Disqus - Latest Comments for noraabungle

Re: http://aaronmbutler.tumblr.com/post/904899461

Aaron — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:34:56 -0000

Yep. The distortion pedal is boosting the signal so that the flanger and wah will work without having to crank the volume.

It's just a temporary solution for fun. Soon it'll be processed through Ableton Live.

Re: http://thomasburritt.tumblr.com/post/611346993

Aaron — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:46:30 -0000

I think part of the confusion with the use of fingers (at least for me) is when people try to learn this grip without a teacher. When I first began working on it there was noone around me that used it, so I bought MOM and read the beginning about 5 times and started working on the exercises.

In some of those Stevens metions adding fingers into the single independent strokes after the basic rotation has been worked on.

I've never seen LHS play in person... does he use that kind of a finger stroke?

Re: http://thomasburritt.tumblr.com/post/544836980

Aaron — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 22:59:28 -0000

"The Place You Go" is an incredible read.

I'm just finishing up "Winter Music" if you haven't read that check it out next.

Re: http://thomasburritt.tumblr.com/post/544836980

Aaron — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 22:56:37 -0000

The audience was free to move about the space... I'm sure some people stayed in the center area, though.

I can't describe how cool the ending was... the glockenspiels, triangles, distant lingering tam-tams and birds were truly incredible.

Re: http://andybliss.tumblr.com/post/424924411

Aaron — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:01:40 -0000

Great interview. I'll withhold further comment until the entire thing is posted... don't make us wait too long though.

Re: Can't wait for 2010

Aaron — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 09:59:22 -0000

Keep in mind that I only heard the piece once at PASIC (I'm just now realizing that I should've taken notes on the pieces performed during Focus Day... next time).

From what I remember in the program notes he talked about the similarities in phrasing of tabla players and the over-the-bar phrasing of drummers like Tony Williams and Elvin Jones as being influences on the piece. I thought that was a cool jumping off point for a piece.

Then just from an instrumentation stand-point I was interested:

David played a "drum kit" that was like something Bob Moses or Milford Graves would play. He had a 16" (I think) bass drum, a Djembe in the snare position, a pipe metallophone, a set rice bowls ( I imagine tuned with water), and a bunch of Chinese cymbals (maybe a set of high hats too).

The other woman (can't remember he name) had a more "traditional" multi set-up of a couple roto-toms, a few octabons, a tom (?) and a concert bass drum.

I was really taken by the efficiency with which he used the material. The combination of of both players playing similar themes and voicing it on, say, high drums and rice bowls then metallophone and a low drums, all while there's a groove being maintained on the "kit".

I had a chance to talk to David for a second and he told me that he would be self-publishing the piece soon. It's definitely a piece to check out.

Re: Can't wait for 2010

Aaron — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:42:03 -0000

I didn't know about the Gordon sextet... I'll keep a lookout for it. I will say, however, that I'm not too fond of XY. I like it on the page and seeing it performed is impressive but after a couple listens I started skipping it when it would pop up on my ipod. I'm not familiar with Trance but I'll do a little research in a bit.

Thanks for the link to John Lane's youtube page (don't know how I missed it). His performance of Nana at PASIC this year is what sparked my interest in it.

I'll add as an honorable mention David Carlisle's percussion duo Mad Cow that he performed at PASIC.

Re: Can't wait for 2010

Aaron — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:14:38 -0000

Don't know what happened with the answer form up there, but here's my favorite pieces of '09:

Lang - Cheating, Lying, Stealing
Gordon - Thou Shalt! Thou Shalt Not!
Garland - Nana & Victorio

Granted these pieces are older and I had heard of them before 2009, but I haven't heard them until this year. I can't stop listening to the Gordon and Lang pieces and I'm sure I'd have Nana & Victorio on repeat too, but I haven't found a recording (anyone know where to get one?).

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:51:22 -0000

First off: the Flex-a-tone group was started in a sarcastic (maybe even spiteful) manner.

I feel like the egroups create LESS interaction. While there are MANY areas of percussion, we are still a specialized group and by allowing anyone to create an egroup we run the risk of isolating ourselves from each other.

Already there is a Percussion Discography egroup as well as a Percussion Recordings egroup... why?

