Shock Tactics

As part of the recent NOISE SHOCK Festival (July 10th & 11th) was an adapted performance of John Zorn's 'Cobra'. The premise of Cobra and other game-pieces like Shock Tactics is to use hand-gestures, cards, dice etc. to determine the direction of the piece. Game-pieces are in essence "directed improvisation" or "spontaneous composition".

Heat (X+X) and I will again be directing a performance of Shock Tactics at The ARTery in Rock Island on Aug. 14th.

More info to follow.

For more pics of Shock Tactics and the NOISE SHOCK Festival -

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=363649368&albumId=1186454

For more on Game Pieces -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_piece

Spectralism

Recent musical explorations have revolved around the concept of Spectralism. In researching and exploring spectralism, I came across this article from the London Times Online. It asks the question is Spectralism the future of classical music?

"Before devising each piece of music, a composer would feed a computer a note, say the sound of a bell or a violin, and a programme would unravel it, revealing a spectrum of pitches, showing up as coloured lines on a graph. The composer would then take each of these pitches and get each part of the orchestra to reconstitute the original sound".

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article4914202.ece

For more on Spectralism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectralism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Fourier_transform

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Grisey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iancu_Dumitrescu