Voice On Record - Final Show

I finished my 58th and final show of my Voice On Record radio programme on 20th December. This was a one hour show for Resonance FM broadcast every week on Tuesday evenings, repeated on Sundays featuring a wide selection of spoken word recordings from my collection.

Each week would have a theme and through the almost 18 months the show was running, I played recordings of people like William Faulkner, Buckminster Fuller, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Aldous Huxley, John Arlott, Richard Burton, James Joyce, Bela Lugosi, and many other not so famous individuals with interesting voices or stories.

The shows are possibly still available to download from Resonance FM.


The full details including playlists and pictures of the records are available on the Voice On Record blog.

Art Of Record Production Conference 2010

3-5th December 2010 was the ARP conference at Leeds Metropolitan University where I presented a paper entitled - Tubby's Dub Style: The live art of record production. There was a great range of papers and some very interesting speakers including Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), Paul Harkins (Edinburgh, Napier) and an excellent keynote by Steve Albini.

ARP 2010

Eugene Chadbourne and Roger Turner gig

Edinburgh was honoured with a visit by Eugene Chadbourne and Roger Turner to play a gig for Grind Sight Open Eye on 17 September 2010 in the Bongo Club. This gave me an ideal opportunity to play records between the sets including tunes by George Formby, Einsturzende Neubauten, Moonflowers, Mel Blanc and a pan-generaic variety of others.

Needless to say Eugene and Roger played an amazing set and it was the first time I'd seen Eugene play since around 1994 in Brighton. Went out for a large Chinese meal afterwards - it turns out that Eugene is a huge fan of duck.

ICMPC11 Seattle

A whole week of music psychology papers at the ICMPC11 was quite tough going but there were some very interesting papers, plus the chance to present some of my own research into incidental noise via a poster entitled Noise and Fidelity: Poles Apart?

Glasgow Improvisors' Orchestra's Raymond MacDonald did a most enjoyable gig on the Thursday night with drums, violin, cello and contrabass clarinet.

I also managed to use a day for research at The Experience Music Project which turned up some exciting new material.
Big thanks to Brian, Julie, Tracey, Jason and Zoë for looking after me.

Stockhausen Courses

Thanks to a Gwen Clutterbuck scholarship I was able to attend the Stockhausen Courses in Kürten for 10 days at the beginning of August. This was a wonderful experience - parallel seminar and workshop sessions each day followed by a concert of Stockhausen's music every evening.

Intuitive Music
Run by the Ensemble for Intuitive Music, Weimar, who have been playing Stockhausen's Intuitive Music for 25 years, this was a 3 hour seminar every morning, starting with the ensemble playing a piece from Aus Den Sieben Tagen or Für Kommende Zeiten. We would then discuss the interpretation and performance and start to unpick the details in the score. Discussions were often informed by recollections of Stockhausen's comments during sessions he had conducted with the ensemble in past years, and there was a great deal of detail and guidance springing from that, above and beyond what is written in the scores.

Ensemble For Intuitive Music Weimar with class

There was a lot of participation and it quickly became apparent that only through attempting to perform the pieces could a better appreciation of the details, limitations and scope of interpretation be gained.

Sound Projection
Run by Bryan Wolf, this course dealt with how to set up the sound system, how to mic up various instruments and how to organise and plan a Stockhausen performance from the technical perspective.

Sean and the Midas Heritage 3000

The course covered reasons behind selection of particular equipment as well as the specific aims - the most important being the use and positioning of loudspeakers to enhance the acoustic sound without it obviously sounding like it is coming from a PA. The famous Stockhausen track-ID tape was used to balance the system rather than white noise or impulses etc, and by having hands-on experience in this class, it was surprisingly easy to understand the benefits of this method over any others.

Mikrophonie I
The main reason I wanted to come to Kürten this year was to witness the rehearsals and performance of Mikrophonie I, and there were several opportunities to observe rehearsals, as well as a seminar and a lecture on the piece.

Mikrophonie I rehearsals

The most surprising thing for me was the use of a smooth filter with a fiddly interface, differing significantly from the Maihak W49, and the fact that the ensemble consisted of 6 percussionists with no electronic performance specialists. I will write further on this topic elsewhere, but despite this, it was wonderful to witness the piece being performed.

Concerts
I can honestly say that I had no idea of the range of Stockhausen's work before these 9 days of consecutive performances spanning his music from the 1950s to the 2000s. Since I became interested in his music through Kontakte and Gesang der Jünglinge, the later work was at first quite challenging to appreciate. 9 days later and patterns emerge and connections with early ideas, incorporation of Intuitive Music elements, and other links throughout the body of works, and the later pieces become so much more accessible.

Many questions have arisen as a result of my attendance at the courses, especially with relation to the question of electronic performance practice, so I hope to attend next year when there is a chance of a course devoted to this question which I hope to be able to contribute to.


Performance Practice
I have taken on the challenge of preparing a performance of either Spiral or Pole and will be aiming to get that to a stage where it can be performed next year in Kürten. Watch this space!

People
One of the most memorable features of the courses was the friendly family atmosphere. I met so many lovely people, organisers, performers, participants and local folk alike, and this really made for a very special 10 days.

Press
Here I am quoted in the local newspaper!
http://www.rundschau-online.de/html/artikel/1280572143106.shtml

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my new blog which will replace the main page of the sbkw.net website.

I'm currently in Portland Oregon in between playing tunes at Psymply Psychedelic which was a fabulous outdoor party near Eugene and presenting some of my research on noise and music at the International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition in Seattle next week.

Sunday morning 8-10am set in the beautiful sunshine!

Improv gig at Grind Sight Open Eye

Performance of live electronic improv with Owen Green, Lin Zhang and Jules Rawlinson at the Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, 26th July 2010. This was our last gig with Lin before he went back to China. We all miss him very much as he brought so much energy to the whole music scene in Edinburgh.