Showing posts with label experimental music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label experimental music. Show all posts
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Buddha Box 2.0
Last year I composed a new piece for Obey Convention IV called Buddha Box 2.0 for four electric guitars and electric bass. The piece is very simple to play and I've uploaded it for all to download and in my dreamy hopes, perhaps in some circumstance, a group of beings might want to play it.
You can listen to the performance here on soundcloud. I think I had more fun making the score than the piece - The score is actually mostly text based. The graphic score exists mostly as an accompaniment to help the performers "get in the vibe" although neither the text or graphic score existed at the time of the performance, I just told them what to do. I am planing on doing some screen printed versions of the score as well.
Thanks to Emily Robb, Ryan Kirk, Jason Eastwood, and Luke Corrigan who all helped realize this piece and a special thanks to Darcy Spidel for programing it and Lukas Pearse for recording it.
You can download all the files you need HERE.
PS. This is Avant-Lard's 100 post! Thank you all for following!
-Z
Buddha Box 2.0 by zacharyfairbrother
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Games by Ryan Kirk
Reposted from Ryan Kirk's Blog, Nayr Krik.
Great blog! Ryan has some very interesting muses and points. A multifaceted musician and writer, Kirk creates music centered around mythology and is an avid drone-practitioner. Kirk can play many instruments including french horn, trumpet, guitar, and piano. He is a very interesting, thoughtful, and thorough writer of both prose and music. Please enjoy this wonderful essay he posted! Thanks for sharing Ryan!
-Z
_______________________________
"A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context." (Clark C. Abt)
I have always been fascinated by games. Whether board, video, role-playing, abstract, or sport, games have always managed to suck me in and in many cases to distract me from other more pressing matters. I’ve been thinking about them quite a bit lately and so I’ve decided to share some of my experiences, observations, and ideas relating to games.
Games can be based around three different methods; skill, strategy, and chance. Although in practice most games somehow blend two or more of the above. Even a game as simple as dice, though it may appear to be all chance involves some kind of strategizing and decision-making. And games that appear on the surface level to be all about skill, like hockey or football actually involve a fair amount of strategy and large scale planning.
My own history interacting with games, and most likely yours, goes back to the earliest days of my childhood. Beginning with simple games like catch, musical chairs, and tag, children learn to interact with one another in specific social contexts. In a way games become social rituals for children that determine appropriate behaviours and modes of interaction and establish hierarchies and pecking orders. They also often encourage conditioning and development of the body and motor skills as well as encouraging a healthy psychological state by facilitating play and learning.
As well as those simple children’s games, I was also exposed to traditional boardgames in my home. We always played the staples, snakes and ladders, parchisi, checkers, and then when I was a bit older some of the more complicated ones like chess, Scrabble, and Risk. Risk was always my favourite. I was a typical kid and loved playing with army men and G.I. Joes and watching old war movies that would play on television during the day. So I guess the idea of controlling whole armies over continents and ultimately the world really appealed to me. I played all kinds of boardgames and cardgames throughout my childhood and they have a special place in my memories. But then videogames came onto the scene.
I got my first Gameboy for Christmas when I was six or seven. It came with Kirby and I was hooked from the start. From there I got a few other classics like Mario and Zelda and then a year or two later my brother and I got a Super Nintendo and a little colour TV to play it on for Christmas. Super Mario World consumed my childhood. I played it incessantly and even today I will once and awhile hook up the old Nintendo and it instantly takes me back to the countless hours I spent as a kid trying to reach %100.
From that point on videogames mostly dominated my gaming experiences. I tried my hand a few sports, but never really took to any of them, and unfortunately my obsession with videogames stopped my board gaming short. Which brings me to the downside of some forms of gaming, specifically videogaming. At certain points in my preteens and early teen years I became so obsessed with games that I would relegate school work, physical activity, and socializing just to get further ahead in the games. It wasn’t all bad, and some of my friends played videogames, so there were social times of playing together. Overall though I would say there were far more hours spent playing them alone in my room. There was also the frustration they posed. There would be points where instead of having fun I would get so angry I would throw the controller at the floor. Fortunately I grew out of that pretty fast. By the time I finished high school I was only playing videogames sporadically. I had found other activities that interested me more and used my time in more productive ways. I still don’t feel that videogames are bad, but they can become addictive in ways that I never experienced with social games or boardgames.
