Orchestrate Clang Mass

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:13:15 PDT

rediscovering "If only i could remember my name"

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:22:08 PDT

David Crosby's album from 1971 is just an amazing snapshot of a very interesting period in American Rock n Roll history. It is is a veritable who's who of the SF/LA rock scene from that period.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

conductor vs network

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:54:11 PDT

The sage on the stage or the dynamic inter-connectivity facilitated by a central organizer. Great music and great knowledge distribution depend on different degrees of this sort of interaction.

My day job for the last year and a few months has been closely involved in experimenting with and creating new educational technology resources at a major university (CSUEastBay in Hayward, CA) However my years of previous work in the dynamic distribution of musical decisions and actions via networks is never far back from the front of my thoughts. This is a consensus based way of creating music with machines that had grown out of a post-hippy community utopia vision that was ironically fostered as an under current in the new anarchy unleashed by the "new wave" and punk culture of the early 1980's. For all the "Sic Vicious" sneering and safety pin earrings, there was a feeling of a new paradigm based on a consensus of the crowd. This undercurrent fostered the now burgeoning open source software revolution and manifested itself in my life as series of musical projects, most centrally charcterized by the work of the HUB (Please reference this link for more than enough information about this work )

The over riding experience of playing music in this new way was one of a sort of intense engagement that appeared to the audience as a complete separation of the actions of the performers from what they were seeing. The visible concentration and small motions did not coincide with the resulting bombardment of sound the issued forth. A recently revelation from my son, now 28, who grew up on this musical genre was that the listening experience was alway discorporate and detached for him. This is something that Iannis Xenakis had mentioned to me when I had the rare opportunity in 1983 to work with him for several weeks. He walked up to one of the 10 loudspeakers that we were setting up for a live acoustimass mix of his "La Legend D'eer" and put his hand on it and said only, "This is the problem with electronic music". I understood this to mean, the discorporate nature of using the loudspeaker itself was the problem of connection. It was only later when the electronic pulsing of the loudspeaker created an atavistic collective dance urge that something more primal was satisfied, but those of us who have been working at the filigree at the edge of these beats are examining something more ephemeral and less easily understood and defined.

Cage tried to let us believe that it was all alright, and to a certain extent this world of sound is all alright, but there is a way to proceed with care and attention to detail that was clearly the unspoken part of Cage's (and Tudor's) process when I saw them working. All these great pioneers of electronic music were equivalent to conductors in a more traditional context. Conduits for the enery they were harnessing.

In some ways none was more emblematic of this concept of a thought conductor than Pauline Oliveros particularly with her "Sonic Meditations". This ground breaking work, a set of simple instructions about sonic mindfulness, pointed the way to a new type of musical context based solely on collaboration based in procedure. The late great composer/performer/theorist Jim Horton maintained that Oliveros' early works in this vein carved the conceptual path that is now referred to as "free improv". This focusing of the intent through guidance has in some cases led to a form of unwarranted idolatry, almost cultism, but there is no doubt that it deserves our respect and attention.

At the time of Cage's death in conversation Serge Tcherepnin told me he was under the impression that "the only real future would be in collective work and cooperation between artists, colaboration." It is this sense of unification and collective consciousness that is at the basis of what makes any orchestra great, and I would say that technology gives us the advantage to circumvent these mechanisms of performance and create on-going contexts of performance and sonic intervention that are at once anarchistic and yet unified in the common need for the expression of that place between the random noise of exsistence and the single beautiful tone of a bell.

Cellphonia: 4'33"

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:01:48 PDT

Call: 1.212.937.7725 to add your note (of silence)
Visit: http://cellphonia.org/433/listen.html to see the scrolling score and listen to the installation performance at The Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University.
Commissioned by New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME)

Designed by: Steve Bull & Scot Gresham-Lancaster

McCluhan vs Mailer (1968)

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:55:39 PDT

My Son Nathan told me about this one.

