image: mark falesch |
I think of myself as part of the free-improvisation community in the role of performer. As a composer, I'm into exploring the marriage of electronics with non-electronic instruments and the voice. I'm also developing a body of purely electronic compositions. I am the founder and one of the hosts of the radio program classical and beyond on WNUR-89.3FM. With time on my hands I produce essays and rants of arguable value. I use computers during performance and I've explored the use of software in the compositional process for purposes beyond sound design. This includes software which might help create and refine ideas for local and global formal structures. Often the software involves my own designs. Tools used include pd, max/msp/jitter and reaktor, aided by macro structures and abstractions already designed by scores of master musicians before me. I often use an instrument I've named metaPiano. The metaPiano is a keyboard-based instrument that can sound like a grand piano, but can use any sound. My piano keyboard (a 61-note or 88-note midi controller) sends signals to a computer which can alter them before they are sent to a sound-generating module (which can reside in the computer or externally). I frequently use it for pitch set operations, in realtime, on the incoming midi stream. Most of the time I'm not using metaPiano in a piano performance style, but much of the software of my metaPiano system is a central part of the instrument I use in improvised performance contexts. In recent performances, instead of a keyboard controller, I've used a fader box and/or a joystick and flight-simulator foot pedals..
I have used this software system to a limited degree in developing some compositions, and an important goal is to more tightly integrate the tools I use for performance and composition and thus mediate process and work into a more seamless whole.
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