David Tolley 1936-2014

We lost one of our finest on 20 Feb.  David Tolley, composer, improviser, artist, teacher, warm human being passed away.  One of the very souls of Melbourne new music, he'll be missed, and missed greatly.  Vale, David.

Work in Progress

Catherine took a picture of my desktop desktop while I was working on a new piece using Lemur on the iPad controlling the Linplug Spectral on my laptop.  Seeing all the little soundmaker friends to my right, gives me the idea that they could be incorporated into this piece.

Linplug Spectral - A Review

My review of Linplug's new software synthesizer "Spectral" is now up on Soundbytes Magazine.  Here's a link to the review: http://soundbytesmag.net/spectralbylinplug/.  Spectral is a very lovely softsynth, which offers a lot of sound design possibilities.  Well worth a look at!

And here's a link to Soundbytes mag itself, which has a lot of interesting reviews in the current issue. http://soundbytesmag.net/.  Enjoy!

More Talk Less Action December 5 Three Pix and Links to Audio and Video

Thursday night, December 5, 2013 at WestSpace Gallery in Melbourne, I was part of the "More Talk Less Action" series organized by Clinton Green and Greg Wadley.  That night, the members of the panel were me, Stelarc, and Paul Doornbusch.  Stelarc and I both did performances as well.  Here are three pictures from the event.  The recording of the wide-ranging and fun panel discussion will soon be available in the Archives section of the www.moretalk.org website.  The Audio of the performance, a 2 minute video excerpt, and a recording of the panel discussion are now available on the MoreTalk.org archive webpage: http://www.moretalk.org/archives/.  For those who just want to go to the Audio recording, here's that link: http://spill-label.org/sound/moretalk/WarrenBurtMoretalk.mp3. And here's the audio of the panel discussion: http://spill-label.org/sound/moretalk/MTLA6-discussion.mp3.  Many thanks again to Clinton Green and Greg Wadley for all the work they did on the show, and after the show, getting these recordings processed and up on their website.

WB performing on iPad, Korg Nano-Pad and computer at Westspace, Dec. 5. Photo by Catherine Schieve.

Panel discussion: Greg Wadley, Paul Doornbusch, WB, Stelarc.  Photo by Catherine Schieve.

Pre-show publicity photo gone awry - with those three, what can you expect? - L to R: Greg Wadley, Stelarc, Paul Doornbusch, WB.  Photo by Clinton Green.

Messier 15 - a new work that just sort, well, happened

So there I was, reading the New Scientist, minding my own business (and as William Burroughs said, "There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business!"), when there was this gorgeous Hubble telescope image of the distant globular star cluster Messier 15:

I don't know about you, but when I see an image like this, I think, "picture to sound conversion!"

So I took this image, and fed it into Nicolas Fournel's program AudioPaint, and using one of the Mt Meru scales I developed based on Erv Wilson's work, and some sawtooth waves (about 902 of them, to be prezact), got a 30 second sound file that sounded like this:

I liked the sound - you can hear how it gets denser and noisier in the middle, reflecting the shape and density of the star cluster.

Then I thought, "What if this were played a lot more slowly?" And "What if the scale the image was mapped to was a diatonic one?"

So I set up AudioPaint to make a 20 minute version in one of the ancient Greek (just intonation) modes - the Phrygian Diatonic in Archytas's tuning, no less.  This sounded gorgeous.  I was happy.

And then - "But what about doing the same thing in two different modes?  So I did - using the Hypodorian Diatonic (Archytas's version again) and the Lydian Diatonic (Archytas's version, but also a tip o the Hatlo hat to George Russell, of course).  Again, both gorgeous.

So I spliced them together, and listened over headphones while going to sleep.  And had a VERY satisfying nights sleep drifting off to slumberland with this.  

Eventually, I found the time to listen while awake and conscious.  I still liked it.

But wait a minute!  Now I've got ANOTHER hour long piece!  In a world which demands everything be a 20 second soundbyte.  What do I do with this piece?

Well, put it on the internet, of course.  And give it away for free.

So here it is.  "Messier 15 Globular Cluster In Three Different Modes for an Hour."  I hope you'll enjoy it.  And maybe you too will find that it's an aid in having sweet dreams and deep sleep, or if you're listening to it awake, maybe you'll also be pleased with it's sound.  Enjoy.