Worth checking out

Scot

csuebtest page on mogulus Studio

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:14:20 PDT

All right this will be working on and off for a while here

trying to post audio

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:11:00 PDT

Here is Whitman's ode to America

Mobile post sent by scotgl using Utterli. Replies. mp3

Testing Utterli for the first time

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:54:56 PDT

I am using a new service called utterli http://utterli.com/ that pushes content to several social media sites at once with one "utter" ...

Mobile post sent by scotgl using Utterli. Replies.

Cellphonia: tempo variabile

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:51:45 PST

Great Sound in 'yud' gallery at CJM

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:56:35 PDT

It was an amazing opportunity last night to hear a HUB piece in performance. So often I am listening as a performer which is a way different experience from actually just sitting back and absorbing a piece. VAV, Chris Brown's commission for John Zorn's Aleph-Bet Sound Project at the beautiful new Contemporary Jewish Museum in downtown San Francisco on Oct. 23rd.

This was an unusual HUB event for a lot of reasons. This piece more than most of our other pieces was not done as collectively as usual. Chris got the commission and did a lot of the ground work on the piece, designing a functioning user interface and really clearly specifying all the parameters before any of the rest of us worked on the piece. Still the end result had the characteristic "collective" sound that is emblematic of the HUB's work.

There was some back and forth over email when we were putting this piece together about attribution and this spirit of cooperation that felt to be partially violated in the way this piece came to Chris first. He was clearly credited for his excellent work on it in a way that separated him from the rest of the group. This is unusual from our usual practice. However, having gone through the full experience now, it is clear it was his vision of this piece and hard work to make it happen that made a significant portion of what we heard in this magnificent new space last night.

It was pleasure to meet Dan Schifrin as well writer in residence and director of Public programs at the museum. What an interesting job to have; to be responsible for this amazing acoustic space with the promise of it's rich future for performance and interaction.

There are some interesting problems that are presented by the architects vision of this room, supposedly designed for sound, but more aligned with visual aesthetic considerations. For the concert last night they brought in 4 surround speakers and a LFE subwoofer for in the plain of the gallery while the Mackie UPM 100 that are installed above for the standard playback just acted for the lift provided by the "center" channel of the 5.1 mix that Chris had done. Looking at the space it was hard to understand why the architect, Daniel Libeskind, did not specify that the speaker system be built into the walls of the space. For that matter, why weren't the lights also integrated into the walls? The striking non-perpendicular aspect of the room is unnecessarily disturbed by the lighting and speaker grid above the space.

However, I am not complaining this is a spectacular venue in a fantastic new venue that promises to fully enrich the cultural life of the Bay Area and it was a real thrill to be a part of the beginning of what promises to be years of rich new culture creation associated with this new resource.

Octoharp on TIEM!

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:09:47 PDT

TIEM

Taxonomy of Realtime Interfaces for Electronic Music Performance is database of musical interfaces and instruments. The curators are interested in exploring the practice and application of new interfaces for real-time electronic music performance. So I submitted information about my ongoing "Tensegrity Harp" cum "OctoHarp" project.

TIEM is a great resource that any interested live electronic music performer should check out.

This attention to this project will hopefully spur me to dust off the moth balls and get the instrument prototype #5 into production.

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:06:57 PDT

Toyojis_Song.mp3 - Scot Gresham-Lancaster

Using sensor Data from a Crossbow network on Camilie Vineyard, I constructed this piece for the tree planting memorial for Toyoji Tomita at Mills college on Sept. 10, 2008. Thanks so much to Mark Holler for giving me access to this amazing sensor network he has constructed at his place on Mt. Veeder.

It was a wonderful evening with performances by many who love and will miss our good friend.

HUB 'smart mob' on Mozes.com/hub

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:07:41 PDT

Ebu says: "Check it out"

Dreamhouse mashup

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:32:57 PDT

Best if veiwed in full screen ...

New HUB 3 CD set "Boundary Layer"

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:07:14 PST

I am very proud of the new retrospective of my work with this landmark computer music network group.

