Tag: gig

Gig Report: The Royal Vauxhal Tavern

I’ve recently joined a rock band, Helen’s Evil Twin and last night was my first gig with them. It was their highest profile show yet and one of the biggest pop music gigs that I’ve ever played. We were at the Wotever Extravaganza, part of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern‘s Hot August Fringe Festival.
The RVT used to be a music hall. This was a form of mass entertainment that predated things like radio and TV. The working classes would cram into cabaret theatres and watch people sing and play piano and dance, etc. So the club has a long bar on one wall and then the seating is arranged in a sort of semi-circular pattern, facing a small stage. Upstairs, there is a kitchen, an office, a large room holding many stage props and upstairs from that there are dressing rooms and a flat that somebody seems to live in.
Helen, the guitarist (every third British woman is named Helen), and I met early in the afternoon and loaded up her drum kit and two very tiny amplifiers into a hired car and took them to the RVT, but they ended up not being used, as the other band decided an hour beforehand to hire much better gear. In the UK, it seems to be very common that rock acts will share drum kits and amps at shows, whereas, in the States, every band seems to bring their own gear.
The show started at six with some poets and then DJ + dancing and then some cabaret acts and then DJ + dancing. Some of the acts were quite compelling. Two highlights were Jet Moon doing her bit about “Femme Packing,” which is fun. And Michael Twaits did part of his show, Icons and a piece about the Stonewall Riots, which I’ve seen him do about three times now and I get a lump in my throat every time, because it is so very excellent.
I went up to our dressing room to get changed. Taylor, the violinist came up and reported that there was a naked man on stage, speaking like the characters from The Sims, and smearing himself with paint. We tuned our instruments and when we heard echos of Ingo’s voice booming from below, we walked down to have a very brief tech check while another DJ was spinning tunes and a few people danced.

We hadn’t had a sound check, so the tech was asking questions and running cables. It was very suboptimal, but half the band hadn’t been able to show up until after the event started and it probably didn’t make sense to check with only bass and guitar. So we waited around back stage and I tried not to be overly nervous. Hoops, the drummer, said, “this is so exciting! It’s like being back stage before a gig!”

The club was packed, but Wotever audiences are very friendly. I was just concerned about making mistakes, as I’m new and all the songs had completely left my head. I had written out the chords next to song titles on my set list, so if the basslines completely escaped me, at least I could play the right roots.
Ingo came out and announced as and mentioned that I was the new bassist and people cheered. The stage lights were very bright, so I couldn’t really see people, except for one guy close to the front who seemed to fancy me. We started playing through our set and I wasn’t screwing up as much as I feared, so that was ok. And people were cheering and dancing in the front. When Helen said we were nearly done, a large number of people yelled “more” at us. We were like fucking rock stars!
I went upstairs and changed back into my street clothes and then watched the next band, The Blow Waves, who describe themselves as “the campest band in the world.” They were very fun.

Post Mortem

I need to be less nervous and have more stage presence. Also, I need to wear earplugs, as my ears were ringing like mad after wards. Sound checks are almost always a good thing. I think, in general, we should stand farther forward, take up more space, and own the stage more, because we could totally be rock stars. Or at least, I totally want to be a rock star, which is almost the same thing. With screaming fans, dancing people and dressing rooms!
I’m thinking I might want to write a few songs about pop music topics: love, sex and death. And by sex, I mean gender, of course.
Our next gig is in the West Midlands at Worchester Pride, on 22 August at the Mars Bar.

Tonight!


Glove of Truth (0b2)
Originally uploaded by celesteh.

Hey folks, I’m playing in San Francisco tonight in the Edgetone Summit. Show starts at 8PM at the SF Community Music Center on 544 Capp Street. X-street is 20th. I’ve been informed this is directly in between 16th St BART and 24th St BART, only one block of of Mission. Also, very conveniently located if you want to purchase illicit drugs or sex on the way. Save a Hamilton for the $10 admission, though.
Polly Moller and I will be doing a work for lie detector. So think up some yes or no questions to put to Polly. Has she ever cheated on her taxes? Does she still beat her dog? If terrorists were going to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge unless she fellated Dick Cheney, would she do it?
I’ll be moderating, so if something is in bad taste, I will smack you down!
There are some other exciting people on the bill also. The summit goes on all week.