These days I’m pretty busy and don’t have much time for games. But when I do I tend to prefer boardgames and cardgames. I find that videogames are too time consuming. A boardgame can start and end in an hours time and it allows you to game in a social way. Whereas my experience with videogames tends to be that an hour just wets your appetite and that generally it’s more difficult to videogame socially. My favourite games these days are mostly strategy and abstract. Games like chess, checkers, backgammon, Risk, and Diplomacy. Diplomacy takes the interactive element of gaming to the extreme, I’ve only played it once but would love to try it again. I also enjoy a few cardgames; poker, cribbage, and crazy eights.
These days I also see elements of gaming and play in other activities I enjoy. One that rings especially true to me is music making. Although in many cases music exists as more than just a pastime or fun activity, it still involves elements that are shared by games. There are often multiple independent agents involved, and there is usually a common goal of some kind as well as a limiting context and the same elements of chance, strategy, and skill figure in. Take for example a symphony orchestra; the members are all working towards the goal of realizing the piece being performed, the conductor and performers use strategies to ensure a successful performance, the players need skill to actually perform the parts when they come up, and as far as chance, well things can always go wrong. It’s even plainer to see in improvisation.
Artists like John Zorn even explicitly compose game pieces. Where players can compete and there is a conductor who establishes rules and divides players into sub-ensembles or teams. In some cases there are even point systems. Free improvisation also incorporates a large component of game and play. Within the performances there can be room for competition and subversion. Music like John Cage’s Book of Changes draws explicitly on chance through the use of dice, a tool common to many games.
I find games interesting because they seem like such a natural human activity. Boardgames date from the earliest known civilizations in Mesopotamia, and in many cases are not that far off from contemporary games like chess. They’re a productive pastime that encourage socializing and stimulate your mind. Games can offer you an escape from the everyday world, yet in familiar and comfortable ways, either through simulating a situation or encouraging roleplaying. After all, who doesn’t want to conquer the world, especially when the leaders you’re competing with are all your best friends?
-Ryan Kirk
Great blog! Ryan has some very interesting muses and points. A multifaceted musician and writer, Kirk creates music centered around mythology and is an avid drone-practitioner. Kirk can play many instruments including french horn, trumpet, guitar, and piano. He is a very interesting, thoughtful, and thorough writer of both prose and music. Please enjoy this wonderful essay he posted! Thanks for sharing Ryan!
-Z
_______________________________
"A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context." (Clark C. Abt)
I have always been fascinated by games. Whether board, video, role-playing, abstract, or sport, games have always managed to suck me in and in many cases to distract me from other more pressing matters. I’ve been thinking about them quite a bit lately and so I’ve decided to share some of my experiences, observations, and ideas relating to games.
Games can be based around three different methods; skill, strategy, and chance. Although in practice most games somehow blend two or more of the above. Even a game as simple as dice, though it may appear to be all chance involves some kind of strategizing and decision-making. And games that appear on the surface level to be all about skill, like hockey or football actually involve a fair amount of strategy and large scale planning.
My own history interacting with games, and most likely yours, goes back to the earliest days of my childhood. Beginning with simple games like catch, musical chairs, and tag, children learn to interact with one another in specific social contexts. In a way games become social rituals for children that determine appropriate behaviours and modes of interaction and establish hierarchies and pecking orders. They also often encourage conditioning and development of the body and motor skills as well as encouraging a healthy psychological state by facilitating play and learning.
As well as those simple children’s games, I was also exposed to traditional boardgames in my home. We always played the staples, snakes and ladders, parchisi, checkers, and then when I was a bit older some of the more complicated ones like chess, Scrabble, and Risk. Risk was always my favourite. I was a typical kid and loved playing with army men and G.I. Joes and watching old war movies that would play on television during the day. So I guess the idea of controlling whole armies over continents and ultimately the world really appealed to me. I played all kinds of boardgames and cardgames throughout my childhood and they have a special place in my memories. But then videogames came onto the scene.
