Currents investigates the overlaps and gaps between noise and pattern; acoustic and electronic timbre; and live and fixed elements. Currents sounds out the intersections of our current electronic state while referencing its history. The piece was written for Tesla: Light, Sound, Color, a full stage production exploring the life and work of Serbian-American inventor, Nikola Tesla. Currents references Thomas Edison’s inefficient and noisy direct current (DC) electric motor and imagines the brilliant showmanship of Tesla and his revolutionary alternating current (AC) technology.
Distance-X is a digital musical instrument that consists of a hacked Gametrak, Nintendo Wiimote, and customized Kyma software. Music on Distance-X is all human-powered computer music. No tapes. No spacebar playback. Just body movements turned musical mutants.
Tesla: Light, Sound, Color is a 90-minute stage production with live physics demonstrations, digital animation, an original string and electronic musical score, and contemporary choreography. The project is the culmination of a 2016 Oregon Community Foundation Creative Heights award.
Hailed as a genius of the industrial age, Serbian immigrant Nikola Tesla continues to captivate the public with his electrical inventions that includes alternating current, contributions to radio transmission, the Tesla coil, as well as 280 other additional patents. The production brings Tesla’s enigmatic story to the stage by combining the science of his inventions with mixed media representations of his complex and tumultuous life. Harmonic Laboratory brings original artwork and broad collaborations together with content by Brad Garner, Jeremy Schropp, Jon Bellona, and John Park. Collaborators include: University of Oregon Physicist Stan Micklavzina, Delgani String Quartet, Eugene Ballet Company dancers, and visual artist Julia Oldham.
I composed six new original works for string octet (four violins, two violas, two cellos) and fixed electronics. One of the works, Currents, includes live Tesla Coils driven by MIDI messages. A second work, Broadcasting, uses FM transmitters to send audio to handheld radios carried by the eight dancers on stage.
City Synth transforms the city of Eugene into a musical instrument. By transmitting video feeds from multiple locations to a central location downtown that interprets movement and color into sound, the cityscape becomes a soundscape. The project offers the community a playful way to learn about and interact with the gigabit network in downtown Eugene. The project was a month long installation housed in downtown Eugene, OR. Project partners include South Eugene Robotics Team (SERT) and XS Media. The project was funded by a Mozilla Gigabit Community Fund Grant.
Artists involved in the project:
Jon Bellona, sound design, coding, project lead
John Park, coding and visual design
Jeremy Schropp, interface design and construction
Human-powered computer music. No tapes. No spacebar playback. Just body movements turned musical mutants.
DistanceX is a new digital musical instrument I’ve developed for live performance, specifically tailored for Kyma. The input controller consists of a hacked Gametrak, cut in half to leave a single 3D joystick fader, which is then strapped to the right arm. A Nintendo Wiimote provides additional button and accelerometer controls. In Study 1 (TCF4), a single 6.928 second audio sample serves as the material, a mid-range frequency oscillation that is controlled directly by the performer. Both Gametrak and Wiimote control analysis file parameters, and these controls shift slightly depending on varying control states. The performer has full command over each control state. The result is a choreographic relationship between performer and sound, a movement-based sonic composition wound within the boundaries of his own parametric kinesphere.
The performance was recorded at Virginia Tech on May 2, 2017. Thank you to Tanner Upthegrove for running sound and Charles Nichols for organizing the concert.
Dimension Chorus is a VST plugin modeled after the Roland Dimension D® chorus. The effect includes a shared LFO (with phase flipped on opposite channel). The dimension knob controls a mix of inverted, high-pass filtered signal, which is sent to its opposite channel further spreading the stereo source.
Installation:
For Mac OS, go (Cmd-G) to ~/Library/Audio/Plug-ins to see your “Component” folder (for AU plugins) or “VST” folder (for VST plugins). Move the plugin file to the appropriate folder. You may also go to /Libary/Audio/Plug-ins too. Either place can be used to install plugins. Most DAWs will scan and recognize both locations.
If you dig the free software, please follow my music.
Beat Repeater is a VST and AU stereo audio plugin that manipulates the wet, dry, and feedback gains of a simple delay line. When on, the plugin cuts off the input to the delay, cuts the dry output signal, and increases the feedback to 100%; in short, the sound “stutters” or repeats the beat according to a BPM setting selected by the user. An additional automate button lets the plugin randomly select beat divisions for a further glitchy breakdown of the sound. User parameters control left and right channels separately. Beat Repeater was built using the JUCE Framework (C++).