In the KFJC Pit

This afternoon, Polly Moller and I went down to Los Altos Hills to play in the KFJC pit. KFJC is the radio station at Foothill College, a community college. I took classes there during the summer when I was in high school. And I listened to that radio station when I was a teen, but I’d never been inside of it before.
They lead us down to the “pit” which is a room full of CDs and records with enough space in the middle for a small band to play. I was looking at all of them, since I listened to this station so much when I was a kid. On one wall was tubs full of 7 inch punk records. I saw Bratmobile sort of casually stacked at the edge. These records changed my life! These actual records! Not, like, a different instance but the same pressing, but these actual physical pieces of vinyl opened up my world when I was 16 and then I was in the room with them.
They started calling up sound engineers so that somebody would come over. One finally did, so we did a sound check. There was so much hum and the right channel was out on my headphones. So the sound guy jiggled the headphone cables and I separated the audio cables from the power cables, as they were all snuggling together. Then we improved for about 25 minutes.
I played my “Simple Sample” program. I didn’t know I was going to be playing this ahead of time, so I played the version I had put together for the ETC gig. It has joystick control. It also has a bug in the timing thing that I need to find and squash. Polly played flute and also toys. She read text from a spam message. The text is totally bizarre. I hope she posts it so I can link to it. It has some really disturbing images that come up in it, like with some sort of giant bug, ala Naked Lunch. I sampled her and mostly just played it back, since she wasn’t into the pitch shifting. I added a garbling thing that I originally wrote to mangle Bush, (which I played at ETC along with porn samples.)
I haven’t started officially live coding yet, but I’m at the point where I will confidently modify a program during a sound check. The coming lie detector piece is written to allow live code modification. Because I’m lazy and it’s easier than making buttons and stuff to change states. And that piece is why we were at KFJC. We were there to promote the Edgetone Festival. So after we played, we were interviewed. Well, mostly Polly was interviewed because she is on the board of the festival and because she already knows those guys and finally because I was struck shy by being some place so cool.
Then we packed up and went for food.
The set seemed ok, but Polly was sad because yesterday would have been her 11th anniversary with Paul if he were still alive. It’s the first one she’s marked since he’s gone. She got a tattoo on her back yesterday in honor of him. It’s the Two of Cups, which is a tarot card that had special meaning for them. She spent 3.5 hours having needles pushed into her lower back. It was intense. The tat looks cool, though. It still needs some color work. Her artist is really cool. Seeing that happen really made me want to get another one. A tuba to go with my bass clef? A modular synth front panel? (yes!!) A bike gear and chain? A trans pride symbol? A peace symbol? All of those? (yes!!!)
M ex has a peace symbol around the same spot I would want to put mine. It might be a little weird, but it’s hardly unique for a Berkeley radical to display a peace sign, so I think it would be ok. I’m leaning towards the trans pride symbol, but also wary, in case I want to go stealth or something. Which is stupid, because I’d have to go into hiding or something and give up my career and it would still only out me to people who know this symbol.
Um, anyway, my time is mostly scheduled with practicing for our show on the 23rd. Which you should come to.

Edit

The lyrics are now in the comments for this post.

Gig Report: ETC (Hangover editition)

