Playing with PD Fiddle~

PD's Fiddle~ object is fascinating - picking up the MIDI note values of audio notes played - so I've made a video of just the pitches of the notes in my improvisation. Also been thinking about strings... might actually write this one down... watch this space.

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Haunting

This improvisation is played to a series of Edwardian photographs of everyday life. These technological echoes of a 'modern' world fascinate because everybody's dead - it's like looking at ghosts (like the Mitchell and Kenyon films). One day our technologies like Facebook will hold the same fascination for us. Photos for these people must have seemed such a novelty.

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Some week!

End of long day. SPLICE conference success. ALT paper snatched defeat from the jaws of success. Annoyed. Tired. Drama tomorrow.

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quick sketch

I'm going out in 5 minutes, so need to do this quickly - what is it? a bit of a mess - but bear in mind the thing about judgements.. does it matter? Nice day at zoo with Izzy.

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Judgements and Music

I realise that in saying that a certain impro. is x or y (i.e. sad, happy, etc), I'm expressing my own opinion, and that to anyone else, it is something completely different. The issue of objectivity in making judgements about music (or learning, or anything else) is important. I think the judgements we make about things being a certain way (good or bad for example) are in fact a result of the function of the thing we are commenting on (music, learning, etc). They serve a function in increasing the probability of successful communication - the probability that we can say something. In saying something is bad (for example) we're actually demonstrating its success. So I've tried to improvise some 'bad' music - which I actually quite like... typical! (Maybe this is why things can be so bad they're good...?)

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Dance, Music and Communication

If music is the interface between perception and communication, what of dance (music)? It is essentially the same, I suspect, but we are talking about a different sort of communication. A symphony or opera might bring us to the point of words, but a tango (or a Bartokian folk dance like this one) brings us to the point of physical intimacy - no less social! And whilst the words themselves serve as a context for other communication, so physical intimacy serves as a context for the communications of love: so contexts within contexts (VSM!)...

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Childhood 2

Had Isobel in work today, and it brings home the disconnect between the world of adult life and the 'bubble world' of childhood! (losing her train ticket was one incident amongst a number that brought the two worlds crashing together!) The not-quite-formed regulators of the communication system are brought out in the rhythmic right-hand pedal in the first improv (very much like yesterday's). In the second (slightly sad) lyrical piece, there is an almost autistic focus on minutiae of motivic cells, scales, etc. Dance tomorrow - how does that relate to the communication system??

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