Mobtown Modern played host to Baltimore’s 4th Annual performance of Phil Kline’s ambient Christmas masterpiece last weekend. It was a fun, fun evening as always. And also as always, thanks to Rob McIver for his awesome photos.
I actually had my first “taste of Christmas” last night (added an orange twist to class things up a bit this year), but got the tree this evening. Decorated and will now bask in the tree’s warm glow. Gotta soak it up while I can since I’m off to Chicago for the Midwest Band Clinic tomorrow.
As Mobtown Modern counts down to the first performance of The Rite of Spring for Jazz Ensemble, you can chart the progress and read all about the many, many decisions that have gone into the arrangement process at composer/arranger Darryl Brenzel’s blog Stravinsky for Jazz Ensemble.
Towards the end of last night’s Zodiacrobatic rehearsal, Erik and I sat down to discuss MIDI mapping for our—well, my—Zodiac Live set. I’d already mapped out my Pisces cadenza with the FCB1010, but Erik said he had a better way. As he explained his method to me, I admit that I was extremely confused, until it dawned on me that his method and my method were different solutions for the same problem.
My method maps all the things I need to do for a specific melody in a single bank. So for example, in the Pisces melody I need to launch clips, scenes, add effects, and use the expression pedals. My solution was to assign all these tasks to switches 1-10 in Bank 01. And when it came time for the next melody, I’d simply scroll to the next bank of switches.
Erik’s method is to create banks that are each assigned to do specific tasks. So Bank 01 might be clip launching/stopping and scene advancing, Bank 02 might be for adding a certain kind of audio effect, Bank 03 might be to arm and deploy the looper, and so on.
Once I got my head around it, Erik’s way seemed extremely logical and made perfect sense. His reasoning for setting up his FCB1010 in this manner is that he’s creating an instrument that can be used across multiple projects. In contrast, my mapping choices were very project-specific. My issues with mapping things as Erik suggested is that it could potentially create some situations in live performance that would require some unnecessarily fancy footwork. Say I’ve got to toggle between Banks 01 and 05 quickly to activate something-or-other while playing some intricate line on the saxophone and then go back down to bank 00?
Obviously, there’s more than one way to skin this cat. I’m interested in what other performers—especially instrumentalists—have found to be the best solution here. Thoughts?
This is the fifth year that I’ve organized a performance of Phil Kline’s ambient Christmas masterpiece Unsilent Night (a.k.a. the boombox Christmas parade). It’s the fourth time I’ve done it in Baltimore and the first time it’s been presented under the auspices of the Contemporary Museum’s Mobtown Modern series.
As always, simply show up with a boombox (or not if you just want to follow along), I’ll provide the tapes and CDs (N.B. eager participants who have audio capabilities can download a sound file of the piece at this website), we’ll press play, and be off to spread some ambient holiday cheer throughout the streets of Baltimore. The route will be the same as previous years, though I think we may take a detour to a stop included on the first year’s route—the curved glass in front of the Meyerhoff lobby.
Tim Smith of the Baltimore Sun wrote a really nice preview yesterday on his blog. Make sure to give him a read.
Update: Anne Midgette of the Washington Post also chimes in with a little pre-Unsilent Night love.
I inadvertently unlocked a secret setting in Ableton Live tonight that allows you to create bona fide Milton Babbitt compositions on the spot. Just set a clip’s warp mode to “tone,” assign the clip’s transposition knob to one of the expression pedals on your FCB1010, and voila!
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Yesterday I put the finishing touches on my looping cadenza that will connect the “Aqaurius” and “Pisces” melodies in Zodiacrobatic. It took me a little longer to create than I had planned, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
The cadenza will begin towards the end of “Aqaurius” when Erik starts introducing samples of soprano lines I pre-recorded. Using those licks as a jumping off point, I’ll create a frantic, swirling improvisation that begins kind of pointillistically and gets much denser, approaching the perpetual motion figure that will serve as the foundation for the melody. During the improvisation, two multiphonics will be played and subsequently triggered in Live to create a richer texture and the scale will change from the “Aquarius” scale to the scale I use for the “Pisces” melody. (Should I have made a Pisces/scale pun?)
I’ll end the improvisational section with a lick that kicks off the perpetual motion. It’s a 16th-note figure that I record and trigger immediately in Live, adding a second harmony figure on top of it. This forms the loop. With the loop established, I’ll continue to create variations of the material live with the soprano and also by triggering variations within Ableton. It all sounds very oceanic. Once I get bored of doing this, I’ll add a couple of grain delays that sweep the pitch up and trigger the drone that will support the melody:
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After the first time through the melody, I’ll trigger a pre-recorded sample of the accompaniment line, Erik will drop the beat, and we’ll be off. Here’s what the Live set looks like:
Hey Brian,
I’m the developer of the McSweeney’s iPhone app and just saw your rather angry comment about the app, so I thought I’d contact you to find out what is making you so irate.
The app is priced at $5.99 (USD), with subscription top-ups at $4.99 for each subsequent six months. The subscription is just for the Small Chair content (stories, films, audiobooks, movies, etc.) that is pushed to your phone each week. The syndicated content from the McSweeney’s website remains free forever.
I think I can easily justify the 20¢/week charge for the Small Chair content. I mean, you know, there’s artists to pay, significant server infrastructure costs, not to mention the time of the people at McSweeney’s and myself. Do you expect an advertisement-free book subscription to be free forever? I think most people would realise why this isn’t possible.
I’d like to hear your reasons why charging a comparatively miniscule amount for content is such a bad thing, with the alternative being we all lose money to provide you and others with our work. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about basic economics, etc.
Russell.
Too good not to re-post. Bike Snob NYC thinks he got Lance’s personal copy of Comeback 2.0 by mistake.
This May, Mobtown Modern will close out its 2009-2010 season with something that, to my knowledge, has not been done before—an arrangement of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring for jazz ensemble. I mention this now because I played a gig with my friend Darryl Brenzel—Darryl is arranging The Rite for our show—this past weekend and he slipped me a CD of the rehearsal recordings. Wow. That’s all I have to say. Below are excerpts from Parts 1, 2, and 4. I’ve heard the entire arrangement and am convinced that May 12, 2010 will be a very special night.
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There's more where that came from. Music, videos, and albums by Brian all inside.