I started yesterday by sleeping in a long time. Then I went to get a haircut. There’s a great haircutter here in Amsterdam. So I got a haircut. On the way out, my bike tipped over, alas, which is a common enough occurrence. I got to the venue early in the afternoon and proceeded to drink like 10 cups of coffee and eat a lot of sugar.
Then I went to set up and my synthesizer wouldn’t plug in. The power transformer plug got bent when my bike tipped over. Oh No! Oh no! So I used my pocket knife to bend it back, but, um, yeah, it would have probably been smarter to unplug it first.
My synth wouldn’t turn on. After some experimentation with a volt meter, we determined that the transformer is dead. And just try finding something that puts out +15V, -15V and ground. I’m not 100% certain that the problem is actually the transformer, but I really hope it is because trying to fix the synthesizer itself is beyond me. It’s an evenfall minimodular, so if I broke it, bah, they’re not being made anymore.
I wet and bought some Jenever, a type of Dutch gin. Then I tried to figure out what the hell to play. 40 minutes of live sampling was down the toilet with nothing to sample. I quickly assembled a program and put together a very alpha version of of my crotch-mounted joystick piece – with the wrong game controller, so the visual element was lost. I got it finished just in time for my sound check.
The right speaker connection was janky, so the person running the sound check, was all “we’ll have to tell the engineer to jiggle this if it drops out.” The next person trying to sound check just could not get her system working at all. So finally, about an hour late, I was on. Nobody from The Hague came, but I didn’t exactly give them advance notice and anyway, I wasn’t even playing my program so whatever.
I started playing the silly phone sounds piece that I wrote for brumcon. And I hit the button on my joystick. And nothing happened. I knew it had loaded the drivers correctly. Jesus, the batteries must have died. I wasn’t on a stage, I was back by the sound booth, which was lucky, but nobody had batteries. I ran up out of the performance area and found bag, overturned it, grabbed my spare batteries. The moral of the story is that spares must be kept with me. The cool thing was that as soon as I got the batteries in, I could start controlling the piece, even from outside, so I was able to make it kind of play ok while I was coming back.
That piece sounds great in a bedroom, playing out of genolec monitors. It sounds like crap on any other equipment with any other acoustics. Sine waves are unforgiving. And the acoustics at Plantage Dok are crap. Yeah, so great start.
Then I went to play my little movie about getting an injection. (I know, a few days ago, I’m all weird about shooting T and two days later, I’m performing a video of it. Whatever.) The right speaker dropped out completely. And then proceeded to allow bursts of sound in only on the really loud parts. all of the nice, sustained bass sounds are on the right. I turned to the sound engineer, “the right speaker is out!” She had no idea about the janky connection. Somebody sitting next to the speaker, said, “no, it’s fine! I hear sound!” It was not fine. It’s kind of suboptimal explaining a technical issue to a sound perform during a set while an audience member insists that it’s all working fine. This whole situation can’t have lasted more than a minute, but it seemed a bit longer. And then the sound was back. on the right.
I don’t even remember what else I played. Finally I did the piece with the joystick and the moaning porn women and it worked really really really well. Which was amazing because I had done less than a full run through of it ever. It was the maiden voyage. so to speak.
I decided to quit while I was ahead. I think everything must have been less than 20 minutes, but I actually have no idea at all. But to summarize: we have a dead synth, a dead joystick, a dead audio channel, a sudden exit, and playing pieces about male-embodied masculinity and sounds of porn to a feminist, women audience. It went over really, really well. This is one of the friendliest audiences ever.
I think also the performance aspect was working very well. I was projecting my screen contents so that I could show my video, but it also showed them the source code for my pieces, which was not cleaned up at all. My phone sound piece is still full of cuss words. The piece with the porn sounds has “naughty_piece” for it’s file name. They could see all the weirdness, which created a connection. And also, running out and upstairs and madly throwing cables everywhere, digging for batteries is dramatic. People like drama. I want everything to be really clean and professional and together, but folks seem to connect more when it’s more obvious how precarious things are. I mean, I always test my music a bunch of times before I play it. (well, almost always), but I never make it perfect. some of my pieces dance on the verge of completely crashing and print out tons of error messages. People like that.
So I didn’t do any live coding, but I think I see the mechanism that attracts people to it. They don’t just want to see somebody play violin, they want to see them do it on a highwire without a net.
Anyway, after I was off, I opened the bottle of jenever and proceeded to drink a lot of it. It’s really good! Tasty. Not harsh. Really fucking strong.
And today, I want to barf.
Just randomly, about a year ago, I went to a show at this same venue. Somebody was making sounds with a wireless joystick exactly like the one I have now. The show ran into major technical problems and wasn’t really going. They had thrown something together at the last moment, but it sounded cool at least.
Ugh, I fee like sick.

Show Wednesday (Tomorrow)!

I will be playing tomorrow night at 21:00 at the Plantage Dok in Amsterdam. The show starts at 21:00. Admission is free and the beer is cheap! I’m be playing “electronic noise that you can almost dance to.”
The address is Plantage Doklaan 8 tot 12. See the venue’s website for more information.
I’ve been trying new methods to make fun music. I’ll be using a MiniModular synthesizer, but re-sampled to 8 bit and silly 8-bit nintendo-inspired drum sounds. Hopefully, It will be exciting and fun. I don’t know if you will be able to dance to it, but I hope you try.