Also if you look at the number of members for the egroups they're very small. The way the forums were set up I had the potential to ask the entire PAS membership a question... now I'm only asking the 30ish members in the group.

I do agree that the old forums were outdated, but the forum style is not. There are forums that I visit that offer the exact features that PAS is touting as improvements in the egroups. BUT the forum layout is easier to use, quicker to check and easier to read (the way the posts are laid out in egroups makes it difficult to follow a single thread).

As far as the "library" feature of the egroups goes... why (if I'm already reading a thread in which someone uploaded a file do I have to go back to the "communities link" to click library and dig to find the specific file that was being talked about? That file should be linked in the thread... or at the very least the library should be accessible from within the egroup.

It was a good effort, but horribly executed. The biggest downer for me was the lack of response from PAS about concerns in the first weeks of the site being up.

One more thing then I done:

I know PAS has said something about people giving the site time and getting to know it. I think that's completely backwards... in this day and age if I have to devote hours to figuring out how to use a website, something is really wrong.

okay... one more.

In the end what used to take me to 10 minutes to check now takes me 30, but it almost seems unimportant because the amount of activity in the egroups is WAAAY less than what was going on in the forums.

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:47:12 -0000

Here's a teaser of the Dong-Wook Park piece:

http://aaronmbutler.tumblr....

Re: Here is a photo of the percussion solo referenced... - nief-norf TV

Aaron — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:40:01 -0000

the light bulb chimes look very cool!

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:38:46 -0000

ALSO...

this isn't a PASIC event but across the street Jonathon Haas is hosting an NYU/Aspen Music Festival/Julliard Pre-College get together at the Westin Suite 1009 on Friday at 5.

Simon Boyar will be performing a new Elliott Carter marimba solo!

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:34:45 -0000

Stuff I'm looking forward too:

Ohio University's performance of Dong Wook Park's "Contrast."
"Contrast" is a really cool piece that fuses traditional Korean percussion into a modern western percussion ensemble. OU will play at 1 on focus day (they start the session that Percussion Group Cincinnati plays on (so get there a little early). I'm going to try and record their rehearsal tonight and post some clips to my tumblr. I'll reply with a link if that happens.

All the lecture/poster sessions (Bliss/Anderson/Gerber).

Susie Ibarra

Yale Percussion Group (why'd they have to schedule Nathaniel Bartlett at the same time?!?!?)

JACK DEJOHNETTE!!!

The ZMF session

Finding some bell mallets for some solo rep. I want to work on.

Hopefully meeting some people that I've been networking with for awhile...

Re: - Here’s a performance of Cage’s 1948 piano piece...

Aaron — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:37:34 -0000

Thanks for the comment!

I really feel like the piece is ever-evolving for me too. Each time I play it I think of something else to bring out or a different way to phrase something... there's just so much to do with the six notes.

One Question though: What mallets have you found to work well for this piece? I'm not completely happy with what I used (some purple innovative vibe mallets I borrowed from a friend), but they were by far the best option at my disposal.

I've tried yarn, but it always lacks clarity in the vibes (unless it's too hard) and cord always seems to just sound thuddy on the marimba. Maybe I need to check out those Rosauro "hybrid" mallets at PASIC.

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:09:07 -0000

Rebecca Kite's book, "Keiko Abe: A Virtuosic Life" is an amazing resource for anyone interested in Keiko Abe or early Japanese marimba repertoire.

Something that really changed the way I listened to these pieces was learning about the Japanese concept of "ma" ( http://www.columbia.edu/itc... ). Mrs. Kite says of the very phrase you performed:

Sueyoshi uses ma, the Japanese concept of the fullness of silence and space, as an essential part of this music...
....More than half of this first phrase is silence - silence that is an integral part of the line. (Kite pg. 202)

I think this concept of the energy of silence and the difference in western composers use of silence is intriguing. Cage used silence as a way to bring the rest of the world into his compositions, but Sueyoshi is using it as negative space to focus the gestures occurring around it.

To answer the question of the episode:

I love Ikebe's "Monovalence I."

