experience it purely as signal and image processing without social context.

Jim Haynes’ performance was a sharp contrast to Zimoun, both aurally and visually. His table was covered with a diverse array of audio devices and lab equipment.

[Click to enlarge.]

At first, I took the metal column and rings to be a custom-made theremin of sorts before realizing that it was the rings and tower familiar from countless science classes.

After an initial burst of loud noise and feedback (which reassuringly let us all know that “yes, this thing is on”), the sound unfolded as an exploration of traditional elements, notably fire, air and earth. He opened with fire, specifically from the flame of a lit candle. He latter added sand, which poured from a bottle he placed on the metallic rings so that the sand could gradually fall out onto a contact microphone. While Zimoun’s performance invited detachment, Haynes’ required close attention. Many of the sounds that emerged seem closely related to the elemental sources: from the fire a series of crackling sounds and wind sounds from the excited air, and from the sand a sea of granular noises that could at times seem like liquid. But there were other sounds as well, the sound of ambient radio static, something akin to vinyl noise, a high-pitched shaking sound, and metallic rattling. Whether these were directly from the fire and sand or from the BOSS Dr. Sample and associated effects boxes is unclear.

This performance was in many ways a preview for Zimoun’s exhibition at the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) which opened a few days later. That exhibition is still ongoing and will close on on February 22nd. Follow the link for more details.

Paul Cowan, Cameron Soren, Amy Yao, Jancar Jones Gallery

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by Jancar Jones Gallery to see the current exhibition featuring works by Paul Cowan, Cameron Soren and Amy Yao. One the things I like about visiting is the gallery itself, a small but inviting room tucked away on a rather idiosyncratic block of Mission Street in SOMA. Despite being such a small space, the exhibitions are always sparse and calming. (You can see previous reviews of exhibits at Jancar Jones via this link.)

[Installation View: Paul Cowan, Cameron Soren, Amy Yao. Image courtesy of Jancar Jones Gallery.]

Perhaps the pieces that most caught my interest were Paul Cowan’s two paintings featuring musical notes, both with the label Untitled, 2010. Each features a single quarter note on five-line staff without a clef. Assuming an implicit treble clef (which is admittedly a big assumption), the notes would be A and G, respectively. The “A” is on a very sparse canvas with red lines, similar to something I might have had to draw out myself during early years of studying music. The “G”, by contrast is filled in with vibrant color fields, though once again red is the most prominent color.

[Paul Cowan: Untitled, 2010, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches; and Untitled, 2010, oil on canvas, 18×14 inches.  Images courtesy of Jancar Jones Gallery.]

The other piece that caught my attention was Amy Yao’s Dealing Don’t Cry, which featured three small bits of newspaper fastened to a horizontal wooden dowel. The bits of text on two of the paper bits feature the text “Dealing” and “Don’t Cry” – I am always interested in the use of text, especially when the context is missing. My understanding in this work is the title is derived from the material, rather than text being found to fit the title.

[Amy Yao, Dealing Don’t Cry, 2010, wood dowel, newspaper.  Image courtesy of Jancar Jones Gallery.]

Rounding out the exhibition was Cameron Soren’s untitled video installation depicting the gallery on the opening on January 7, 6-9PM.

This is the final weekend for the exhibition – it closes on February 12 – so stop by if you happen to be nearby.

Preparing for Regents’ Lecturer presentation, Part 1

I have been busily preparing this weekend for the first of my UC Berkeley Regents’ Lecturer presentations:

Open Sound World (OSW) is a scalable, extensible programming environment that allows musicians, sound designers and researchers to process sound in response to expressive real-time control. This talk will provide an overview of OSW, past development and future directions, and then focus on the parallel processing architecture. Early in the development of OSW in late 1999 and early 2000, we made a conscious decision to support parallel processing as affordable multiprocessor systems were coming on the market. We implemented a simple scalable dynamic system in which workers take on tasks called “activation expressions” on a first-come first serve basis, which facilities for ordering and prioritization to deal with real-time constraints and synchronicity of audio streams. In this presentation, we will review a simple musical example and demonstrate performance benefits and limitations of scaling to small multi-core systems. The talk will conclude with a discussion of how current research directions in parallel computing can be applied to this system to solve past challenges and scale to much larger systems.

