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Metal Drone

Naiiff

by davidestevens on October 2, 2009

in Recent

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: Naiff

I’ve had a bit of a break from working in my studio – part of which was a week away working with children with special needs. This is a week long project that I run from time to time on behalf of Eyemusic (best known for the wonderful Colourscape structure and new music festival).

At the end of the week I was performing in Colourscape on Clapham Common with Lawrence Casserley, Phil Wachsmann (violin) and Simon Desorgher (see the image below) . There were some lovely soundscapes created, which makes it a pity that we didn’t record any of them!

So I decided it was time to do another studio improvisation with my “sunday morning” software, but using some different sound sources. I decided to start with a plucked kitchen knife (hence the title of the piece) as I wanted short rather than sustained sounds to start off with. To this I then added a bowed and struck brass rod. As I use this software more, I’m starting to get more of an idea of how the input sounds are going to turn out, and when to start them running.

This is a more peaceful piece than some of the previous ones, and as the source sounds are natural (as opposed to the electronic noises from the Cracklebox), the resulting sounds have a lot more internal variation.

Enjoy!

Here’s a recent picture of Simon performing in a giant bubble floating on the Thames, as part of the 2009 Thames Festival…

The Colourscape Sphere on the Thames

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suspended – part 2

by davidestevens on May 23, 2009

in Early pieces

I’m away on the north of England this week, running a first outing for the sensory room version of my interactive max/msp software at the Haworth Art Gallery in Accrington. Today (Saturday) was the first of two “public” days, and they’ve gone well. I’ve shot some video of people trying out the system, which I’ll edit when I get home next week. It’s pretty dark in the sensory room, so I’m not sure how well it’ll all come out. I was using an LED light from B&Q as a kind of low tech light source this morning while shooting some shots of the empty room – worked pretty well!

In the meantime, here’s the second part of suspended …

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suspended – second part

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suspended – live performance in Colourscape

May 15, 2009

suspended pt 1
suspended (pt 1)  – Autumn 2000
Download the mp3 here. (21.8mb)

After the evening Sonic Arts performance (see “the dream before-1”) where I discovered the interesting sonic possibilities of bowing metal strips, I started work on building a performance rig that would expand on the idea.
I bought metal strips of differing lengths and materials from [...]

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the dream before – 2

May 1, 2009

the dream before 2 – the dream before 4-5 (16′49)
Here’s the final part of “the dream before”, continued from two posts ago.

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falling embers – bass, flugel, electronics

April 23, 2009

falling embers
falling embers (41.52) 23/04/09
Steve Lawson and I finally managed to get together today. After some initial problems with Steve’s looper, we got started, and produced this 45 minute improvisation. I’m very happy with the way it worked out – apart from a few small cuts to tidy things up, this is exactly what we [...]

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