1 00:00:00,050 --> 00:00:01,670 The following content is provided 2 00:00:01,670 --> 00:00:03,810 under a Creative Commons license. 3 00:00:03,810 --> 00:00:06,540 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare continue 4 00:00:06,540 --> 00:00:10,120 to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,120 --> 00:00:12,700 To make a donation or to view additional materials 6 00:00:12,700 --> 00:00:16,705 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:16,705 --> 00:00:17,205 ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:26,210 --> 00:00:29,970 PROFESSOR: Our guest today, this is Neil Leonard from Berkeley. 9 00:00:29,970 --> 00:00:32,080 As you can see by your handout, he's 10 00:00:32,080 --> 00:00:35,570 the director of the interdisciplinary Arts 11 00:00:35,570 --> 00:00:38,200 Institute there, and professor of electronic production 12 00:00:38,200 --> 00:00:40,030 and design. 13 00:00:40,030 --> 00:00:41,280 He's been a friend of mine. 14 00:00:41,280 --> 00:00:43,870 He was a former student, briefly, at NEC, 15 00:00:43,870 --> 00:00:47,340 and gone on to great, wonderful things, 16 00:00:47,340 --> 00:00:49,390 including travels around the world, 17 00:00:49,390 --> 00:00:51,220 as you can see by the bio so we're 18 00:00:51,220 --> 00:00:53,890 very fortunate that he's here today. 19 00:00:53,890 --> 00:00:56,250 He's got an assignment on the handout which 20 00:00:56,250 --> 00:00:58,250 he'll talk about as we go through. 21 00:00:58,250 --> 00:01:00,380 And that'll be due next Monday like we've 22 00:01:00,380 --> 00:01:02,720 done before with other of our presenters. 23 00:01:02,720 --> 00:01:05,200 Don't forget, Wednesday we have a concert with Neil 24 00:01:05,200 --> 00:01:07,180 and an associate Robin Eubanks, who's 25 00:01:07,180 --> 00:01:10,000 one of the great improvisers on the scene 26 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:12,200 today, wonderful trombonist. 27 00:01:12,200 --> 00:01:14,830 So they'll be in Killian Hall, Wednesday night, 8 o'clock. 28 00:01:14,830 --> 00:01:16,580 So bring everybody you know for that. 29 00:01:16,580 --> 00:01:18,060 It's free. 30 00:01:18,060 --> 00:01:21,275 And once again, there will be a concert reflection, as we know. 31 00:01:21,275 --> 00:01:24,330 So turn it over to Neil, welcome him. 32 00:01:24,330 --> 00:01:24,830 Thank you. 33 00:01:24,830 --> 00:01:27,700 NEIL LEONARD: Hi. 34 00:01:27,700 --> 00:01:34,134 So I'm going to give a short presentation on a work 35 00:01:34,134 --> 00:01:35,800 I've created, a little bit of background 36 00:01:35,800 --> 00:01:39,450 and why I made the work, and leave you 37 00:01:39,450 --> 00:01:42,630 with an assignment, which is to create 38 00:01:42,630 --> 00:01:46,750 your own work along the same lines and with the idea 39 00:01:46,750 --> 00:01:49,640 that when I come back next Monday 40 00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:52,460 I'll be able to hear what you guys have come up with. 41 00:01:52,460 --> 00:01:54,110 And we could even play together. 42 00:01:54,110 --> 00:01:58,270 So this is all kind of going in the direction of you taking 43 00:01:58,270 --> 00:02:02,290 some of these ideas and running with them on your own. 44 00:02:02,290 --> 00:02:07,000 I have a background as a jazz saxophonist 45 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:13,090 with some activity in the area of fine arts, which kind of 46 00:02:13,090 --> 00:02:17,820 means that I've always had not like a singular vision of what 47 00:02:17,820 --> 00:02:19,430 I want to do, but I've always kind of 48 00:02:19,430 --> 00:02:22,310 been looking on the peripheral for other things 49 00:02:22,310 --> 00:02:24,450 that will be interesting. 50 00:02:24,450 --> 00:02:29,920 When I was a teenager, really, I played in bands 51 00:02:29,920 --> 00:02:30,880 in Philadelphia. 52 00:02:30,880 --> 00:02:34,140 And one of the bands that I was part of 53 00:02:34,140 --> 00:02:37,214 had these two brothers Robin and Kevin Eubanks. 54 00:02:37,214 --> 00:02:38,880 And Kevin Eubanks, you might have known, 55 00:02:38,880 --> 00:02:40,710 was the band director of the Jay Leno Show 56 00:02:40,710 --> 00:02:42,820 for I think about 18 years or so. 57 00:02:42,820 --> 00:02:44,730 And he recently retired. 