Supercollider​

Logic​

Sibelius​

Here's how composing looks to me at the moment:

(
a=[46!5,39!4,41!4,36!3,44!3,43!2,37!2,38,42].flat;
Pbind(\midinote, Pstutter(
Pwhite(5,17,inf), //min max number repeated notes
Pxrand(a,10) //get 10 pitches (actually 8???)
),
\dur, 0.25,
\legato, 0.5
).play;
)

Took the time to go to a concert of contemporary music tonight, a rare pleasure for me these days. Psappha, at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, playing a concert of largely new work. Sean Friar's Scale 9 which opened the programme was likeable and energetic, a sort of andante and allegro, or rather andante and blues, in a post- (very-post-) Gershwin vein. Nice to see an ensemble conducting themselves.

I like my flavours strong and simple, and Francesca Le Lohé's Blind Men and an Elephant was a little too detailed and finely wrought for my taste. It had the merit of turning out to be shorter than I thought it would be, which sounds snarky, but is actually an honest and well-intentioned comment: a compressed, rich piece.

Shows how out of touch I've become that I didn't even know Gordon McPherson had a big three movement prem tonight, Stunt Doubles. The gag here was having a synthesised ensemble play along with the real players. This worked very well: even just a few years ago this would have been a very different piece, but today's huge sample libraries make a much better job of it than the old 128 midi sounds. The first movement was… maximal, a million notes, but still very clear and structured. In the second movement Gordon dipped into a jazz bag which he normally keeps very well hidden, up in the loft somewhere behind an old sofa: we all liked this.

The third movement gave me some pause, with a slightly, er, naff, pastiche, of a filmic whistly-march type tune. The end of this piece oddly made more sense to me, where we heard this tune again, this time on the synthesised ensemble. Overall I thought this was a good piece, a bit tiring in places.

Dimitrios Skyllas New Miniatures for the Universe rather exceeded my C21st 140-character attention span. Seemed to be rather large miniature. And, the Steve Reich Double Sextet: boring.

But, very well played by Psappha, as were all the pieces in this well balanced and engaging concert.

My friend and colleage Kath has persuaded me to sign up for a ten-hour sponsored improvisation which she is organising. The event is in support of Common Wheel, a Glasgow-based charity who provided 'meaningful activity for people with mental illness'. They have two strands to their work, a bicyle project and the music project 'Polyphony'. The latter runs at Gartnaval Hospital, where they are asking interested musicians to join them on 28 January for ten hours of sponsored musical improvisation.

I've agreed to sign up for nine hours, which is the longest they are allowing people to attempt. I'm intending to play a variety of instruments, probably all piped through the laptop, maybe sruti box, trumpet, ketipung, and a synth. Should be interesting! As an experiment I had a wee go myself at improvising vocally and over the sruti box the other night, was able to keep going for well over an hour. Still, nine hours… I wonder how that is going to feel!

As well as the musical challenge, of course, it's about the money. If you'd like to sponsor me, you can use the donate link on the Common Wheel website, send me an email as well so that I know, tedthetrumpet (at) gmail.com.

calling-all-musicians_sponsored-improv-jan28th.pdf

Not be much to listen to, maybe, but feels an important moment for me: a new direction after finishing the PhD, satisfyingly far away from score-based contemporary 'classical' nonpop, or whatever you call all that stuff. Next up: more of this kind of thing, plus more gamelan. Happy days.

I've been working on a piece for this year's Plug festival at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, which will be in May sometime. The theme this time round is 'postludes'. Head of Composition Gordon McPherson has invited all the composers here, including staff like myself, to compose something which draws on, or reflects, or comments upon in some way, a piece from a previous Plug festival.

I've found myself drawn immediately to one of Gordon's own pieces from 2007, 'Spiricom', part of a trilogy of pieces called 'Ghosts' which deal in various ways with death and a possible afterlife. 'Spiricom' refers to... we'll, you can google it, a strange and mad episode in the history of pseudoscience, a couple of cranks who convinced themselves they had built a machine which would talk to dead people.

My postlude will be for solo clarinet and acoustic laptop: by which I mean a laptop operating entirely by itself, using just the internal mics and speakers. I've written a patch in Pd which will (quietly) transform long notes played by the clarinet, these long notes being a (very) approximate by-ear transcription of certain passages within Gordon's original piece. I have Fraser Langton lined up to play the clarinet, and we've had a wee try out with the patch: sounds ok.

A frustrating, ugly, boring piece to listen to, I imagine. But it will only be short :)

Just found out that the Bremen gamelan group Gamelan Kancil are playing Running in the Dark on Nov 27, working from the score they found here. Hope they make a recording, be curious to see what they make of it…

I've just got a new toy (tx John!). It's a Cheetah MQ8 midi sequencer. This is UK made, apparently released sometime in the late 80s as a competitor to the Alesis MMT-8. I've only just started to figure it out: pretty crazy trying to do everything with a combination of button presses and a tiny, dim LCD screen!

cheetr.mp3

Don't listen to this one at all unless you like really hardcore distortion. No, scrub that, just don't listen to this one. Please. (Brownian walks in SuperCollider, samples & fx in Logic Pro.)

gamhum.mp3