CREATION: LIL' STUBBY - a squeeling and droning stub-knecked guitar combining contact mics, internally amplified soundhole speaker, and signal processing (max/msp).
With unlimited technological potential and removal of constraints on instrumentation, timbre, and even the very notion of musically organized sound, the impetus for the composer is that of constant expansion and exploration rather than development of a cogent work. Not to be taken as a categorical assertion, this is merely my perception as the musical language grows more diverse and looses its ability to communicate a shared human experience. With this in mind, I am doing textual study of how we've reached this point in music history, and later, the philosophical implications of a digital/algorythmic world on music's communicative potential.
Further, in this stage of myriad spectacles devoid of inherent meaning and coexisting in a frame of wealth and artificiality, I find myself attracted to ancient abandoned streams of technology - the greek monochord and aeolian harps for example - along with the reappropriation of late modern technology that has been disregarded. I aim to provide a contextual understanding of distortion and the role of both technological and aesthetic boundary conditions on the creator and the creative object
Having meandered extensively in the waters of electronic repetoir and programming, I have attached myself to the idea of reappropriating acoustic and electric instruments into a live performance rig incorporating solenoid triggered bells and klangers, speaker driven guitar body sympathetic monster, monochord, the hardshell suitcases of DOOM
Techniques of the Observer by Jonathan Crary
Deep Time of the Media by Ziegfried Zielinski
Labrynths by Jorge Luis Borges
ARTISTS :I am looking at artists with a multi-disciplinary approach to see how established forms are extended or transformed
Alvin Luciere - electro-magnetic monochord, sound experiments
David Tudor - early work with homemade elctronics
Merzbow - Harsh Noise
Samuel Beckett
William S. Burroughs
Conlon Noncarrow
Luigi Russolo
Antonin Artaud
Sonic Youth
My Bloody Valentine
lil' stubby started life as a dejected classical guitar which i smashed over my head during a rehearsal in a moment of musical passion. left with a splintered wreck, i waited for inspiration.
the idea of the "speaker as instrument" became my primary focus around week 7 and i began exploring the vibration of sympathetic strings in a speaker cabinet. due to the happy accident of feedback, my project followed this direction and became a plate set into vibration by a speaker and piezo-transducer feedback which varies based on the modal patterns of the top-plate. with this in mind, i constructed lil' stubby 1.0 which differs from the current instrument in its lack of an under-saddle transducer,computer signal processing, and blinking led lights (!!!).
the current iteration of lil' stubby pipes both the under-saddle transducer and piezos into max/msp where I have written a patch which can perform cross-synthesis, convolution, or simple enveloping by multiplying the signals by a sine-wave. additionally, the patch can record clips of lil stubby into buffers to be looped back for total mayhem.