58 00:02:44,730 --> 00:02:50,030 And his older brother, Robin, is going to, as Mark said, 59 00:02:50,030 --> 00:02:52,470 participate in the concert on Wednesday 60 00:02:52,470 --> 00:02:54,470 evening, fantastic trombone player. 61 00:02:54,470 --> 00:02:58,480 So he's a guy I've known as a kind 62 00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:02,670 of young musician in Philadelphia. 63 00:03:02,670 --> 00:03:05,210 And that was sort of the background 64 00:03:05,210 --> 00:03:07,127 I came from, just kind of people playing jazz, 65 00:03:07,127 --> 00:03:09,210 a little bit of pop musical, a little bit of funk, 66 00:03:09,210 --> 00:03:11,640 occasionally a Latin gig, as a teenager in Philadelphia 67 00:03:11,640 --> 00:03:13,616 before I moved out of Philadelphia 68 00:03:13,616 --> 00:03:14,615 to go to a conservatory. 69 00:03:19,250 --> 00:03:23,750 In the course of playing the saxophone, 70 00:03:23,750 --> 00:03:28,780 I came across a few things which really interest me. 71 00:03:28,780 --> 00:03:31,110 One was a reel-to-reel tape deck. 72 00:03:31,110 --> 00:03:34,870 So the school I went to had a small electronic music 73 00:03:34,870 --> 00:03:41,900 studio with a EMS synthesizer and a two reel-to-reel tape 74 00:03:41,900 --> 00:03:42,700 decks. 75 00:03:42,700 --> 00:03:47,090 And we were essentially just shown this stuff 76 00:03:47,090 --> 00:03:50,100 and invited to come to use it somehow. 77 00:03:50,100 --> 00:03:53,500 And at that time, I was really interested in pop music. 78 00:03:53,500 --> 00:03:55,130 That was kind of before jazz, I had 79 00:03:55,130 --> 00:04:01,020 listened to pop music that had very interesting things 80 00:04:01,020 --> 00:04:02,250 happening in the production. 81 00:04:02,250 --> 00:04:04,740 So this would be Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, 82 00:04:04,740 --> 00:04:07,550 you name it bands of say the '70s, so to speak, 83 00:04:07,550 --> 00:04:10,180 if I can really date myself. 84 00:04:10,180 --> 00:04:13,450 And I began to teach myself a little bit 85 00:04:13,450 --> 00:04:14,890 about how to use this tape deck. 86 00:04:14,890 --> 00:04:16,390 And one of the first performances 87 00:04:16,390 --> 00:04:21,459 I can remember doing was with a trumpet player, my brother 88 00:04:21,459 --> 00:04:24,280 Devin who played trumpet, a pianist. 89 00:04:24,280 --> 00:04:27,930 I played some objects which I had just collected, 90 00:04:27,930 --> 00:04:30,550 pieces of hardware, chains, stuff like that. 91 00:04:30,550 --> 00:04:32,260 I had some recordings that I played back 92 00:04:32,260 --> 00:04:35,140 from this reel-to-reel tape deck. 93 00:04:35,140 --> 00:04:39,190 And for me, this just seemed like a normal way 94 00:04:39,190 --> 00:04:41,070 that someone would want to play music. 95 00:04:41,070 --> 00:04:42,890 So you'd learn to play your instrument. 96 00:04:42,890 --> 00:04:43,860 You'd take lessons. 97 00:04:43,860 --> 00:04:44,800 You'd be in ensembles. 98 00:04:44,800 --> 00:04:48,870 You'd do all the things that an instrumentalist would do. 99 00:04:48,870 --> 00:04:50,930 But at least to me, it just seemed 100 00:04:50,930 --> 00:04:54,610 interesting to see what else I could bring 101 00:04:54,610 --> 00:04:57,290 to the mix of playing improvised music. 102 00:05:01,210 --> 00:05:03,420 And now a few decades later, I'm really 103 00:05:03,420 --> 00:05:04,970 still kind of doing that. 104 00:05:04,970 --> 00:05:11,280 So I'd like to introduce a work that I did that in. 105 00:05:11,280 --> 00:05:13,470 But I guess first before I show my own work, 106 00:05:13,470 --> 00:05:21,210 I want to talk a little bit about things 107 00:05:21,210 --> 00:05:22,721 that were in the air when I started, 108 00:05:22,721 --> 00:05:24,720 a little more about things that were in the air. 109 00:05:24,720 --> 00:05:29,685 And two of the things that I think had an impact on me 110 00:05:29,685 --> 00:05:32,530 as a young musician, and musicians in general, 111 00:05:32,530 --> 00:05:34,260 was number one, John Cage. 112 00:05:34,260 --> 00:05:38,270 And mark has mentioned that you've 113 00:05:38,270 --> 00:05:42,600 spoken a little bit about John Cage's work in this class. 