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yellowpuncher

September 2, 2009
All, Tech

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFvzKT-GeIc Well, it’s a start; learning the basics of GEM in Pd. And, whoever would have thought that the quicktime midi synth on the mac had that ‘Punch’ sound hidden in one of it’s alternate banks :)

text-to-screech work in progress

August 29, 2009
All, Tech

I’m working on a new piece towards ARTMUSFAIR/2009, for flute, horn, cello, marimba and ’tape’; this is me working towards the latter, the fixed audio part of the piece. Up to my usual text-to-screech tricks here; this shows some of the tools and methods I use to put things like this together. [vimeo 6326582] (If you go to the original on vimeo you can watch it pretty much full desktop size. ...

Glasgow Sequenza XVII – ‘Exercise’ for Trombone

April 15, 2009
All, News

This years Plug 2009 festival of new music at the RSAMD starts soon, 27 April - 1 May. One of the features this year is a new set of ‘Glasgow’ sequenzas, written variously by students and staff and interspersed among larger programme items. Mine is for trombone and, between myself and Head of Composition Gordon McPherson, we’ve cooked up a plan to, um, kill a trombonist? Here’s my description from the score; ...

MuseScore

April 8, 2009
All, Tech

I’m quite excited today to discover a free/open-source music notation program I hadn’t previously heard of, MuseScore. (That I hadn’t heard of it probably has something to do with the fact that they’ve only just released a mac binary.) Very early days so far, but already I’m very excited to see the beginnings of what could be a foss alternative to Sibelius and Finale, something which I think the world badly needs. ...

Bare Wires in the Skinny

March 13, 2009
All, Reviews
Bare

Nice piece on ‘Bare Wires’ by Clare Sinclair in the Skinny; ‘The lines between technology and the arts are blurring at an astronomical pace: the latest laptops and computers position themselves not only as tools for business, but as home entertainment centres where anything seems possible. J. Simon van der Walt, performing as part of the Cryptic Nights season, parallels this revolution yet takes it back to the ‘Bare Wires’. As Edward ‘Teddy’ Edwards and the Electr-O-Chromatic orchestra, he presents and electronic symphony of music and performance. ...

cynthcart

February 22, 2009
All, News
Bare

Got hold of a loan of a very cool instrument to use in the show; Yup, it’s a cynthcart, a Commodore 64 hacked up to play as a synth! Tried it out in rehearsal today, works great. (Thanks to Col for the loan.)

Plan for the show, version 02

February 21, 2009
All, News
Bare

Well, that worked out easily enough. If the longer numbers are in the region of five mins, I reckon I can just about bring that in at 45 mins. Also working on a list of instruments, looks like twenty-two different bits of gear, including laptops, effects units and conventional instruments.