You can find out more details, including location for those in the Bay Area who may be interested in attending, at the official announcement site.


Much of the time for a presentation is spent making PowerPoint slides:

With slides out of the way, I can now turn to the more fun part, the short demos. This gives me an opportunity to work with TouchOSC for the iPad as a method for controlling OSW patches. We will see how that turns out later.

Ivy Room Hootelatkenanny, December 2010

Today we look back at the Ivy Room Hootelatkenanny, the December edition of the Ivy Room Hootenany improvised music series. The Ivy Room in Albany, CA, has in fact turned into a great venue for new music, with many performances even beyond this long-running series. The combination of music, mixed drinks and quirky decor seem to come together.

Despite the play on words in the title, there was nothing Hannukah-related about the performances that evening.

The first set featured a quartet I put together with Bill Wolter on guitar, Dave “Djembe” Coen on percussion and JP O’Keefe on drumset. Gear-wise, I kept things pretty minimal, with just the Dave Smith Evolver and the iPad running Curtis and the Korg iMS-20 apps.

I started out the set with my usual metallic patch on the Evolver, and quickly added granular sweeping with Curtis. Slowly the percussion came in, with soft rolls on the cymbals and djembe. As Bill Wolter with soft chromatic harmonies on guitar, I switched to a different Evolver patch and to the iMS-20 with some analog-like arpeggios. These set up a rhythmic foundation which the drums matched with a strong 16-note rhythm – the tempo and pulse were reminiscent of disco but texture and individual rhythmic phrases were more complex – something akin to 1970s fusion. The iMS-20 served as a de facto bass with heavily filtered patches set against the guitar improvisation – at various times I opted for a softer tone like an electric bass, others a highly synthetic sound like a “techno bass.” Harmonically and melodically, we danced around blurs, pentatonic, chromatic and tri-tone patterns against the ever changing but steady pulse rhythm of the two percussionists. At one point, Bill started playing the strings below the bridge and I used this sound effect opportunity to return to Curtis. We kept the pulse going for a bit, then cut out for a quiet moment. Then the rhythm gradually re-emerged, a bit more tribal and accented off beat, and with more inharmonic timbres on synth and guitar. Then we returned the jam feel with guitar, bass and drums, and continued in one of these patterns or another for the remainder of the set, at one point switching to a 6/8 rhythm with a more humorous sounding synth line. I have to admit, this was one of the most fun I have played in a while, both idiomatic and experimental at the same time, both completely free-form and rhythmically structured. I will have to get this quartet back together again sometime soon!

We were followed by the duo of Kenneth and Kattt Atchley. Their music also combined experimental electronic elements with a strong idiomatic style, in their case something reminiscent of late-night electronic music at dance clubs or lounges. They did several distinct pieces during their set. The had a slow steady rhythm with soft electric-piano chords set against analog or analog-like electronic sounds, relative high pitched with pitch LFO. The chords and rhythm continue in a very moody, almost R&B fashion while the high pitched electronic sounds ride above more rapidly. Then all at once it stops, replaced by a very distant-sounding synth pad, and the voices and poetry returned amidst the sparser texture. The music moved back and forth seemelessly between these two overall textures. Kenneth and later Kattt at various moments intone “I wouldn’t change a thing” and descriptive phrases about “East Bay nights” and “Pacific Fog cooling the air”. The texture eventually gave way to harsher electrical noises and pulsating sounds that still have a harmony of their own – and one can still hear minor chords in the background. When the chords and rhythm return to the forreground, there are a bit more fragmented than before.

The next piece was entitled Over Ice. It started with very liquidy and crystalline sounds, with words and melody in a descending minor scale. There was something vaguely religious or spiritual sounding about this pattern, almost like a chant. A sparse rhythm emerges, and the high crystalline sounds remain in the background. It eventually because very abstract, with electronic hits and noises sounding at first in a random pattern that gradually becomes more rhythmic. After a monologue section, the original melodic pattern returned, but with a more rhythmic foundation.

