Catch Up: Writing Scores, Testing in the Performance Studio, Recording Visuals

It's been awhile since I've updated my blog, life has kind of gotten in the way and I've slightly neglected it, but I feel I will be updating more often from now on. 

Since the last work in progress session on the 12th of March I have started thinking and writing scores. This is because I need away of organising musical ideas and to have some structure. To get in the mindset I've been thinking about the first year of uni. The first year of uni had us challenged my understanding of musical structure and form. Through the lectures I was inspired the experimental music of Stevie Reich such as Pendulum Music. One of my first year composition Magnetic Soundscape played with the idea of chance in music, ideas that were practiced by John Cage. The exposure of the experimental and Avant-Garde are still influences on me, although I am somewhat looking away from them in this project. It's helped that I've had two years away from that material.

Because the concept of my piece has started with the visual I believe I have to grow the music from that, which works really well for me.  Last year I toyed with the idea of using film as an interpretative score for musicians to play too. I think I am repurposing that idea somewhat here. At the centre of the idea is the question: how do musicians interpret moving images through sound? Whats more interesting to me is how will musicians play when they know they have influence over the visual. Once I realised that what I find interesting about my piece, I knew I had to write a set of instructions that facilitate that. The aim of the instructions is to get the musicians thinking about their relation to the visuals. I've written some things down, but I'd like to flush out some more ideas before I get together to jam them with people. 

I'm not sure if I have mentioned it before but I was encourage by my teach Holger to have it in the performance studio, which is cool because I kind of secretly wanted it there. For a start it's a bigger space, this will give the light more room bounce around and more room for the musicians and I. I want to create a semi circle around the audio where and have the musicians lite by some kind of light. i was thinking of buy some orb lights to put on the desk. But they might break my budget. Maybe some cheap fairy lights. I'll have to look around brighton. I should try spot lights first, but I feel they will be a little too intense. The only problem with the space is I can rehearse in there so often and I need to have an induction on how to use the ladder so I can hang the screen and angle the lights. 

I have had some trouble getting the visuals out of touch designer, which is pretty annoying, as you can imagine. The problem is that touch designer seems to lag when you want to record anything live from it. So I've come up with an inexpensive way of doing so. I plan on recording them onto VHS tape and then bring them back into the computer to sync the sound. I want to do this for archiving purposes and I think it will add a quality to the visuals I couldn't get directly from Touch Designer. 

Thats it for now,

Written by Jack Cleary
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