hippies & yippies is a composition written for Baritone Saxophone and Tape, taking inspiration from the works of Jacob Ter Veldhuis (Jacob TV), in particular his composition entitled “Grab It”. It uses a speech by John F. Kennedy, which has been pulled apart and rearranged. A baritone saxophone line was then composed imitating the rhythm and melody of John F. Kennedy’s speech. Duration - 4:20 Performances - 20150505; Jonathan Maltman (Baritone Saxophone) @ Spectrum Project Space, Perth, Australia - 20161029 @ Spectrum Project Space, Perth, Asutralia
ascendancy - for three performers & one piano
The idea for ascendancy is based around “free improvisation” inspired by the work Cobra by John Zorn. It is a game piece in which each performer is given a specific region of the piano, that they can’t play outside of. Each performer is given a popular musical theme as well they must work into the piece. There are many other ‘rules’ the players must follow whilst playing the piece. The word ascendancy means “occupation of a position of dominant power or influence”. The piece is designed to be a ‘battle’ between the performers, where each performer was fighting for his/her dominance of the piano, and dominance of ideas over other players. Duration - free improvisation - 20161029; James Paddock, Joe de Kock, Ben Fillingham (Piano) @ Spectrum Project Space, Perth, Asutralia
ars vita, longa breva - 23 short acousmatic compositions
This composition is a suite of noise works. The piece entitled ars longa, vita brevis translates from Latin into English as art is long, life is short. I like the contradiction of the title to the work, as well as giving the work a linking theme. The suite is a combination of 23 short noise works, based around my everyday life and individual sounds that I generally come across every day. Each track uses only 1 sound source, varying in length from 3 seconds to 45 seconds. I then used an acousmatic approach on each sound to remove the knowledge of what each sound was to the listener. I used various techniques such as time-stretching, applying reverb, EQ, compression, distortion, flanger, delay, echo, limiter, phaser, spectral gate, guitar pedal, pitch shifter and correction, among many other effects. Duration - total 7:44
multa sonatis - for tape
multa sonatis is the larger work created from the 23 short acousmatic pieces from ars vita, longa breva. It uses 19 of the 23 short pieces to create a larger work in the style of the works by Varese. This piece is particularly defined by sections, with there being 21 different sections throughout the entire piece. Duration - 7:10
circulorum - for keyboard, vocal & laptops
This piece was composed and performed by Lila Raubenheimer, James Paddock and myself. The main idea for this piece stemmed of James’ thought for each of us to perform, and then for each person to effect other people’s performances. Each our instruments/microphones, were connected to the next person's laptop, which they then used to manipulate the previous persons sound. This keeps going around, essentially creating a controlled feedback loop.