My good friend Le Tuan Hung, who runs the Sonic Gallery, his "Exhibition Space for Experimental and Cross-Cultural Music" has put my piece "Perfect Harmony for David Dunn, up on his website. Take a click over there and have a look at the website - he has lots of interesting things up there. In addition to my piece, some recent entries are "Quan Ho Singing in Bac Ninh Region, Vietnam," a long and very interesting paper, "Composing for Japanese Instruments, by Marty Regan," and Le's own "A Song for SKy Bells." Thanks Le! It's great to be in such good company! Here's the link: http://sonicgallery.org/2015/03/29/perfect-harmony-for-david-dunn/
I just had published, in Soundbytes magazine (soundbytesmag.net) my review of 2CAudio's new and wonderful program Kaleidoscope. http://soundbytesmag.net/wcaudiokaleidoscope/ Kaleidoscope, as you'll see, is an amazing new take on the idea of graphic synthesis, as well as offering tuning resources not before available with that technique. I also conducted an interview with Andrew Souter, the developer of Kaleidosope, and a lovely guy he is too. Here's a link to that interview, in the same issue: http://soundbytesmag.net/andrewsouterinterview/.
Here's a look at the GUI of Kaleidoscope - which is explained in detail in the article.
And here's a 24 minute long piece I just finished with Kaleidoscope. This is about 6 different patterns made with Kaleidoscope and mixed, using about 4 or 5 different tunings. It's called "Kaleidoscope Mix Nr 2," although I know I could do better than that for a title.
From the Netherlands comes the sad news of the passing of Paul Panhuysen, visual artist, sound artist, composer, ornithologist, curator, writer, and so much more. As well as doing his own work, Paul, together with his wife Helene, ran Het Apollohuis, an amazing venue for visual and sound arts, in their hometown of Eindhoven. I remember a wonderful time staying with them in 2000, in which Paul and I made a piece together. We also walked across Eindhoven to a music shop to pick up 4 Alesis AirF/X units, a walk that took about an hour each way. It was quite a lovely walk, and we talked about many interesting things that afternoon. Paul was a wonderful gentleman and a phenomenal artist, very clear in his structuralist aims and realizations. He will be much missed. For more information on Paul and his work, go here.
Here's a picture of Paul and Helene:
As a small memorial to Paul, I wrote this piece, "Three Movements in Memoriam Paul Panhuysen." Like much of Paul's work, there is a structural idea underlying the piece. In this case, each movement consists of a playing through of a series of all 131 dyads which exist between the 12 members of a 12-note microtonal scale. In the first movement, there is just one version of the scale playing. The second movement has 2 simultaneous orderings of all the dyads, and the third movement has 3 orders of the dyads. A different 12-note microtonal scale (from my Triangle Scales Catalog, based on Erv Wilson's Mt Meru scales) is used for each movement. The structure is realized with John Dunn's ArtWonk, and the piano sounds are made with the Garritan Personal Orchestra Steinway Piano samples, tuned by files made in Manuel op de Coul's Scala. Each of the three movements is approximately the same duration,and is played in the same tempo. The thickening of the texture in each movement gives the work a feeling of slight acceleration.
Warren Burt: Three Movements in Memoriam Paul Panhuysen, Movement 1
Warren Burt: Three Movemens in Memoriam Paul Panhuysen, Movement 2
Warren Burt: Three Movements in Memoriam Paul Panhuysen, Movement 3
Jan 26, 2015 - Australia Day, Australia's national holiday, known as Invasion Day by our Indigenous colleagues, was the time for a concert at La Mama, in which The Third Rail breathed its first breath, so to speak. Once upon a time in Wollongong, Gary Butler headed up WANK, the Wollongong Anarchist Noisemakers Kollektive, but now the three main members of the group, Gary, me and Houston Dunleavy, are all based in Melbourne. So it was time to revive the group and get a new name. Which we did, and performed the opening concert of the 2015 season of La Mama Musica. We had guests, too - Ren Walters, guitar; Dale Gorfinkel, switches and hose; Julia Reidy, guitar, and Rod Cooper, upright. The Gorfinkel and Cooper instruments are home-mades, as you'll see in the photos.
The concert began with a set in which I duetted wth Ren Walters, and Dale Gorfinkel, separated by a solo. Here's a picture of Ren and me performing - him on guitar and me on laptop. I'm using the Kaivo softsynth for my part:
And here's a recording of our duet:
I then did a solo on iPad, using the Novation Launchpad, Audiobus and Jasuto apps. This enabled me to perform a collage of pre-existing sounds which were then processed through two 15 second delays and pannings. Here's a video of 2 minutes near the start of the piece:
And here's a recording of the complete 9 minute piece:
Finally, I did a duet with Dale Gorfinkel, who was playing his wonderful "Switches and Hose" instrument, which in this case, was hanging from the stairwell at La Mama. Here's a picture of Dale in action:
And here's a picture of the two of us in action. Dale is hidden in the shadows here.
And here's the recording of the two of us performing:
The concert continued with a trio from Gary Butler, Ren Walters and Julia Reidy on guitars. Here's a picture of them in action:
And here's a closeup of Gary's guitar neck, prepared with true-blue dinky-di Australia Day patriotic mutes:
Rod Cooper performed his wonderful home-made "Upright" which combines lamellophone and plucked string techniques:
Rod performed this in duet with Houston Dunleavy on clarinet. Then everyone performed together. In this picture we have Ren Walters, Houston Dunleavy, Julia Reidy, Dale Gorfinkel, me, and Gary Butler, l to r:
And finally, here's a closeup of me and Gary near the end of the improv. Things had gotten fairly rowdy by this time, so I was using Marcus Hobbs' SmackTalk app, which records a slice of time, then plays it back a couple of octaves higher, accompanied by an animation of a guinea pig singing the sounds. (Marcus, by the way, is also the developer of the Wilsonic app that I use in my performing.)
A good time was had by all. Thanks for Annabel Warmington for organizing the gig and asking us to perform! And many many thanks to Catherine Schieve for taking all the photos and video!
In November 2014, and January 2015, in Soundbytes Music Magazine, I had two reviews of new synthesizers published. The first was Bazille, by U-He, and the second was Kaivo, by Madrona Labs. Both of these are small synthesizers that do unique things, and both encourage lots of interesting sound exploration.
And here is "Perfect Harmony for David Dunn," a 15 minute piece I made with Bazille, in which I'm exploring some of the microtonal harmonic possibilities of the machine.
Here's an 8 minute piece, "Polyrhythmic Pulse Sequence," I made with Kaivo, using the sequencers, 2D LFOs, and Noise Sources to make a polyrhythmic piece that gradually gets thicker and thicker throughout its duration.
I hope you enjoy the reviews and the pieces. I can recommend both new synths highly.
Sunday, April 12, 2015 at 9:47AM 
