April 2013
6 posts
12 tags
Two performances [guest post by Leo Hofmann]
[It’s my pleasure to present Leo Hofmann as the tenth and final guest writer in this series. Leo is a Swiss artist working in the fields of performance and media art, often combining the two to create a very unique body of work. I first met Leo at the Hochschule der Künste Bern where we both studied, and where he is just finishing his Masters Degree in Contemporary Arts Practice. - Tobias]
...
11 tags
Music (and live coding) as activity [guest post by...
[Please welcome Alex McLean as this week’s guest writer. Alex is a musician from Yorkshire, UK who specializes in live coding of music performances. He has written a PhD on “Artist Programmers and Programming Languages for the Arts” and is a co-founder of TOPLAP (Temporary Organisation for the Promotion of Live Algorithm Programming). Alex is @yaxu on Twitter and his website is...
13 tags
Todmorden 513 concert in Denver, April 18th
Picture by Markus Reuter
I’ve arrived in Denver, Colorado yesterday for a week of work on Markus Reuter’s “Todmorden 513” orchestral project. We’re staying at conductor and orchestrator Thomas Blomster’s place and are currently working out all communication and “to do” items for the coming week, which will include the following events:...
4 tags
Words made sound
„Material creation from the word is an idea central to magic in all cultures; it is precisely what magic spells perform. Magic therefore is, at its core, a technology, serving the rational end of achieving an effect, and being judged by its efficacy. […] The technical principle of magic, controlling matter through manipulation of symbols, is the technical principle of computer software as...
9 tags
Creating technical media music within a digitized...
[Please welcome Marcel Saegesser to the series. Marcel is a composer and musician from Bern, Switzerland who has steadily built a body of performative and installation work over the past few years, often blurring the boundaries between the two. Marcel’s work is being performed internationally and his piece “The last place (left)” was released on Tonus Music Records in 2011. His work and activities...
15 tags
Fello [guest post by Andi Otto]
[Please welcome Andi Otto as this week’s guest contributor. Andi is a composer, electronic musician and researcher from Hamburg, Germany. He performs internationally under the name of Springintgut, his third album “Where We Need No Map” (CD/LP) will be released on April 15th on the Pingipung label. Here’s his artist profile on the label’s website, and these are his...
March 2013
5 posts
11 tags
Improvising (with) the setup [guest post by Jeff...
[It’s my pleasure to welcome guest writer Jeff Swearengin to this weekly series of writings on “live performance with computer technology”. I’m particularly excited because I heard about Jeff through the recommendation of our mutual friend and previous guest writer Adrian Benavides. Jeff is an electronic musician, drummer and producer residing in Los Angeles. His SoundCloud...
The Library Project
A couple of weeks ago I researched libraries in Switzerland that would accept my CDs for inclusion in their catalogue. I also offered anyone on Facebook and Twitter to send them two CDs for free if they volunteered to bring one of them to their local library. I liked the idea because it was about making gifts to each other and to the public and built on collaboration and trust.
Ten people got in...
9 tags
Spring Teaching
I’m very happy to announce that I’ll be teaching at the Hochschule der Künste Bern (University of the Arts Berne) from April to June. Media and performance artist Lara Stanic and I will be standing in for a faculty member on maternity leave. I will be working with students form the BA programme in Music and Media Arts and the MA in Contemporary Arts Practice, and classes will include...
13 tags
Designing live electronic instruments for...
[Please welcome Samuel Gfeller as this week’s guest contributor. It’s my big pleasure to have Samuel here as I’ve seen him produce very interesting work for a number of years now, much of which fits this series perfectly. He’s applying his interest in interactive and generative composition in such diverse areas as music composition, performance, installations and audio...
Making the computer vibrate [guest post by Markus...
[I’m thrilled to welcome Markus Reuter as this week’s guest writer. Markus is a composer, producer, musician, guitar designer, teacher and psychologist (among many other roles and professions) living in Innsbruck, Austria. I’ve been lucky to study, work, play and perform with Markus for many years and continue to benefit from his insight into the creative process. He is currently running a...
February 2013
6 posts
4 tags
Watchpink noise (basel, february 11, 2013)
13 tags
Performance Enhancement [guest post by Adrian...
[Please welcome this week’s guest writer, Adrian Benavides. Adrian is a musician, producer and live and studio sound engineer from Austin, TX, now living in Orange County, CA. He’s worked with my band centrozoon as a mixing engineer of our “Boner” and “Fire” albums. Adrian is currently on tour as a playback engineer and drum tech for Daughtry and has previously...
