Just before finals last semester, Matt Roberts and I lead a group of advanced Digital Arts majors to Miami during Art Basel where we performed together as Mobile Performance Group, our student-faculty new media collective and laptop ensemble.  We presented all new material inspired by our surroundings in the bustling Wynwood arts district. You can learn all about the experience from our online documentation or get a taste of things from the video below. Special thanks to Juraj Kojs for the invite.

• online documentation @ mobileperformancegroup.com

MPG Miami 12.01.11 – 5 min, 14 sec

Awesome Auto-Harmonizer – 4 min, 2 sec

Triggering Percussion Samples – 4 min, 48 sec

Violin Accompaniment – 3 min, 11 sec

Guitar to Voice Harmonizer – 4 min, 2 sec

Since the presentation was on lecture capture, it made sense to capture it! For this task, I used ProfCast. This is the same software that captured the other enhanced podcasts you’ll find on this website. It is super easy to use and I highly recommend it.

I know this a bit different than my usual focus on electronic music and audio signal processing, but I figured some might be interested in the tools I use to teach. Let me know your thoughts.  As I usually do, I’ll post Flickr credits and links to the reports cited in my comments.

• enhanced podcast – 24.9 MB

My title slide. Uses a photo by Flickr user Taqi.

Title: Enhancing musical skills through sound design

Description: Sound design is the process of crafting sonic elements for film or video projects. Practicing this aural art form develops students’ critical listening skills and ability to make compositional decisions. This session will outline the concepts, vocabulary, artists, and software you need to know for developing a sound design project.

• enhanced podcast of lecture – 26.1 MB

This presentation grew out on my experiences teaching the sound design unit in DIGA 101. The topic of sound design allowed me to overcome much of the early hesitancy that non-musicians had about working with music technology in our Digital Arts program. The goal of my presentation was to introduce the topic to K-12 music teachers with existing technology curricula who may want new project ideas for their classroom. The premise is that although sound design is not equivalent to music, it can enhance students’ musical skills and understanding in new ways.

Thanks so much to everyone that attended my presentation. And once again, thanks to Nick Eggen for the invitation to present.

I neglected to include credits for images and other media within the enhanced podcast, but will provide links in the comments of this post.

Max/MSP Saves Christmas – 4 min, 17 sec

Frank ‘n’ Bots – 4 min, 20 sec

Santa’s Merry Algorithmic Patch of Joy – 4 min, 22 sec

Brownian, Euclidian, and Genetic Algorithms – 7 min, 56 sec

Custom Music Sensor Interface – 6 min, 17 sec

When he is not making custom instruments, Eric is co-manager and bassist for Run Rhino.  I am proud to have advised Eric during his time at Stetson and through this project.  I look forward to seeing what the next steps in his career will be.

I happily chatted with him for about 15 minutes about the high points from the last 100+ years and my perspective on genres.  The results were an article that ran in the late October issue of The Charlatan (which is “Carleton’s Independent Weekly”).  One correction though: he seemed to mis-hear “tape” as “take”.  But overall it was a fun experience that I would be glad to repeat if anyone else is looking for an expert in this area.

A bit of my interview with The Charlatan.

I just returned from several days at the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States National Conference.  In addition to hearing loads of new music, I gave a presentation on the MPG Carepackage.  This continues my efforts to get more people using this collection of patches for networking computers running Max/MSP/Jitter and sharing musical data.  Overall, the reaction was positive and I hope many of my colleagues from around the country will follow up by downloading the following files:

• enhanced podcast of lecture – 14.1 MB
• extended abstract in PDF – 104 kb
• MPG carepackage – last update 11 Nov 2009, 185 kb

It is worth noting that I gave this MPG Carepackage lecture earlier at FEAST in November and you can download a recording of that presentation.  At FEAST, I was a little less pressed for time and so it might be easier to understand the more relaxed pace of that version.

I also had a chance to spend some time with two former Stetson students: Jana Fisher (BA/2009) and Chester Udell (BM/2005).  Jana had a piece entitled Top40:France selected for the conference. She created this spectral composition for her senior project and it sounded fantastic on the big Genelec speakers.  Chester had a piece for trombone and live electronics that was really well done and I am not the only one that thought so; Chester was awarded first place in the annual SEAMUS/ASCAP Student Commission!  Big congrats to him as this is a huge honor.

All in all a good conference.  Looking forward to hearing where next year will be held.

Banners around campus made sure you knew where you were at.

Blues Call and Response – 3 min

Loop Station – 8 min, 7 sec

Sonification of Emails – 3 min, 53 sec

CataRT System – 7 min, 14 sec

Accompaniment for Solo Performer – 6 min, 6 sec

Chat Music – 4 min, 47 sec

Scriabin Audiovisualizer – 6 min, 17 sec

Aliens in Baltimore: a piece for electric violin, iPhone and 2 computers – 8 min, 17 sec