Quest
Quest
Hot'n Cold
Three DreamsThis piece is about impossible dreams. Many times and without learning from experience we build beautiful Paper Castles on Invisible Clouds, thinking yet again that dreams are reality, or maybe that they can be turned into reality with sheer will power and the wave of a magical wand. These first two sections are like twin brothers, intermingled yet separate. As for the third and last section, Electric Eyes, if you have ever felt the startling contact of electric eyes, there is no need for me to explain. If you have not, mere words will never be enough... That's my dream and the cause of a lot of Paper Castle building...
The piece was composed in the digital domain using the CLM non real time sound synthesis and processing environment running on a NeXT and the four channel spacialization was performed by a special unit generator programmed by the composer. The processed sound materials are sampled tubular bells, cowbells, cymbals, gongs, knives and screams and the synthetic sounds are rendered through quite simple additive synthesis instruments.
Espresso Machine II
Knock knock... anybody there?"Knock Knock... anybody there?" is an extension to four channels of the original stereo sound track I composed for a collaboration project with visual artists in which I took part during 1994. Willie Scholten and Ruth Eckland provided the sculptures and visual framework while I provided the sound environment for the installation. The music explores altered states of consciousness and in particular insanity, in a journey through a three dimensional soundscape where voices and sounds evoke multiple and conflicting states of mind. All the concrete sound materials used in the piece were gathered during a small meeting with friends where we freely discussed the central topic that motivated the project. From the digital recording I extracted small but significant fragments of the conversation and subsequently processed them in the digital domain by using CLM instruments (CLM, Common Lisp Music, a non real-time Lisp based software synthesis and processing environment written by Bill Schottstaedt at CCRMA, Stanford University). The processing included dynamic spacialization of multiple moving sources rendered in a four channel reproduction environment. The listener moves through the soundscape while voices and sounds tell several overlapping stories that might occur in the hazy border between sanity and insanity. The music even include the piano jam session that happened at the end of the meeting...
With Room to Grow
House of Mirrors
| from the video of the performance of House Of Mirrors during the 1996 Summer Concert at CCRMA.
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"...come, travel with me through the House of Mirrors, the one outside me and the one within. Run, fly, never stop... never think about being lost in the maze of illusions, or you will be. Glide with me through rooms, doors and corridors, surfing on tides of time, looking for that universe left behind an eternity ago. Listen to the distorted steps, the shimmering vibrations that reflect in the darkness, watch out for the rooms with clocks where time withers and stops..." fll.
House of Mirrors is an improvisational tour through a musical form and a four channel sound environment created by the composer/performer Fernando Lopez-Lezcano. The sound of doors opening and closing define the transitions between rooms, corridors and open spaces, where soundfile playback and midi controlled synthesis mix to create different atmospheres sharing a common thread of pitches, intensities and timbres. The journey through the House of Mirrors is controlled in real time through an interactive improvisation software package - PadMaster - developed by the composer over the past three years. The Mathews/Boie Radio Drum is the three dimensional controller that conveys the performer's gestures to PadMaster. The surface of the Radio Drum is split by PadMaster into virtual pads, each one individually programmable to react to baton hits and gestures, each one a small part of the musical puzzle that unravels through the performance. Hits can play soundfiles, notes, phrases or can create or destroy musical performers. Each active pad is always "listening" to the position of the batons in 3D space and translating the movements (if programmed to do so) into MIDI continuous control messages that are merged with the stream of notes being played. The virtual pads are arranged in sets or scenes that represent sections of the piece. As it unfolds, the behavior of the surface is constantly redefined by the performer as he moves through the predefined scenes. The performance of "House of Mirrors" oscillates between the rigid world of determinism as represented by the scores or soundfiles contained in each pad, and the freedom of improvisation the performer / composer has in arranging those tiles of music in time and space.