16 tags
_derivations [guest post by Ben Carey]
[I’m happy to have Ben Carey as the second guest blogger here at A Hundred Quirky Legs. Ben is a musician from Sydney, Australia, and describes himself as a saxophonist, composer and technologist. I was lucky to see him play with his _derivations project at the dBâle festival in 2012 and then spend a few rainy days conversing and playing at my place. I’m very excited about the work...
6 tags
New remix on Lee Fletcher's "The Cracks Within"
Lee Fletcher has released “The Cracks Within: FiWT Remixes”, an album of remixes of two songs from his acclaimed “Faith in Worthless Things” release. I’m happy to be featured among a great casts of artists. The album is available for free or for whatever amount you’d like to pay. All proceeds from the album will go to the Multiple Sclerosis Society UK. Lee...
8 tags
Music Without Music [guest post by Erik Schoster]
[I’m pleased to present Erik Schoster as my first guest blogger here at A Hundred Quirky Legs. Erik is a computer musician form Milwaukee Wisconsin, USA. Under the name of He Can Jog he as released three full length records, many more EPs, remixes and compositions on a variety of labels. His music and software can be found on his website at www.hecanjog.com, and I highly recommend you give...
8 tags
announcing: guest bloggers
This blog has been running for ten months now, with over 50 posts (archived here and always accessible via the “Archive” button on the top right of the page, where you can also subscribe to the blog via RSS feed). I’ve enjoyed the process of doing this very much so far, and I feel like introducing a new element: I’m going to open this up a bit and invite people to write guest posts every now and...
January 2013
2 posts
1 tag
Working for Markus Reuter
Markus Reuter just released this piece of news (via markusreuter.com):
2013.01.16 Happy New Year! It’s about time to share a bit of news: I’m happy to announce that Tobias Reber is now working for me as my personal assistant. He’ll help manage my agenda and my many jobs, do business communication (info@markusreuter.com) and promotional work and assist with his music...
5 tags
End of 2012 recap
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post here. I’d started a “home run” in mid-October, aiming to wrap up a lot of projects until the end of the year so I could begin to put my main focus on new work in 2013. So as the new year’s already picking up speed, here’s a quick update about some of the projects I’ve been working on around the end of last year, in a roughly chronological order:
-...
December 2012
3 posts
11 tags
Unsung Records: free Christmas Compilation (feat....
Unsung Records has released a free Christmas Compilation that will be available for download until the 26th December. Centrozoon have contributed three tracks, and among the other featured artists are my friends Bernhard Wöstheinrich (The Redundant Rocker), Adrian Benavides, Alex Dowerk (ZweiTon), Lee Fletcher and Yoshi Hampl.
<a...
9 tags
A Listener's Guide to centrozoon
Here’s “A Listener’s Guide to centrozoon” that artist Whitney Leary compiled.
It’s made up from tour photos and excerpts of the round table discussion that Bernhard Wöstheinrich, Erik Emil Eskildsen, Lee Fletcher and I recorded for DEGEM’s web radio this summer. The background music is “Field 2” from our Lovefield album. You can listen to or...
8 tags
sketch: synth particles
I’m building a small synth setup for a rehearsal where I need to be able to build a harmonic drone. I want it to be made up of many tiny events which can be controlled over time. This is a recording with 1-6 “particle streams”. All parameters such as speed, dynamic and duration of the streams/particles are still static unless I change them. Some of this will be automated and some...
November 2012
2 posts
19 tags
Essay: Everything old was once new
Putting my creative process in context
Recently I heard a few electronic musicians, some of whose work I admire, talk about how now that computer music has had its moment, musicians seem to want to go back to more “organic” ways of production – especially in performance. I wonder if this is the case? I’ve also noticed similar discussions in other areas: in the field of science fiction literature...
11 tags
new video clip: centrozoon - La Waltz of Kirk
We’ve just received a new video for a centrozoon track: a stop motion animation clip created Unsung Productions’ 2011 intern Mia Plassmann (animation), who had also assisted in the filming of our Fire session (videos on YouTube), with video editing by Bernd Thiele.
Mia’s description of the video: It’s “the fever dream of a stranded astronaut in an alien...
October 2012
3 posts
18 tags
A World Of Music Without Musicians?
I’m reposting below a lengthy response to a thread started by something that music journalist Anil Prasad (of the highly recommended Innerviews) posted on his Facebook profile. The “something” in question is a short piece written by Clyde Smith on Hypebot.com, titled Can You Survive In A World Of Music Without Musicians? which briefly spotlights three recent works of music that...
