modular synth

Halfway thoughts – Late Libran love songs

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Just over halfway through my 6th year of the project approaching the actual halfway point of the circle at the end of 6th, beginning of the 7th part. This moment is represented by the sign Libra, a symbol of balance and harmony and the only non-animal sign in the Zodiac.
Does this suggest that balance and harmony are unnatural states? ideas or ideals created rather than observed?

Ruled by Venus it led me to a Welsh folk song “Mae Nghariad I’n Fenws” which I have one version of on the vinyl record above. I found it first in a book of sheet music for recorder ‘ Alawon Cymru ar gyfer y recorder’.

One thing leads to another as Libra and Venus led me to ‘Liebestraum’ by Franz Liszt and a Youtube short. There will be a longer version at some point..

And on to Chanson D’amour by Libran composer Gabriel Faure, which eventually glitched up to become Chanson D’ommage, a combination of Hommage and Dommage – A damaged tribute song perhaps?

During the last week of Libra I worked with Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No1. I know Satie wasn’t a Libran but he is a favourite composer of my good friend and Libran Sean Vicary, for whom this was a birthday gift.
Interesting challenge trying to sequence a composition that has no bar markings and no time signature!

Gnossienne: The Awareness That Someone You’ve Known for Years Still Has a Private and Mysterious Inner Life.
Definition by the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

Taurean Gig(gle)

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Ive been invited to play some sounds on Wednesday evening for the Walden Arts folk here in Aberteifi.

So with the sun in Taurus, I will be playing modular synths with a set of Taurean and Venusian flavour tunes and cosmic samples to ramble through.

HELLO

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Gemini pop legend Lionel Richie made it a hit back in the 80s, Osymyso used it brilliantly in his ‘Intro-Inspection’ and looking through the databases, finding all the instances of different songs with Hello in the title and thinking of working with them, I was reminded of John Oswald’s ‘O Hell’.

Those songs listed in my databases are – Hello; Hello Dolly; Hello brother: Hello I love you; If you see her say Hello; Hello Again; Hello Earth; Hello Hurray; Hello Mabel; Hello Hello I’m back again; Please tell him I said hello; Hello Dawn; I wanna say Hello; Hello Memory; Hello Old Friend; Goodbye Lover, Hello Friend; Hello Sunshine; Hello Young lovers; Hello Susie; Say Hello, Wave goodbye; Hello Happiness; Hello My Darlings; Hello Operator; Hello Darling; Hello how are you; Hello Goodbye;

So I took a Hello from each of the tracks found and put them together in a sequence, looped it once and it lasts for 1min19. That then goes with loops of Lionel from the 7″ vinyl in a Katzenjammer. During this session I am playing the Hellos file from an ipad and sampling it into the Morphagene. Later in the video, that comes in a bit abruptly and settles in to add different manipulations of the audio.

It is such a nice loop I could play with it all month! Here I put it through an audio to midi converter that is a bit eccentric and doesn’t always get it right and on into the Mimeophon.

Here are all the songs I took a Hello from –

Playing a loop of Hello while setting up at the theatre I was reminded by Sarah about how the word Hello became used as a telephone greeting and learning that quite recently from the Horrible Histories!

A circle in 12 parts – the fifth circle

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Here we go again!

The fifth circle will be about creative expression for it’s own sake, a more outgoing display of creativity. What does that mean? Basically more visible output.

More livestreaming. More guests. More opportunities for play

The nature of the fifth circle is a reflection of the zodiac sign of Leo and the fifth house.
I intend to embrace my Leo rising, to open, share and lead creative processes.
Pluto and Neptune are conjunct in the fifth house of my birthchart.. so that’s nice!

The Pilgrim’s Process: Modular Pilgrim

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The Pilgrim’s Process started in 2004 and maybe never really ended… (read more here).
Primarily a visual project to accompany Vinyl Altar, a live turntable improvisation performance project exploring religious recordings on vinyl, it also includes a number of videos with fixed soundtracks. These 2 recent videos are made live with live modular synths and Resolume VJ software.
The CD artwork for Vinyl Altar links through to mp3 downloads of the recordings from that disc, recorded in 2005. The film below that was an edit from a much longer work created in 2006 with a broken camera, my first post on the then new Youtube!