The last on BrumCon

My previous post is apparently coming off as much more whiny than I intended. I get very nervous on stage, in general. So I always think I’m crashing and burning, no matter what’s actually happening.
Why play on stage even if you get stage fright: it gets easier when you do it a lot. It impresses chicks. It’s even more annoying sitting in the audience watching somebody else play your music wrong (which gets you no chicks, they all go for the performer). Nobody wants to go to a show of tape music. It’s almost always worth it. Audience reaction is the best way to figure out what parts of pieces are working and what parts aren’t.
In the art music scene, we brag about playing in front of hostile audiences. One time, in Connecticut, I had a friend who ran a folk music open mic night. She invited me to come play a political piece I was working on, with the voice of a shrill, horrible far right political pundit. Just about everybody got up and left and the ones who remained tried to give me unfriendly, helpful advice including things like the definition of music, since I was obviously unclear on it. That was a hostile audience. BrumCon? That was mixed.
That was surprising for me: playing in front of a mixed audience, since it was a new experience. And then there were musical problems where I was kind of fighting my gear. That happens sometimes. I now know what changes I need to make before my next show. It’s somewhat stressful, but not like, say, having a tuba that you’re playing suddenly fall apart on stage.
I would totally be into playing in front of the same or a similar group again. And next time, I’ll have a better idea what to expect. I’m glad I added in the 8 bit FX, as that seemed to go over really well. I’m also glad I didn’t get my piece with samples from BNP politicians together. (The British National Party is allied with the French National Front (Le Pen’s party) and other National Socialist parties around Europe. They’re bad people.)
After I packed up, I wandered into the bar next door, where a bunch of the attendees, including the next speaker who was supposed to have started already, were having pints. One friendly guy bought me a Guinness. I chatted a bit with people and then went to the next talk which was on web security and how to hack social networking sites. And how to prevent those hacks. It was interesting and would have been way useful were I still a web developer. You can’t just check IDs against permissions. You need to have some logic in there also. There are permission sets that are impossible. Like a Admin should also have the Moderator bit set, for a hypothetical example, and if they don’t, they got to be an Admin through abnormal means.
Then, I chatted with more people, including one guy who books gigs for a series in London. 🙂 I looked at the clock and it was 17:30. I’d left Xena, my dog, locked in a crate since 10:00 so I decided to bike home with my gear, give her a walk and then bike back to catch the end of things. It was such a lovely day in the park! So bright and sunny and warm! We had a lovely walk and then I sat down for a moment on my bed . . . and woke several hours later. Ha! I can only drink half a pint, or I get totally non-functional. It’s so pathetic. I need to start going to the gym to put on some weight!

BrumCon 07 – Gig Report

And then I was on. And incredibly nervous. The thing about hackers and geeks is that we don’t tend to be polite. Even British hackers. It’s an international identity, really. We’re all zitty, perhaps having some trouble with puberty, awkward, weird and rude. I’m not a technically a hacker, really, since I just do audio and my interest in breaking things has mostly faded. But socially, yeah. So when I started to play, some people were clearly not impressed and not hiding that.
The bass was way too boomy. My computer out was not going through an EQ, so I couldn’t turn up the treble. A bloke in the front row got out a newspaper. The sampled voice was way too low in the mix. The first piece runs on a timer. I wanted it to end, but it goes for at least 5 minutes. I tried to add in as much variation as possible, with the limited controls I gave myself. It’s a poppy tune, without really any dynamic variation. I felt like I was crashing and burning. Finally, after an eternity, it ended.
Immediately there were questions, “were you controlling that with a joystick?” “were those sounds generated live?” “could you plug in a projector so we can see what you’re doing?” Wow. So half the people were interested. Some number of them were actually fascinated. And half the people hated it. Wow. This was the most mixed group I’ve ever played in front of.
I went on to do my live sampling, this time with the projector plugged in. I’d gotten it finally working very late the night before after numerous problems, most of which were extra annoying because the failures happened silently ARG! That should never happen! If something goes wrong, it needs to alert you! Anyway, they saw my screen projected, complete with the many curse words that had worked their way into my source code over the previous 48 hours. The debug window regularly told me to go fuck myself. There was giggling.
Normally, when I’m using a controller, I have it post notes reminding me which button does what. I didn’t do that here. Nor did I regularly post which samples were playing. This combination was not so good, since I completely forgot what button did what. It’s clear now that I had them all wrong anyway. I need to be able to use the major functions in the controller with one hand, preferably, my right hand (unless I’m playing tuba). It kind of didn’t matter, because the projector changed my screen resolution such that I wouldn’t have been able to see my notes anyway.
So the set was fairly confusing and stressful. About half the people in the room left. I still feel ok about it, though. I made some music and possibly some connections.
Some of the local FOSS types are trying to get a free culture group together. I would really like to teach a class in SC. It would be super cool to have an SC users group where people could do demos of their projects or how to do things, so people could get help from each other. We could all build SC cluster computers. It would be teh awesome. Beginner instruction at 7. Regular group at 8. That sort of thing.
Anyway, I have a mental list of fixes for the software. Also, I wonder if I could sort of glue a wiimote to the bottom of the controller. I like the dual sticks and all the buttons, but it would be nice to have positional data too.