From the Tdzadik website, "A new recording by the band that pioneered laptop ensembles over twenty years ago coupled with an historic overview of their recordings, unreleased tracks and video clips of the band in performance. Functioning in the West Coast tradition of composer as instrument builder—redefining music from the ground up—The Hub makes music using electronic and digital systems of their own devising. A natural extension of the late 1970’s ensemble the League of Automatic Music Composers, the group has performed worldwide over the past two decades and continues to break new ground in the ever-growing laptop medium. "

Check it out ...

Extraordinary Rendition

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 23:40:55 PDT

This performance is from the Deep Listening convergence concert at Lifebridge sanctuary in High Falls NY in JUne 2007

Evolution revolution

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 12:52:32 PDT

Maybe not the as high brow as much that I usually post, but I thought this video was too unusual not to pass on. Hope you enjoy it.

more where this came from

Guy van Belle from Brataslava live in Munich

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 17:22:46 PDT

Here is a picture of Guy van Belle (gevan bella) the now Eastern European racountuer and instigator in Berlin on a fine afternoon at the Tesla new media center in June of 2005. You see the experimental stuffed panda balloon in the distance. Photo by Tim Perkis

On 7-7-07 at 7 pm Guy was playing "tubes and flutes" on his mac through the t-u-be vst plugin to the inventive people at t-u-b-e from his front room in Brataslava. As he said in an email:

contributing for the workshops by http://www.t-u-b-e.de/
(it is in an old brewerey in a very beautiful cellar in münchen with a good technological setup
but I guess since I am playing from home missing out on that too .. hihi)

and isn't that the problem with doing network music. Concert promoters save so much on air fare. I like the deep listening convergence scheme cooked up by Vonn New and Pauline Oliveros to rehearse online and then fly everyone in to play together. Much better and very special, I was so happy to be a part of it.

Don't miss my recent interview that is now available on the turbulence.org Networked Music Review. It was so very nice of Helen Thorington to have me. If you haven't checked the site out your really should. It is fantastic.

Extraordinary Rendition online score

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:07:15 PST

Click on the title above to hear my own rendition of "Extraordinary Rendition" that I performed as part of the Deep Listening Convergence at Lifebridge Sanctuary in High Falls, NY on June 10, 2007
Monique Buzzarte' trombone
Pauline Oliveros accordion
David Arner harpsichord
Katharina von Rütte vocal
Scot Gresham-Lancaster piano

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Click here to get access to a "live" score of "Extraordinary Rendition" the instructions are to follow the green ball.

"Extraordinary Rendition" grew out of two sources. First my unstoppable attraction to bad puns. As a musician and a purveyor of rendition after rendition in the course of my life the repeated references to the U.S. governments new improved, indeed, extraordinary renditions had to be met by my own "Extraordinary Rendition". Around this time while studying Mark Levine's book "Jazz Theory" I came across a set of changes that took the core of John Coltrane's remarkable "Giant Steps" and modulated through all 12 keys. I thought to myself while playing through them, there is the essential material here for an extraordinary rendition of this classic jazz standard. So I felt it was my patriotic duty to do my little part for this administrations endless ill defined "war" with my own "Extraordinary Rendition".

This is dedicated to the wonder of "habeus corpus" and the Geneva convention and to all those who truly know that the "rule of law" is what makes our nation great.

Also, check out this cool flash animation based on "Giant Steps" by Michal Levy.
John Coltrane continues to inspire ...

Scot

Cage on "What's My Line" 1960

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Mon, 07 May 2007 10:12:00 PDT

From WFMU's "Beware of the Blog" comes this treasure. John Cage performing "Water Walk" on the national TV show "What's My Line?" I remember watching this show as a kid, but I must admit I don't remeber seeing this episode.

Etude before the Convergence

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:07:15 PST

Here is a transcript of my unsuccessful attempt to have 9 remote players perform in the Concert Hall in the Music Department at SJSU. Mercury was obviously in retrograde on this one ;-) but the link on the title of this entry is one Pauline Oliveros posted of a really fun mp3 of what everyone was doing online that we couldn't get a feed of onstage at the time. It was a bit frustrating up on stage for me, but everyone tells me they had a great time online. So that is great.