Vinyl Altar (2005)

the fourth circle: Midwinter circles

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The final installment of improvisations for the 4 cardinal calendar points. 

Produced live the stream includes the remnants of a fiery circle for Sagittarius for a while before we transition into the liminal space of the solstice, that point of transition leading into a new phase of the year. Another layer explores the emerging Cardinal earth element, filmed by Jay while moving through the landscape earlier on the day. 
Live cameras are processed through an analogue circuitbent video enhancer, and layer up with live tarot, synths, vinyl and bass guitar as well as readings of texts on themes of the solstice, earth and Capricorn.
With 2 Capricorns in the room they got to select vinyl for the evening, subsequently looped and processed by Jay through a variety of pedals they merge with the Make Noise synth sounds shifting and evolving over time. Thanks to guests Rhowan, Erin & Manny as well as regular players Jay and Keryl for their thoughtful and playful contributions.

Mycelium Manifestation: spore prints

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A great day in Aberystwyth Arts centre for the Aberetwm celebrations. Some lovely conversations with new and old friends. Thanks to everyone who came along and joined in and thanks to Marc and Becca for having us there!

I started off the sounds of the day with recordings made on Aberystwyth beach, the waves led us up onto the prom where voices and gulls joined in with some short loops of cello, bass and viol from the lovely Sianed Jones who’s loopstation I inherited full of memories.
From there we heard the call of Penglais woods where the rich and lively birdsong merged with voices and music from the Arts Centre. The voice of Peter Stevenson and music from Ailsa Mair Hughes, recorded during the Flora exhibition in 2017, evokes and describes the geographic and botanical world of Penglais hill as experienced by John Salter in the 19th Century before being submerged in the drones and loops from vinyl records connected to Aberystwyth.
The Vinyl Mycelium connections resonate, ogham trees adding new layers of connection reaching out to both past and future. Traditional instrumental sounds from Deuair bring us back to the present and merge with loops of the past – a stream begins to flow.

Live stream recorded from the event (apologies for some random level changes)

Above is a horoscope chartwheel for the day in Aberystwyth – this recurs in the live visual mix, rotating and merging with another more artistic impression of the chart drawn up for my collaboration with Jay and Keryl Hodges and the third circle.

The space was also inhabited by the mysterious figure of the mushroom man tending his pods and silently connecting us to a world beyond.

4 photos above by Keryl Hodges https://www.instagram.com/littleappleseed/
4 photos below by Sean Vicary https://www.seanvicary.com

4 photos below by Jo Shapland https://www.instagram.com/joshapland

the fourth circle in Taurus – Beltane

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Improvised audio visuals with J&K Hodges on #turntables #pedals #MakeNoise #blackandgold #Strega #0Coast #0Ctrl #live #vj #analog #circles #circuitbent #tree #mayday #ritual #cragenbeca

The fourth circle at Beltane with friends Ceri, Elsa and Kathryn.
I previously wrote about my plans for the fourth circle here.

Visual earth symbols for this session are almost exclusively derived from video clips of the trees of the Ogham Tree alphabet which I have been collecting as part of a new work for ‘Aberetwm’ at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on May 8th.

The birthcharts in the video are mine and Jay and Keryl’s. There’s also one drawn up from the date, time and place of our first play together on Youtube on March 22nd last year.

We were also celebrating the anniversary of the wonderful Cragen Beca parade in Carmarthen on Mayday 2022. An amazing project with public art parade event by Kathryn Campbell Dodd that we were all involved with in some way! Cragen Beca was a conch shell blown by the leader of the ‘Rebecca ‘Merched Beca’ protestors in the 19th century (without them you’d probably be paying tolls on all the roads!). For Kathryn’s project and for this fourth circle celebration of it’s anniversary event artist Ceri Owen Jones sounded a conch, each in a very different way. (Read more about Cragen Beca)

This year the sounds went into some Make Noise modules and bounced around to become some of what you hear in this.