Edit

This is apparently coming across much more negatively than I intended. So I’ve published a clarification. In short: I would do it again, no question.

May Plans

Spring time is nearly upon us. As are several cons, which is always a cause for joy. A con is like a festival, but better because there’s also stuff during the day. Music festivals are nifty, but they’re usually only in the evenings. I’m thinking it would be fun to do a small tour of the continent in May.
May 2 – 4 is Transgender Europe in Berlin. I used the feedback form to ask if they were interested in booking some music. I think they have an obligation to present work by ftm composer/performers of ‘art’ music. As I type this, I’m drining water out of a cup with cartoon of Tigger on it. I want to find out if, like Tigger, I’m the only one. Anyway, they haven’t written back yet, which is frustrating, since I’d like to try to get other gigs around Germany if they take me. And now is the time to be trying to get booked.
May 6 – 8 is the fĂȘtes de Jeanne d’Arc in OrlĂ©ans, France (an hour or so away from Paris by train). I’m several centuries too modern to play at this event, but I’ve been going to it every yar since I moved to Europe and I’d like to go again. And do some biking around the Loire. Last year, I decided not to go to Cherveney, despite it being the origin of my lap tuba – and some fine wine. I don’t know how cool it would be to do a bike tour like that by myself. I think I’m looking for people to go along with me, if I go. Joan of Arc, of course, got burned at the stake rather than dress like a girl, so she’s close to my heart.
May 25 – 31 is /ETC in Amsterdam, a feminist con that I played at last year. They’re women-only, which, obviously, makes me nervous, since I’d rather be burned at the stake than dress like a girl. I had a lot of angst about this last year also and contacted them about whether or not they discriminated against trans people. They do not. This year, the group hosting it is called “gender changers” and they’ve had FTM participation in the past. They seem supportive, and last year was super-awesome, so I hope this works out. I’m thinking of doing a duet with somebody, if they’ll take me, to sort of up the female quotient of my act. ha. I’m going to the con whether I play or not, I think, since last year was so great and I really miss Holland. I want to take Xena, but I think I can still find lodging with a buddy in Den Haag and commute in to Amsterdam on the train. I can imagine that I can find lodging for Xena easier than for myself. She’s popular.
I have a friend in Bremmen, Germany, so I’ll email him a CD shortly. There’s a strong noise scene there. And, if I’m going to be in France, I’d like to play in Paris again. Of course, that’s much, much, much easier said than done. I’m going to see what contacts I can get there through school here and California, since my contacts form living there aren’t great for gig-getting. And, obviously, I’ll see if I can play more than once in the Netherlands. Berlin to Paris to Bremen to Amsterdam is perhaps overly circuitious. I will be travelling by ferry, bike and train, to keep my carbon footprint down as that’s easier for Xena, so the best timing for Bremmen might be late April.
I’m working on a piece about gender issues and sexuality that I’d like to premier in Berlin, if they take me. It’s the drag king piece, which features a crotch-mounted joy stick and moaning sounds. I’m going to add in some videogame samples (specifically, I want World of Warcraft). I also want to use samples of people talking, of course. Because all my political pieces use speaking. Because I’m unsubtle, alas. I think I want to interview people and ask them the questions that I got asked on transgender clinic intake. “What’s your first memory of having a gender?” “How long have you known that you are a man/woman?” “What makes somebody a man?” “What makes somebody a woman?” I think these questions are actually quite stupid. Especially the last two. But the answers are potentially very interesting. I kind of think of it as performative queer theory as much as music.
So if you want to record yourself talking about how you became aware of your own gender and what that means to you, email it to me! Otherwise, I’ll be pushing microphones into other students’ faces. I just came out to them last week, so it should be delightfully awkward and stressful to do this.
Also, if you can get me a gig in France, Germany, BeNeLux or nearby, please drop me a line! I’ll have everything I need to to do electronic noise, live processing, and/or laptop pieces. And a dog! And my bike touring gear. Heh. This is managable, but insane, so perfect. If I can’t get any other gigs, maybe I’ll bike from Berlin to Amsterdam. I wonder if there’s some way to organize a bike/music tour, like, to promote environmental causes . . .