Here is a bit of the text chat transcript just before I gave up:
Scot Gresham-Lancaster 4/25/07 7:58 PM
add me back in
Stuart Dempster 4/25/07 7:58 PM
meltdown
Marc Jensen 4/25/07 7:58 PM
uh oh
Monique Buzzarté 4/25/07 7:58 PM
only 9 add in
Marc Jensen 4/25/07 8:03 PM
is something happening now? I'm still dropped
Scot Gresham-Lancaster 4/25/07 8:05 PM
Thank you not working got to go Thanks a million
Michelle Nagai 4/25/07 8:05 PM
i'm on hold again
Stuart Dempster 4/25/07 8:06 PM
Have a good rest of concert!
Michelle Nagai 4/25/07 8:06 PM
looks like scot has moved on!
Scot Gresham-Lancaster 4/25/07 8:07 PM
bye
Stuart Dempster 4/25/07 8:07 PM
anybody get hurt?
Marc Jensen 4/25/07 8:08 PM
no, we survived the riskiness
Viv Corringham 4/25/07 8:08 PM
better go before we do
Michelle Nagai 4/25/07 8:08 PM
i've got sleepy business. i think i must go...
Monique Buzzarté 4/25/07 8:08 PM
viv back in?
Michelle Nagai 4/25/07 8:11 PM
i'm going to sign off. do i just hit the hang up?
Monique Buzzarté 4/25/07 8:11 PM
yep
Michelle Nagai 4/25/07 8:11 PM
by eall - have fun!
Viv Corringham 4/25/07 8:11 PM
i'm back i think
Marc Jensen 4/25/07 8:28 PM
crash? or is it just me?
Monique Buzzarté 4/25/07 8:28 PM
I'm ok
Marc Jensen 4/25/07 8:28 PM
okay, it's back
Monique Buzzarté 4/25/07 8:29 PM
zzz for meeeeeee
4/25/07 8:29 PM
xo to all
Viv Corringham 4/25/07 8:31 PM
lovely to play with you all- sleep got me too.
4/25/07 8:31 PM
byeee!

Skype or not to Skype

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:57:38 PDT

Saturnalia presents...
First of many skype based rehearsals for the Deep Listenting Convergence

Will Swofford says:
"see below a link to our recording of the first spontaneous conference.
This one is likely to go down in the music history books right next to
James Brown Live at the Apollo ;-)

Hope you all have as much fun listening to it as we had creating
it....

Click Here

Will Swofford, Michelle Nagai + wee one, Kathy Kennedy, Norman Lowrey,
Monique Buzzarte, Al Margolis, Scot Gresham-Lancaster spontaneously
convergence and break through the skype barriers. Nice work everyone.

Test by Fire ... Wall

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 12:34:57 PST

Live performance at CSUEastBay Multimedia Forum on one end and Vonn New's studio in Kingston, NY on the other. My good friend Phil Hofstetter had invited me to give a retrospective of my work, but I decided to start by showing this example of what we are trying to do with the:
Deep Listening Convergence Project

Cutoff at the end, Vonn asks, "Where am I?" because she didn't know where the other end of the performance was located. ;-)

Léon Theremin plays "Boatman on the Volga"

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 15:54:37 PST

I shot this video of Léon Theremin plays "Boatman on the Volga" at the Ensemble Room at Mills College in 1991 during his visit to California.

Hot Potato at NYU

tocs_back@yahoo.com (Scot Gresham-Lancaster) — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 15:06:27 PST

HOT POTATO!!!

Scot Gresham-Lancaster

Play a note (any note or sound) before you randomly throw the single 'potato'. The potato is simply a number that sets the duration of the sound event in each instance. ie 100 = 100ms, 200 = 200 ms etc. Any potato handler can change the number ... or not.