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electroacoustic compostion for saxophone

altissimo

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disclaimer - those of you who don't like weird, look elsewhere for your entertainment.... I mean it, this isn't pretty tunes and nice harmony

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listen on headphones or decent speakers to get the full effect

about 2 years ago, in Manchester, a friend told me that Danny was looking for me 'cos he needed a sax player for a piece he was working on... "Danny?" - my mind was blank, the only Danny I could think of was the mythical purveyor of rare herbs and chemicals in 'Withnail & I' - but, luckily for my central nervous system, it turned out to be a guy I'd met a few times at some of the free improv gigs I'd put on..
emails were duly exchanged and it turned out he was doing his MA in Electroacoustic Music and wanted to do a piece for sax. He'd already tried one of the local jazz bigwigs, but the guy couldn't deliver the goods, so I was the only sax player he could think of who could make a variety of weird noises on the sax. At last my perverse talents had been recognised...
I went down to NOVARS at Manchester Uni and we set up a nice Audio Technica mic and spent the afternoon recording my improvisations and every sound I could get out of the instrument - multiphonics, growls, breath noises, spitty mouthpiece sounds, key clicks and rattles etc. A week later we did more recording, doing more odd sounds. He seemed happywith the results and I enjoyed the recording and the free beer in the pub afterwards. Several months later the music you hear in the link above turned up in my inbox. This is a stereo mix of the full 8 channel surround sound version. There were plans to do it live, but that never happened.
I'm not sure what he did to the raw sounds we recorded, some convoluted processing using MAX/MSP, but I never found out the details
No doubt most of you are thinking 'what the hell is this?' - well, I did try and warn you...
 
Stuff you do at college, eh? :)

Reminds me of my effort at college a few years ago (a rather mature student) without the electronics - see here.

Nice - in a 60s Subotnick, Nono sort of way.
 
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Whilst I probably agree on playing harmonic scales and other styles, I can't say I actually dislike this, I was actually lost in it almost as if it was a story being told -great for a horror or space alien type movie, it is kind of scarey in a way, wondering what is going to happen next.. I listened to the entire track :)
 
I managed a minute a and a half. But being serious I can see the benefit of listening to this, it's sort of music in reverse. When your listening to great music, you get that feeling of total joy. I found the same with this piece when I switched it off.:)
 
Stuff you do at college, eh? :)

Reminds me of my effort at college a few years ago (a rather mature student) without the electronics - see here.

Nice - in a 60s Subotnick, Nono sort of way.

Aww, Nick, that's the nicest thing you've ever said...:)

unlike Morton Subotnick, no electronic sounds are involved, everything is derived from the sax sounds we recorded and further manipulated and mangled using custom software written in MAX/MSP.

for background on this style of music -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acousmatic_music
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroacoustic_music

it's not just something that people knock together at college, there are entire festivals, record labels, academic conferences and journals devoted to this kind of music, you can even hear it occasionally on Radio 3 (Hear And Now 10:30 pm on Saturday night)
but, to quote John Cage, you don't have to call it music, if the term offends you
some of us like to listen to things that don't sound like anything we've ever heard before. I also like Ben Webster

the avant garde may not be to everyone's taste (see disclaimer at the top) but it's there for those that like it and there is a market for it - enough that someone as unknown as myself can get paying gigs. If you sit still and behave yourselves, I might tell you all about my recent trip to Poland - 2 days of eating and drinking at the Radisson hotel, interrupted by the minor inconvenience of having to play the saxophone. And I got paid for it - better than passing the hat round at the local jazz jam session and not getting enough for the taxi home..
For those of you lucky enough to live in Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham and Brighton - I'll be out on the road terrorising audiences with an Italian free jazz outfit and some bloke out of Sonic Youth in mid march. Something makes me think none of you'll be in attendance.. :p
 
Not what I normally listen too. But, that was clever, it must have taken an age to get all the sounds to line up as he wanted them.

Chris..
 
Quite listen-to-able

But I wouldn't pay for it
 
Am I the only one that really likes it?
I just would have liked more johnzorning from our café friend.
 
Hmmmm......... I think it needs some oil and did he actually get the engine started;)


Jx
 
Am I the only one that really likes it?
I just would have liked more johnzorning from our café friend.
there's plenty of vile and unlistenable sax torture on my bandcamp page - some madman actually paid a fiver to download one of my recordings today, but he's a bass clarinettist, so obviously quite insane
 

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