In other news

For those of you in the San Francisco area, Other Minds 13 is very nearly upon you! I am jealous of you, because I wish I could go. The sampler CD for the shows is awesome. There’s a lot of great music. It’s March 6 – 8 in SF. There’s a sudent discounts avilable. I think it’s possible to get in free by volunteering. This year is especially great for fans of the cello. Fracnis-Marie Uitti will be plaing. She’s a friend of Ellen. Her music is incredible. She’s playing on the 6th. If you can only go to one night, go to that one. And then leave me taunting messages about how it was sper awesome and I’ll be sad. I was going to come home for the festival, but the way my student visa ended up working out, I just couldn’t. Alas.

Les Hutchins & Matt Davignon and Polly Moller & Co

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Les Hutchins & Matt Davignon and Polly Moller & Co, originally uploaded by celesteh.

Tuesday, Feb 5 2008 8:00 PM

1510 8th St Performance Space
1510 8th Street
Oakland
Map
Matt Davignon and Les Hutchins will interweave their amazing electronic sounds at 8:00 p.m., followed by Polly Moller & Co., consisting of Polly Moller (flute, bass flute, & voice), Jim Carr (bass), Amar Chaudhary (electronica), and Bill Wolter (guitar).
Cost : $10.00
Venue info: www.bayimproviser.com/venuedetail.asp?venue_id=39
Matt Davignon is a master of the drum machine. His recent album Soft Wet Fish should be required listening for any drum machine user. I’ll be playing some synthesizer with him. It would make a great instrumentation for a techno duo, except that no actual techno will be made.

We’re opening for Polly Moller, who will be appearing with the lads. It’s an eclectic group doing inspired improv.

This venue is new to me, but it won a best-of last year in the East Bay Express. I’m looking forward to playing there. It’s also located very near West Oakland Bart, making it easy to get to from all over the Bay Area.