I got my first Gameboy for Christmas when I was six or seven. It came with Kirby and I was hooked from the start. From there I got a few other classics like Mario and Zelda and then a year or two later my brother and I got a Super Nintendo and a little colour TV to play it on for Christmas. Super Mario World consumed my childhood. I played it incessantly and even today I will once and awhile hook up the old Nintendo and it instantly takes me back to the countless hours I spent as a kid trying to reach %100.
From that point on videogames mostly dominated my gaming experiences. I tried my hand a few sports, but never really took to any of them, and unfortunately my obsession with videogames stopped my board gaming short. Which brings me to the downside of some forms of gaming, specifically videogaming. At certain points in my preteens and early teen years I became so obsessed with games that I would relegate school work, physical activity, and socializing just to get further ahead in the games. It wasn’t all bad, and some of my friends played videogames, so there were social times of playing together. Overall though I would say there were far more hours spent playing them alone in my room. There was also the frustration they posed. There would be points where instead of having fun I would get so angry I would throw the controller at the floor. Fortunately I grew out of that pretty fast. By the time I finished high school I was only playing videogames sporadically. I had found other activities that interested me more and used my time in more productive ways. I still don’t feel that videogames are bad, but they can become addictive in ways that I never experienced with social games or boardgames.
These days I’m pretty busy and don’t have much time for games. But when I do I tend to prefer boardgames and cardgames. I find that videogames are too time consuming. A boardgame can start and end in an hours time and it allows you to game in a social way. Whereas my experience with videogames tends to be that an hour just wets your appetite and that generally it’s more difficult to videogame socially. My favourite games these days are mostly strategy and abstract. Games like chess, checkers, backgammon, Risk, and Diplomacy. Diplomacy takes the interactive element of gaming to the extreme, I’ve only played it once but would love to try it again. I also enjoy a few cardgames; poker, cribbage, and crazy eights.
These days I also see elements of gaming and play in other activities I enjoy. One that rings especially true to me is music making. Although in many cases music exists as more than just a pastime or fun activity, it still involves elements that are shared by games. There are often multiple independent agents involved, and there is usually a common goal of some kind as well as a limiting context and the same elements of chance, strategy, and skill figure in. Take for example a symphony orchestra; the members are all working towards the goal of realizing the piece being performed, the conductor and performers use strategies to ensure a successful performance, the players need skill to actually perform the parts when they come up, and as far as chance, well things can always go wrong. It’s even plainer to see in improvisation.
Artists like John Zorn even explicitly compose game pieces. Where players can compete and there is a conductor who establishes rules and divides players into sub-ensembles or teams. In some cases there are even point systems. Free improvisation also incorporates a large component of game and play. Within the performances there can be room for competition and subversion. Music like John Cage’s Book of Changes draws explicitly on chance through the use of dice, a tool common to many games.
I find games interesting because they seem like such a natural human activity. Boardgames date from the earliest known civilizations in Mesopotamia, and in many cases are not that far off from contemporary games like chess. They’re a productive pastime that encourage socializing and stimulate your mind. Games can offer you an escape from the everyday world, yet in familiar and comfortable ways, either through simulating a situation or encouraging roleplaying. After all, who doesn’t want to conquer the world, especially when the leaders you’re competing with are all your best friends?
-Ryan Kirk
Monday, November 16, 2009
Mix by Chris D'eon
Avant-Lard has been Mr. D'eon heavy lately and we like it! I asked Chris to come up with a mix to feature his extensive knowledge of electronic and pop music. It also features quite a few tracks by Chris himself. So here it is, the exclusive Avant-Lard mix from Chris D'eon!