16 tags
new things for the ears and eyes
I’m neck deep in projects and work, so while I don’t have much time to blog I’m happy to be able to at least point to a couple of new things to listen to and watch.
Namgar preview track
Less than a month after we began recording Namgar’s album it has been mixed by Benni Schäfer and mastered by Lee Fletcher, and the management has released a preview track on Soundcloud.
...
10 tags
centrozoon & friends: a round table discussion
The centrozoon/Boner chat with Bernhard Wöstheinrich, Tobias Reber, Lee Fletcher and Erik Emil Eskildsen that we recorded for the DEGEM web radio is now archived on the iapetus-store.com Bandcamp site for free streaming/download (language: English; running time: 54’30”). You can also just play it here:
<a...
September 2012
10 posts
12 tags
a beat in 20 minutes
Last night I set myself a challenge: I announced on social media that I’d compose a beat in 20 minutes and then record and upload it on Soundcloud. I did, and this is how it sounds:
The track was composed using one of my Max/MSP patches playing a SSD4 drum sample kit. While recording I played some parameters in real time, but after the break at 1.53 the program is playing by itself until...
9 tags
Namgar album recording in Hannover
I was in Hannover last week, where we recorded an album for Moscow-based group Namgar at Horus Studios. Markus Reuter’s production merges the group’s traditional singing and instruments from Buryatia with electronics and guitar playing of all kinds. The song and dance structures themselves were subjected to a radical transformational process, deconstructed and rebuilt through improv,...
13 tags
Touch Guitar Circle: Trey Gunn blog and video...
Trey Gunn has just posted a detailed blog entry about the Touch Guitar Circle course with him and Markus in Innsbruck, Austria back in June, along with a video compilation of some of the things we did. Read it here. I’ve also posted the video below, but if you’re short on time I suggest you visit Trey’s blog and play it while you read.
In addition, here is my blog post on the...
6 tags
Urban Knitting / Urban Extispicy
“Fitch drew the cutter again along the split. A spray of concrete dust and blood mist dirtied him. (…) Guts oozed from the hole. Intestinal coils, purple and bloodied, boiled up wetly in a meat mass. Billy had thought the entrails of the city would be its torn-up under-earth (…), had thought Fitch would bring up a corner of wires, worms and plumbing to interpret. The...
7 tags
Backup Aura Week - Day 5: Ritxi Ostáriz on his...
The CD version of “Backup Aura” was released in a 6 panel digipak case with artwork by Spanish graphic designer Ritxi Ostáriz. Ritxi’s website is at ritxiostariz.com, including a documentation page for “Backup Aura”. I got in touch with him earlier this week to ask a couple of questions which, along with his replies, you can find below.
Backup Aura is also...
7 tags
Backup Aura Week - Day 4: radio interview 2010 (in...
In July 2010 my former teachers Michael Harenberg and Valerian Maly interviewed me (in German) for the web radio of DEGEM, the German Association for Electroacoustic Music. We talked about “Backup Aura”, which was part of my MA thesis project, as well as my thinking about composing with the computer in general, which I’d written about in my thesis paper.
I’m very happy...
6 tags
Backup Aura Week - Day 3: Last Stretch Diary
In the spring of 2010 I went into kind of a work frenzy for three weeks to finish all the compositions in time before heading off to Innsbruck to mix Backup Aura (which you can download here for free this week) with Markus Reuter. To keep track of my progress I posted daily status updates on my Facebook profile which I then collected and put on the only public platform for my music I had - my...
5 tags
Backup Aura Week - Day 2: TR interview by Markus...
This is an interview that my friend, band mate, label owner and “Backup Aura” mixing engineer Markus Reuter did with me and which we made available when “Backup Aura” was first sent out to reviewers in June 2010. Language: English.
To celebrate the two year anniversary of its release, “Backup Aura” is available as a free download for the entire week with...
11 tags
Backup Aura-Week: free download from Sept 3-9
“Backup Aura”, my first solo album, was officially released on September 6th, 2010. To celebrate the second anniversary of this album - a very significant project for me - I decided to make the album available as a free download for the entire week. You can download it at http://iapetus-store.com/album/backup-aura
<a...
11 tags
drum solo recording on soundcloud
I’ve been very busy these past two weeks, working on a documentary feature film mix, composing and recording for my collaborative project with guitarist Alex Dowerk and working on other less interesting things, so I didn’t get a chance to play around with my new Steven Slate drums until today. Below you find a short improv recording on which I play SSD’s Jazz Sticks kit with a...