Last Night’s Gig

I showed up really late to the sound check because I under-estimated how long it would take to get there on Bart. It took twice as long as I expected. I was in an unhappy mood with being late and not really knowing what I was going to play. The show was booked as a duo with Polly but, obviously, she couldn’t make it. I realized that I had been looking forward to seeing Paul at the show and felt more sad.
There was a recording crew there who had set up a bunch of stuff for me. My computer wouldn’t boot when I got everything all plugged in. It does this every single time I go on stage. My computer has terrible stage fright. I couldn’t figure out if it was me being weird about how I was pushing the start button before shows or if something else was up, so I set Nicole to work on it while I ate something. I learned that my mac won’t start if there’s stuff plugged into the audio jacks on the side. This explains why the only time I have this problem is shows and rehearsals, and why I don’t have it at every rehearsal, only the ones that I’m stressed enough about to reboot before starting.
Sound check was a bit wonky, but I had faith the levels would be ok, given as I was sitting in front of a mixing board. I was kind of testy with the recording crew. I was excited about recording when I thought it would be a duo, but a solo is much less exciting and I hadn’t really worked out the best audio routing and it wasn’t coming to me then. I just sent them my stereo signal that went to the speakers, but now I wish I’d sent a separate feed of my synth. I also left the didj at home because there was a major storm and I didn’t want to take it on my bike in the rain. Also, it takes a lot of concentration to both play the didj and sample and process it at the same time and I don’t have a HID set up for that yet. I didn’t think I was mentally up to doing it without a flute to hide behind and while I was feeling so scattered.
Damon and Jen were up first. They played a really energetic set. It’s funny watching Jen on the trombone, because it’s not all that different from tuba, so I knew exactly how she was getting most every sond she got. There are some important differences though, what with the slide and the significantly higher pitch. She didn’t do silly slide glisses at all, but she used her voice in an interesting way. When you do voice multiphonics on tuba, you get an interesting sort of FM. The trombone appears to be different, or else she wasn’t doing multiphonics but interspersing voice with lip buzzing. Also different is that her voice was much closer to the trombone range than most people’s voices are to tuba.
I spent most of their set looking at Damon, because I don’t need to look at a brass instrument to know how it’s being played and I like to understand how sound is being made when I listen to it (ironic given that I’m a laptop guy). He had a whole bunch of bows and more or less attacked his instrument with them and also with a chopstick, his fingers and a large screw. The bass has a really fast response time in that when you hit a string it goes right away – unlike other low instruments where you have to wait for a sound to wend it’s way through a series of tubes. (A bass is more like a truck.) You can hit one string and it starts going right away and you can move very quickly to another string or even play multiple strings at the same time.
Damon and Jen sustained a frenetic pace through almost all of their set. they started fast and stayed fast. After the whole evening, Jen was jumping up and down. Matt D joked that she must be taking multivitamins. Their last piece, though was more subdued. Damon announced that they’d be playing Drescher’s Requiem in honor of Paul and Polly. That piece is largely made up of longer sounds which gradually rise in pitch. It’s subtle, but anguished. It was one of the better requiems that I’ve ever heard. Possibly the best.
Then it was my turn. I felt a lot better after eating a burrito and hearing Jen and Damon’s set. I played my minimodular synth and routed it though my simple looping program that I wrote for processing flutes. I had figured out how to gracefully add some extra features but hadn’t had an opportunity to code them in, so I was really playing with the flute version. Playing with my own synth is different than playing with another person in that I know ahead of time when the sound is going to change because I’m causing the changes. But, like with another person, I don’t know what the changes will be, really. There was some time where I had silence not because I thought it would be a graceful moment to add some, but because I had no idea where the sound went. The Evenfall minimodular is a tricky and subtle beast.
I did a lot of work to really get aligned timing when I wrote my sampling program, but I realized that it would be useful to allow for staggering the loop point. Or to divide by 3 or 5 sometimes instead of always by powers of 2. A (more or less) dead-on beat is perhaps most useful for flute, but with something I’m playing myself, allowing a syncopation could be valuable. I never got my p5 glove to work, alas. It seemed to be generating OSC. At the very least, the driver for it clearly was able to get data from the glove, but I couldn’t retrieve said data in SuperCollider. A glove interface would be really great for didj processing or tuba (if it were lefty).
So after the second time the sound died for reasons that were unknown to me, I thought maybe I should stop, but it turned out that people were actually digging my noodling. So I played a couple more. I’m looking forward to getting the recording.
I still have Polly’s mixing board because it didn’t occur to me to return it to Clyde. She’s probably not missing it yet. I’m going to take some advantage of it. Before, Christmas, I wandered into a gallery near my house, looking for art to give away. The most affordable thing in the gallery was $200. I explained that I liked it, but that was 10 commissions for me: 20 – 40 hours of work. (I work too hard on them.) The gallery owner asked me a bunch more questions about my project and then wrote me a check asking for one! I was quite surprised. I’m going to write it today. Tomorrow is Paul’s memorial service. I sent all my visa paperwork via express mail yesterday. It’s pretty much impossible that it will come back in time for me to get my flight tomorrow, so I’ll be going to the memorial. Actually, I’d probably go anyway. Maybe I should call the airline. It’s a non-refundable internet fare, but I know there are special cases sometimes.
I don’t think I’ll be playing again in CA before I head back to England, but if you want to get on my announcement list just in case – or for next time – I will be playing here again over the summer – you can get on the list very easily! Just send an email to celesteh-CA-subscribe@yahoogroups.com (yes, that’s celesteh-CA-subscribe@yahoogroups.com ). Or check this blog. Or the mailing list also has an rss feed: http://rss.groups.yahoo.com/group/celesteh-CA/rss . It’s an announcement-only list which is really low traffic. I only post to it when I have a show coming up on the West Coast of North America.