I had a great time at White Noise!
My set started at 7:00pm, on time. Most of the audience arrived well after that so only a select few heard me play, but I like that. There's something very intimate to playing to a very small audience - about a couple of dozen - and I felt free to just enjoy playing through the great big amplifier and making different parts of the building (and the audience!) rattle and shake. And it was a massive amp - two stacks of speakers half as tall again as me - that really brought out the lowest notes of the etherwave to their best. It felt just like playing at home, but better.
No nerves whatsoever. I think that making a fool of myself in front of the best, (in Berlin, as noted previously) has fixed that. So I was relaxed, and I felt I was playing at my best. Afterwards I was approached by a local chap who puts on electronic music events and we had a nice conversation about my effects boxes. Hopefully he'll be getting back to me about something he's organising for August. He was very confident that the crowd he draws would be well into the sort of thing I do.
And Gordon from Vars Of Lichti wants me for a Glasgow based event. It's a long way to travel. We'll have to see about that, but I'd like something to come of it.
I made the audience laugh. The first piece was on a short delay, and mashed up bits of Articulator and Hadal Zone. The second piece used a longer delay, and was bits of Ascension mixed in with bits of Bouncing Blumfeld. For the last piece (Gently Drowning meets Iron Sun) I brought the Panic Box and Whistle Pig into the chain and commented "Now it's going to get weird." Laughter.
All the acts were excellent, but the stand-out act had to be HK119. Heidi Kilpeläinen, for that is her name, is totally brilliant. A powerful singing voice, very theatrical set, great electronics (prerecorded) and just an enormous stage presence. Highly recommended. YouTube does not do her justice (you knew that already - it's youTube) but here's a clip anyway...
We chatted a little before her set - she's not as scary as her stage persona suggests, but not weak either - when the video projector fell alarmingly from its position above the audience (and fortunately straight into the arms of the guy setting it up) and screwed her intended set one could tell from the shell-shocked looks of people around that she is not afraid to share a negative opinion when things are not going to plan. So we got a different set. And it was utterly captivating from start to end. She provided my favourite quote of the evening; ""You're a very good theremin player. I've never seen anyone play theremin before." :-)
And then at about 10 o'clock Hiem decided that there was not enough people there for them (there were already a lot more people than at 7 o'clock and by 1 o'clock, when they were due to play, the place was packed) and they left, leaving a hole in the proceedings.
The hole was filled by an impromptu super-group composed of - Vars Of Lichti, (Gordon on guitars, Jack on drums) Dub Chieftain (Eddie on banjo) and Beat Frequency (me on theremin.) We were called Meat Raffle. Ann said Gordon came up with the name. Gordon says it was Ann. Apparently it's a disco in Shoreditch but that's just a coincidence. We rocked the joint.
Afterwards, one of the audience told me I hawkwinded the set excellently. Cool. I have a lot of respect for Hawkwind. We didn't sound anything like this...
Hurrah for Hiem buggering off and letting me play with the big speakers again. Guys, you can bugger off again any time you like. It's fine by me.
Fingers crossed, you'll be able to see a lot of the action on youTube. There was a guy there with a tiny camera, but on a tripod and with an enormous professional mike on the top. I saw a tiny clip and it looked and sounded good, so fingers crossed. It'll give a taste of what you missed.
(Coincidentally, he was also the guy that won the door raffle - a Moog Etherwave Theremin. He was very excited about it and sought me out. Well, he's now equipped with a print out of The Beat Frequency Method, so it will be interesting to see what comes of it. Guy - if you're reading this - head off to the ThereminWorld forums and tell us about it. Also - I hope you don't mind me saying - in three years of browsing youTube and seeking out thereminists, you're the only black person I know of with a theremin. I don't know why that is. I just think it's curious. :-)
Sonic Weekend next week.
(Oh, yes. One other thing. I learned while I was there that apparently there's a fellow drives round New York highjacking the airwaves off classical music stations and substituting his own playlist, which includes Beneath The Cavern Of The Soup Dragon by yours truly. I like that.)
Monday, 30 March 2009
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Phantom Circuit is Great!
... and I'm not just saying that because they played a couple of Beat Frequency pieces on #16.
"discordant electronic howling (just the way you like it)"
Phantom Circuit #16
Monday, 23 March 2009
Monday, 16 March 2009
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Flexatones
These are flexatones. They were invented around the same time as the theremin. I was given a couple for my birthday.
If you have read The Beat Frequency Method you will understand the next bit...
The flexatone can be used as an electro-mechanical theremin effect, specifically a hand-held pitch twangulator.
If you have read The Beat Frequency Method you will understand the next bit...
The flexatone can be used as an electro-mechanical theremin effect, specifically a hand-held pitch twangulator.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
The Beat Frequency Method
The best way to read this document is to select Fullscreen and View Mode>BookThe Beat Frequency Method
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Boundary Conditions and Transitional Phases
I'm just back from a winter break in Berlin. Photos to follow.
The highlight of the trip was Carolina Eyck's CD Release and 21st Birthday Party. It was excellent to meet Randy George while I was there, and to catch up with Barbara Buchholz. OK, I'm a dreadful name-dropper. Sosumi. They are three people I have so much respect for. Just wonderful.
Carolina played a couple of pieces - one duetting with Randy and the second accompanying him on the piano. Her brother Roman played a mean double bass. The first was something classical that I forget the name of. Unforgettable You was the second piece. Barbara played a couple of her own compositions with a looper. You don't need me to tell you how good it all was. Do you? Really? Oh, OK. Very Damn Good!