August 2012
6 posts
10 tags
new reviews: Tönstör Laptop Ensemble, centrozoon
It’s review day, apparently, as I found reviews of two different projects in my mailbox this morning.
There’s a positive and encouraging discussion of the Tönstör Laptop Ensemble’s July gig in the September issue of “dissonance”, the widely read swiss magazine for new music. I’ve uploaded it here (pdf, german). For further info on the Tönstör Laptop Ensemble...
18 tags
new interactive composition documented: Pg Dn
The documentation of my past sound installation continues: my composition “Pg Dn” (2010) for Kaspar Hochuli’s interactive sound installation / game interface “5hoch2” is now documented on my website.
“5hoch2” was exhibited at Substitut Berlin gallery as part of the Transmediale 2010 (where the picture below was taken) and at the Museumsnacht Bern 2010,...
12 tags
new sound installation documented: Irrlichtung
My acoustic game installation “Irrlichtung” (2008) is now documented on my website.
6 tags
the noise of denoising
My laptop is usually quiet enough. Not today, while - ironically - denoising a long recording. I rather liked the image of the laptop emitting the waste noise it extracted from the file.
The laptop as leech. The disk ventilation as chimney.
12 tags
centrozoon interview/feature airing at DEGEM.de
There’s a new two hour long feature on centrozoon currently airing at the web radio of the DEGEM, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik (German Society for Electroacoustic Music) which is hosted by the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. It’s airing about once every 8-10 hours during the whole of August and September. You can look up the schedule here (we are feature B) and...
9 tags
Introducing Mantra at Davos Festival
I’m back from teaching at the Davos Festival this week, where working conditions were about as ideal as it could get: a small but great group of participants, an enthusiastic and supportive festival team, helpful tech people, fantastic accommodation.
Barbara and I each gave extensive theory inputs early on in the course. My job was to present Stockhausen’s piece to the participants -...
July 2012
6 posts
14 tags
Nature/Technology: centrozoon videos by Whitney...
Logan, Utah based visual artist Whitney Leary has created these two beautiful new videos for some of centrozoon’s “Fire” live recordings: Fire 4 and Fire 8. I’ve asked Whitney for a brief statement about creating these videos, and this is what he sent me:
“These video’s were shot using a Canon Powershot SD1400 IS (a fairly cheap camera), in video mode of...
Workshop at Davos Festival, August 6-9
I’ll be co-teaching a course with Barbara Weber at this year’s Davos Festival, starting August 6th and ending with a performance on August 9th. General information and details (PDF) on the Festival website (in German), and here’s a brief description in English:
The course will revolve around theories and practices of conveying contemporary music using Karlheinz...
14 tags
release note: centrozoon "Fire"
centrozoon is releasing “Fire” today, an improv session from June 2011. It’s available for free listening or as a 6€ download at http://iapetus-store.com/album/fire.
<a href=”http://iapetus-store.com/album/fire” data-mce-href=”http://iapetus-store.com/album/fire”>Fire by...
7 tags
TLE performance at Dampfzentrale Bern
A couple of shots of the Tönstör Laptop Ensemble’s opening gig at the “Lange Nacht der elektronischen Musik” at Dampfzentrale, Bern on July 6, 2012. The performance marked the completion of the second “season” of this project, and now it’s back to planning the future and raising funds so that we can hopefully make this the ongoing and growing Ensemble that I...
9 tags
Photo: performing in Bielefeld
Bernhard and I performing/presentating/discussing centrozoon at Capella Hospitalis, Bielefeld, Germany on Monday, July 2. Wonderful location but just a handful of people in the audience. The trip was well worth it, though: it’s always good to spend time with Bernhard, the improv recordings from the previous day are fab, there was time to talk about how to proceed with the band, and the...
7 tags
Artist talk with centrozoon in Bielefeld, July 2,...
Cooperativa Neue Musik, a sound art community in Bielefeld, Germany has invited my band centrozoon to present our work on July 2, 2012 as part of the Jour Fixe series of artist talks. Bernhard and I will be there (Markus is on tour with The Crimson ProjeKct) to play music and to talk about the band’s history, approaches and the new album “Boner”.
<a...
June 2012
9 posts
10 tags
expanding my grammar
Several times over the past few weeks I’ve heard or read the phrase “expanding my vocabulary as a musician” or some slight variation thereof. It is a common thing to say among musicians, one that I hadn’t really paid attention to since my teenage years when I was still thinking about trying to pursue an education and career as a guitar player. And now, suddenly, it caught...
