Ottevanger's Omphaloskeptic Outpost

[karlhenning]

Hello chaps!

Back from France, where the internet connection was sporadic and didn't really let me contribute fully - I've been back a few days, actually, but putting things in order and not really posting here. There's a little room in my PM box now btw, should anyone need it.

I've described how two years ago, on holiday in the same place in France with my extended family, my brother, brother-in-law and I spent a somewhat drunken evening making a list of 80s pop songs which could provide suitable subjects for fugal treatment. The result was the silly little fugues I posted a few pages ago (because, for some reason, I took up that project anew this spring for a little entertainment). That gives some sort of an idea of the type of irreverent musical projects we dream up whilst in la France profonde....and explains this - http://www.mediafire.com/?b0bv4obt5cwdu7o - my first foray into musique concrete. Perhaps the sound source can be guessed (there's only one). But because, to my surprise, I actually find the result rather potent (images of wordless desolation, of an alien landscape, almost-human cries and answers, hints of Ornette....) I thought I'd share it with you      Enjoy!

"Hints of Ornette" : )

Downloaded and listened to it at last! Man, was I ready for some sonic irreverence after this sprint to finish the va sta (itself no stranger to the occasional musical outrage).

This is fun, and among other things I like the triadic bits which emerge . . . bicycle pump?

[Luke]

Funny, I was playing this piece to some people this morning....found it plaintive and desolate in a Clangers-like way once again  0:) 0:)   Not bicycle pump, no....I can see the logic behind that guess though.

[Cato]

Funny, I was playing this piece to some people this morning....found it plaintive and desolate in a Clangers-like way once again  0:) 0:)   Not bicycle pump, no....I can see the logic behind that guess though.

Various tubes being manipulated on a vacuum cleaner?

[Luke]

No....pipework is involved, though...

[Cato]

No....pipework is involved, though...

Hmmm!

Okay, how about a variable speed hair dryer blowing through various pipes? 

Wait a minute!!!  (Homer Simpson's epiphanic voice!)

You weren't doing something...unnatural...to the bagpipes, were you???   

[karlhenning]

Organ bellows?

(Horrified at the possibility at which Cato hints . . . that one may be able to find bagpipes in France!)

[Luke]

Quel horreur!!

Not bagpipes, not a hair dryer. It's actually....


the sound of the cistern refilling after flushing.... one take, no cuts or splicings, layered against itself at various speeds and pitches and with various starting points, and also backwards. It struck me that, once one forgot what the source of this plaintive little moaning was, it was actually quite affecting. Hence, this piece!

[karlhenning]

Hah!  You see, none of us would have cast aspersions on your work by imagining any such source, mon cher! ; )

But your having made such fine use of that material! . . . do you suppose you'll go back to the well (as it were) at all? : )

[Luke]

I think I've rather drained it dry, don't you? Back to good old notes on paper for me now.

Speaking of which.....just some getting-into-the-groove splurgings, signifying nothing, I'm sure Guido knows not to get excited by now....

[karlhenning]

Oh! Somehow those pages are on their side . . . makes me want to take the laptop and rotate it so that I can read properly . . . .

My 'reading disability' aside, glad to see you back in the saddle!

[Luke]

So they are! - must be some mistake in the PDF-making process (though I've done the score in landscape, it fills up the lines more meaningfully that way). You can rotate PDFs though, to view them the right way...

[Luke]

My reading disability' aside, glad to see you back in the saddle![/font]

Just tentatively approaching it at the moment, but it's fun!

[karlhenning]

You can rotate PDFs though, to view them the right way...

Thanks, got it!

Such a sweet opening! I like it, we want more!

[Cato]

Thanks, got it!

Such a sweet opening! I like it, we want more!

Amen!  0:)

Concerning your previous composition with the "cistern," did you use a tape recorder or one of these newfangled digital doohickeys?

[Guido]

Yay! Looks delicious. Some lovely cello writing already...

[Luke]

Amen!  0:)

Concerning your previous composition with the "cistern," did you use a tape recorder or one of these newfangled digital doohickeys?

It was a doohickey.

Well, actually, not exactly, I do have a doohickey, but I didn't take it on holiday with me. For this I just used the built-in microphone on my laptop. It did an OK job, I think. 

Guido - you'll be pleased to hear that more notes are accumulating in the cello piece but I"m going to be very busy for the next few days so I won't be able to do much for a bit...

[karlhenning]

Gradual parallel accumulation, that's the ticket.

[karlhenning]

YHM (of the e-mail variety, too) : )

[Guido]

Don't know where else to post this, but as Luke likes Barry Guy, and to keep things ticking over in the Outpost:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UVgO4hhSmw&feature=related

[Luke]

Well, chaps, not much happening round these parts, of course, as I've been stupidly busy the last few weeks, and it's going to stay that way for the foreseeable future and beyond. The composing has taken a knock because of that, which is of course hard to take, because however rubbish what I write might be, creating it keeps me (relatively) sane, and without it I go a little doolally. The following are the only things of slight note:

1) That cello piece I posted the first page of a few weeks ago was never really a go-er, I think I knew that from the start, but it has a few ideas in it which might resurface elsewhere at some point.

2) At present I have a silly little project in mind whose nature is apparent from the title of the piece, at which I made a first essay today, the first page of which you can see below if you want. I also wrote some of the next page, and I've planned the whole thing; as plans go it's a good one, I think, but we'll see if it makes it into realisation.

3) There's also another folky-ish-esque-like setting for voice and violin of Yeats' ubiquitous Down by the Salley Gardens, which is complete, I think, but for dynamics etc, which I started in the spring but left incomplete; I finished it off recently (apart from said details). But it's a damn depressing piece (that's why I couldn't finish it back then) and I'm not sure of its quality. It's too simple, maybe...