I also played a short set. Hadal Zone, Articulator and something that was basically a loose idea and not much more. I'll get to that in a moment, but first... this was me facing any scrap of performance anxiety head on - an audience of the afore-mentioned top-rate musicians and me with a few years of figuring it out by myself and a knowingly obtuse, even perverse, approach, launching into a piece that is begging to fail. And of course it was not my finest moment. But there you go. Afterwards I slumped against a wall and explained a bit to Barbara about the last piece - title: A Point Of Collapse.
This is the thing - I'm interested in boundary conditions, interim states and transitional phases. Of course I was mindful of the Berlin Wall and its destruction and the associated changes. But more generally, for instance, people settle on land near water - a boundary - how many towns have a river? Why do we go on holiday to the seaside and sit on the beach - the place between land and water? We duck our heads as we walk into rooms - even when we will clearly fit easily. And so on. I enjoy things that are in the grey area between sense and nonsense, structure and chaos, reason and irrationality. So the question is - how much can I allow things to fall apart whilst playing, without crossing the line irretrievably. Musical chicken. Theremin brinkmanship. As you might have guessed this is a panic-box piece. By the end of the performance I felt I was not so much taking it home as dragging its corpse to the river.
I felt fine about it. The point of playing before an audience is to empathise - to hear it through their ears, and that's a good thing.
And the moral of this story is; If you eat a live frog before breakfast, nothing worse will happen to you all day.
That night, back in the pension, in hypnagogic reverie I decided the piece needs an anchor, something to take it out of the theatre of the imagination and make it specific. In short, a few words.
One experiment we did at school was paper chromatography, splitting out the pigments in black ink to find a wealth of colours there. So I imagine a technique for opening out a momentary sound, unfolding it to find the richness therein. Not literally, of course - an "artist's impression".
Most of the words of the anchor followed from that idea. One line - the pistol shot - was from a dream I had later that night. Someone in a long coat asked me if I knew of a particular book by an author he named. I did not. He quoted that phrase from the book and it was clear that it had special significance.
So here it is in full.
I think it should be spoken by a chorus of computer generated female voices.
I brought home some trophies - Carolina and Barbara's new CDs and a tourist t-shirt - black, with a white silhouette of an East German border guard leaping the Berlin Wall when it was just a stretch of barbed wire. Based on this photo.
More info here.
The highlight of the trip was Carolina Eyck's CD Release and 21st Birthday Party. It was excellent to meet Randy George while I was there, and to catch up with Barbara Buchholz. OK, I'm a dreadful name-dropper. Sosumi. They are three people I have so much respect for. Just wonderful.
Carolina played a couple of pieces - one duetting with Randy and the second accompanying him on the piano. Her brother Roman played a mean double bass. The first was something classical that I forget the name of. Unforgettable You was the second piece. Barbara played a couple of her own compositions with a looper. You don't need me to tell you how good it all was. Do you? Really? Oh, OK. Very Damn Good!
I also played a short set. Hadal Zone, Articulator and something that was basically a loose idea and not much more. I'll get to that in a moment, but first... this was me facing any scrap of performance anxiety head on - an audience of the afore-mentioned top-rate musicians and me with a few years of figuring it out by myself and a knowingly obtuse, even perverse, approach, launching into a piece that is begging to fail. And of course it was not my finest moment. But there you go. Afterwards I slumped against a wall and explained a bit to Barbara about the last piece - title: A Point Of Collapse.
This is the thing - I'm interested in boundary conditions, interim states and transitional phases. Of course I was mindful of the Berlin Wall and its destruction and the associated changes. But more generally, for instance, people settle on land near water - a boundary - how many towns have a river? Why do we go on holiday to the seaside and sit on the beach - the place between land and water? We duck our heads as we walk into rooms - even when we will clearly fit easily. And so on. I enjoy things that are in the grey area between sense and nonsense, structure and chaos, reason and irrationality. So the question is - how much can I allow things to fall apart whilst playing, without crossing the line irretrievably. Musical chicken. Theremin brinkmanship. As you might have guessed this is a panic-box piece. By the end of the performance I felt I was not so much taking it home as dragging its corpse to the river.
I felt fine about it. The point of playing before an audience is to empathise - to hear it through their ears, and that's a good thing.
And the moral of this story is; If you eat a live frog before breakfast, nothing worse will happen to you all day.
That night, back in the pension, in hypnagogic reverie I decided the piece needs an anchor, something to take it out of the theatre of the imagination and make it specific. In short, a few words.
One experiment we did at school was paper chromatography, splitting out the pigments in black ink to find a wealth of colours there. So I imagine a technique for opening out a momentary sound, unfolding it to find the richness therein. Not literally, of course - an "artist's impression".
Most of the words of the anchor followed from that idea. One line - the pistol shot - was from a dream I had later that night. Someone in a long coat asked me if I knew of a particular book by an author he named. I did not. He quoted that phrase from the book and it was clear that it had special significance.
So here it is in full.
frozen moments
the slow explosion
walls bulge
the pistol shot
a point of collapse
I think it should be spoken by a chorus of computer generated female voices.
I brought home some trophies - Carolina and Barbara's new CDs and a tourist t-shirt - black, with a white silhouette of an East German border guard leaping the Berlin Wall when it was just a stretch of barbed wire. Based on this photo.
More info here.
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