-Z
PLAYLIST
chris d'eon - artificial jurisprudence
fingers inc - another side
clarence g (drexciya) - data transfer
metro - brownstone express
wajd - civic planning
chris d'eon -
loose ends - hangin' on a string
chris d'eon - the girl from köln is gone
s.o.s. band - even when you sleep
chris & cosey - hazey daze
unknown - tashi laso, at the top of lucky valley (bhutanese)
cabaret voltaire - arm of the lord
cabaret voltaire - james brown
wajd - ashqabat
zed bias - been here before
dem 2 - destiny
indo - r u sleeping (bump & flex vocal mix)
a.c. marias - just talk
chris d'eon - mix nov 2009 by wajd
-Z
PLAYLIST
chris d'eon - artificial jurisprudence
fingers inc - another side
clarence g (drexciya) - data transfer
metro - brownstone express
wajd - civic planning
chris d'eon -
loose ends - hangin' on a string
chris d'eon - the girl from köln is gone
s.o.s. band - even when you sleep
chris & cosey - hazey daze
unknown - tashi laso, at the top of lucky valley (bhutanese)
cabaret voltaire - arm of the lord
cabaret voltaire - james brown
wajd - ashqabat
zed bias - been here before
dem 2 - destiny
indo - r u sleeping (bump & flex vocal mix)
a.c. marias - just talk
chris d'eon - mix nov 2009 by wajd
Monday, September 21, 2009
Land Otter Man - Origin is the Creator - AVL - 03
A couple years back I did a doom/metal/ambient/drone inspired project under the moniker of The Land Otter Man. I had access to the electro-acoustic studios at Dal at the time, so I got to use all sorts of really cool synths, including an ARP 2600! For those unfamiliar with that particular synthesizer, it's the one used to create the voice of Star Wars R2D2. Most of the stuff is created in the studio or at home using Ableton Live. I play guitars, percussion, synths, radios, mixers, and drum machines, to paint a pretty black picture. Drone-Aggedon is a piece recorded live in my friend Ryan's bedroom with him on French Horn and Keyboards and my other buddy Dan on percussion. Origin is the Creator uses the Arp 2600 to create some pretty tense drones. It's 5 tracks clocking at just over an hour, space and doom out!
Perhaps I was pretty depressed when I was making this music, it certainly sounds like it. There is no artwork.
-Z
http://rapidshare.com/files/283160710/Origin_is_the_Creator.zip
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Anthony Braxton - Creative Orchestra Music
Back in the mid 70's Anthony Braxton did a series of landmark albums for the Arista label. Most of the records saw him exploring the limits of a piano-less jazz quartet, but a couple of them saw Braxton writing for some extraordinary ensembles. These recordings have since be compiled into a box set and if I had the $200 to cover the cost, I would for sure buy it! The recording posted here features Braxton composing for big band. Braxton is not afraid to explore many musical styles; over the course of his long career he has played in many radically different situations. That being said, he never lacks focus, and nothing comes across as contrived. Braxton has the ensemble playing through blindingly fast be-bop-esq tunes, skewed marching band music, to more spacious and experimental compositions that explore complex harmonies. This record is absolutely brilliant and is a great introduction to Braxton's vast musical output. Listen to on repeat!
-Z
Grip it HERE
-Z
Grip it HERE
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Interview with Matthew Duffy
My friend Matthew Duffy was in town the other day, so I took the opportunity to interview him. Matthew is a close friend of my mine and one of my favorite people to talk to. There is no shortage of ideas flowing from his head, he has a truly unique and beautiful mind. He is at times brutally honest and what you see is what you get with Matthew, there are now airs or pretensions about him. I hope you enjoy the interview!
-Z
-Z
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Symphonie Portuaire
Every winter in Montreal for the last 15 years, when the St. Lawrence freezes, the Museum of Natural History commissions a composer to write for the Symphonie Portuaire. The boats along the shore of Montreal become land locked due to the ice, and so there's not too much for them to do other than become giant horn instruments. The event is free to the public and is an enjoyable treat to help pass the long winters. Here is a video of composer and guitarist Bernard Falaise piece for the 2009 edition. The name of the piece is humorously titled, The Spicy Sounds of a Privateer's Horn. Enjoy!
-Z
-Z
Anthony Braxton Videos
Anthony Braxton is a brilliant man. He is a philosopher, composer, performer, and chess master. He speaks in parables and believes that music is the direct language to the creator. He teaches at Wesleyan University and has a class on the analysis of Stockhausen and Sun Ra. He is extremely prolific and it's not surprising for him to release six albums a year. He has worked from artists as diverse as Chick Corea to Wolf Eyes. He speaks of music and the cosmos and realizes the importance of science in music and the music in science, something that is being forgotten. Here is some candid videos of Anthony Braxton.
-Z
-Z
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