The final set featured Dean Santomieri with Michael Zelner on reeds, and Suki O’Kane “massaging the skins”, i.e. on percussion. It consisted of improvisation around a series of poems featuring “spine words” and “spine phrases” based on Jonathan Franzen’s best-seller Freedom. Things opened with resonating cymbols and Santomieri’s introductions, followed by the initial poem based on the spine word “Franzen.” The music consisted of short clarinet and percussion phrases filling in the spaces in between Santomieri’s words, with some more extended instrumental lines. The overall texture was very sparse with individual notes, but also some jazzy phrases and some extended wind techniques set against a diversity of percussive sounds. Among the spine phrases used were “left right rhetoric”, “Lolita” and perhaps the most memorable “Franzen, Franzen, Franzen”. Indeed, the author’s name was frequently used in many playful contexts, such as “Franzomancy reveals a function, the zen idolatry…”. Section with more complex and richly tonal words followed by noisier and squeakier instrumentals. During one of the poems, Zelner switched to extended-technique flute, which was set against small metallic and wooden percussion from O’Kane. He returned to clarinet this time employing multiphonics for the final poem, which again used the spine “Franzen, Franzen, Franzen”.

RIP Milton Babbit

Milton Babbit, a noted and influential composer, teacher and thinker, passed away this Saturday at the age of 94. He is someone who I had met personally and with whom I had a rather influential encounter.

He is known for his highly complex and highly rational music – music that could truly be called “experimental” in light of his vision of academic music programs as laboratories for. He was not only involved in the early expansion of serialism beyond pitch into rhythm and dynamics, but also involved in the early development of electronic music. He was one of the first directors of the “Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center” and involved with the development of the RCA Mark II synthesizer. Many of his compositions from the 1960s were either fully electronic, such as his 1961 aptly named Composition for Synthesizer and his piece Philomel which featured electronic sounds and the processed voice of Bethany Beardslee. Philomel was probably his most well-known work, and you can hear a clip in this video:

Many remembrances describe his music as difficult or unapproachable, indeed the New York Times obituary opens with a description of his music as “impenetrably abstruse”. But I actually find several of the pieces beautiful, I could see listening to them and enjoying them for particular moods rather than as objects of study. Although he is most closely associated with the integral serialism that informed his composition, I see in pieces like Philomel similarities to works by Karlheinz Stockhausn and Luciano Berio based on very different compositional ideas.

I had my own encounter with Babbit about 16 years ago, when I was applying for the graduate composition program at Julliard. I had gotten a callback for live interviews with professors, and I found myself in his office with him looking over my scores. He was very friendly and humorous, and had kind words for my music (far more so than any other reviewer that day). Most significantly, he advised me about the relatively conservative “star-struck” environment Julliard – which has its place for turning out the next generation of professional concert musicians who aspire to cross the street to Lincoln Center – but that I would probably be happier continuing my work at a university such as Yale where I was completing my undergraduate work or Princeton where he taught. There was nothing condescending or discouraging about his advice – it was more a sense of “you are one of us” and I remember it fondly to this day. It was also important in the process that eventually brought me to UC Berkeley and to my current life in California.

My positive personal experience with him was in contrast to the portrayal he received in some of my early classes, where his statements about music most notably his essay “The Composer As Specialist / Who Cares if You Listen?” (an editorial retitling that he never liked) were often put into a dichotomy with others – I recall a couple of smackdowns with Babbit’s essay on one side and a counter-essay by Susan McClary on the other. As someone who was struggling to figure out where I fit in the world of academic music, moving between very rational and very theatrical, I sometimes took the bait on one side or the other. In the end, the argument was a non-argument. In fact, one of the fun things I have learned about Milton Babbit from the obituary writings was his fondness and knowledge of popular and theater music (particularly pre-World War II) and his brief experience with Broadway musicals. Something to keep in mind as we continue to make new music.