It completely blew my mind the first time I heard it on Abe's "Art of Marimba" LP, then when I first saw the score what little was left of my mind was blown again. I had never seen music that looked like that and had no idea what was going on on those pages, but I kept listening because there was something so powerful and raw about the performance. The more I watched the score (completely clueless at first) the more it made sense. I love the way the melody emerges from the chaos and the first time I started to "hear" it, I felt like I found a treasure I had been searching for for years.

That post was really long, sorry.

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 23:14:40 -0000

When I was doing my undergrad (probably my senior year) I was in the music library and a fellow music student starting talking to me about a musical he was MD for. He was complaining about the drummer (who was hired because he was friends with the daughter of the woman putting on the show) and wound up asking me if I could do it.

I said, "Sure! When does it run?"

To which he replied, "It starts tonight."

So I showed up an hour and a half early and he went through the trickiest spots with me and I played the show for two weeks. It was a tiny bit nerve wracking but mostly a lot fun, and we wound up getting a lot of compliments from the reviewers and audience members.

Luckily it was only a drum set part with some light percussion... had it been any more I probably wouldn't have fared so well.

Re: + T W O . . .

Aaron — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 13:43:20 -0000

The main things I've done differently are:

-I play the vibes from the + of 2 of bar 34 (the pedaled section)
-I've also been playing beat 4 of bar 43 through 44 on vibes and marimba with the idea that sneaking the marimba sonority into that last little phrase will help make the transition to the first chord of bar 45 less jarring.

I just noticed that you play the chords in bars 7 and 8 down an octave. What led you to do that?

Re: + T W O . . .

Aaron — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 22:58:08 -0000

I've been wanting to play this piece since I saw the Firth podcast when it first came out.

I finally got the piano score and made some decisions based on what you do in this video but do a few things differently. I also haven't added crotales yet but I may try it soon.

Did you use a multiple staff notation? Or just put in directions on when to change instruments?

Re: Stuff and Things - File under: Awesomely Bad Automated...

Aaron — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:34:48 -0000

Nothing I like more than a nice relaxing bubble bath, some scented candles and.... "Metastasis."

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:14:18 -0000

Been meaning to post this for people who may be unfamiliar with this work.

http://www.avantgardeprojec...

The avant garde project is a really cool site. Tons of out-of-print material and obscure pieces that you can't find anywhere else... such as this recording of "Mad King" and it's companion work "Miss Donnithorne's Maggot." My college library had this album and it was the first recording of "Mad King" I ever heard... it's still my favorite.

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:15:16 -0000

This is pretty cool. Too bad I'll be in the process of moving/settling in to a new city...

Can I get a handicap or somethin'?

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:19:07 -0000

Here's a Paul Lansky quote I found in an interview on newmusicbox.com:

“One aspect to listening is being able to tune your ears and not just to the details of the music, but also to the cultural and social aspects that surround the music…

…learning to listen to pieces that are just not down your alley…one has to do something with one’s head in order to adjust to the music coming in. Music is kind of a sharing of minds: someone is saying something in a language, in a culture, and you have to learn to deal with it."

I think regardless if a composer is trying to "tell a story" or "paint a picture" with their music they are, at the very least reacting to things around them... and sometimes these events can lend clues to where the piece is coming from.

Alex Ross does a good job of this with his book "The Rest is Noise." He goes into many different things that were going on in major 20th century composer's lives that may be seemingly irrelevant to the pieces they were writing, but these happenings give greater insight into some of the pieces discussed than any theoretical analysis. It really helped me to appreciate pieces that I had decided I didn't like years ago.

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:17:39 -0000

I think the marimba assembly contest is a great idea... kinda like army guys seeing who can assemble their rifles fastest!

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:16:49 -0000

I have one other suggestion for the next interactive piece.

What about the First Bagatelle by Hasenflug? It's available as a free sample from Malletech's website, so that may help increase the number of participants.

Also, it's short enough that it won't be a HUGE load but there seems to be a whole lot to get out of it.

Re: Percussion Axiom TV

Aaron — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:32:47 -0000

I've been reading "The Indie Band Survival Guide," which is more geared towards indie rock bands, but has a lot of good, easy to understand advice on branding and marketing yourself. On the companion site they have some resources for "online music collaboration" ( http://www.indieguide.com/c... ).

I haven't really dug through it, but they idea of working on a quartet of some sort may not be too far off.