114 00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:44,510 And did you talk about Four Minutes 115 00:05:44,510 --> 00:05:46,920 and 33 Seconds of Silence by chance? 116 00:05:46,920 --> 00:05:48,710 Do you know that work? 117 00:05:48,710 --> 00:05:51,930 OK, so this is a work, seminal work of 20th century music. 118 00:05:51,930 --> 00:05:53,550 It's a piece in three parts. 119 00:05:53,550 --> 00:05:57,680 And in the premier performance, as I understand it, 120 00:05:57,680 --> 00:05:59,400 the pianist went to the concert hall, 121 00:05:59,400 --> 00:06:01,290 opened up the lid of the piano, sat 122 00:06:01,290 --> 00:06:04,570 for four minutes and 33 seconds, and then closed the piano lid. 123 00:06:04,570 --> 00:06:06,160 And the piece was done. 124 00:06:06,160 --> 00:06:10,820 I heard a really interesting lecture on Cage 125 00:06:10,820 --> 00:06:16,110 and his impact on today's music in the last week. 126 00:06:16,110 --> 00:06:19,690 And the person who gave the talk pointed out 127 00:06:19,690 --> 00:06:22,770 that Four Minutes and 33 Seconds of Silence 128 00:06:22,770 --> 00:06:27,850 was not about listening to the sound in the room. 129 00:06:27,850 --> 00:06:31,500 But it was about diverting your attention. 130 00:06:31,500 --> 00:06:33,700 So you go to the concert hall with the expectation 131 00:06:33,700 --> 00:06:36,120 of seeing the lid goes up on the piano, 132 00:06:36,120 --> 00:06:37,870 this virtuoso plays this incredible piece. 133 00:06:37,870 --> 00:06:39,480 We're all in awe. 134 00:06:39,480 --> 00:06:40,320 We applaud. 135 00:06:40,320 --> 00:06:41,450 We go home. 136 00:06:41,450 --> 00:06:44,350 And this piece was like opening up 137 00:06:44,350 --> 00:06:47,905 the door to shifting your attention away from that. 138 00:06:53,710 --> 00:06:56,170 And that has some really interesting implications 139 00:06:56,170 --> 00:06:59,820 because I think even for Cage-- Cage was thinking 140 00:06:59,820 --> 00:07:02,930 about the impact of convention, but also 141 00:07:02,930 --> 00:07:04,720 the impact of big business on music. 142 00:07:04,720 --> 00:07:09,905 So he wrote a lecture that was called Lecture on Nothing. 143 00:07:09,905 --> 00:07:13,690 And in this lecture, he talks about the impact of media 144 00:07:13,690 --> 00:07:17,310 culture, Time Magazine, Life Magazine, Pepsi-Cola, 145 00:07:17,310 --> 00:07:20,640 and how they have a bearing on what we understand culture 146 00:07:20,640 --> 00:07:21,630 to be. 147 00:07:21,630 --> 00:07:25,780 I got a text for my son during the last Superbowl. 148 00:07:25,780 --> 00:07:26,910 And Rihanna was on. 149 00:07:26,910 --> 00:07:30,430 And so I went to go catch a little bit of this thing 150 00:07:30,430 --> 00:07:32,212 he was all excited about. 151 00:07:32,212 --> 00:07:33,920 And it was sponsored by Pepsi, wasn't it? 152 00:07:33,920 --> 00:07:37,990 Wasn't Rihanna's Superbowl performance sponsored by Pepsi? 153 00:07:37,990 --> 00:07:40,066 So, again, it was like big business 154 00:07:40,066 --> 00:07:46,045 is investing a lot of time, money, and energy on what they 155 00:07:46,045 --> 00:07:47,420 want us to see, which is probably 156 00:07:47,420 --> 00:07:49,470 going to lead us to buy Pepsi-Cola, which 157 00:07:49,470 --> 00:07:51,110 is why they're putting money into this. 158 00:07:51,110 --> 00:07:55,360 But all this is to say that one of the things that 159 00:07:55,360 --> 00:07:58,725 was interesting about Cage was his music was encouraging, 160 00:07:58,725 --> 00:08:02,370 or his work was encouraging us, to look outside 161 00:08:02,370 --> 00:08:04,590 of the prevailing orthodox models of making 162 00:08:04,590 --> 00:08:09,220 music, and thinking of other ways to think about music, 163 00:08:09,220 --> 00:08:11,340 to approach music, to approach working with sound. 164 00:08:11,340 --> 00:08:13,860 So somehow that stuck. 165 00:08:13,860 --> 00:08:16,550 Another thing that was in the air at the time 166 00:08:16,550 --> 00:08:19,530 that I was starting to play music was, I think, 167 00:08:19,530 --> 00:08:24,740 one of the first albums-- I remember at one point, 168 00:08:24,740 --> 00:08:26,670 for my birthday and for Christmas, 169 00:08:26,670 --> 00:08:27,881 all I wanted was recordings. 170 00:08:27,881 --> 00:08:29,380 My mother's in the back of the room. 171 00:08:29,380 --> 00:08:33,760 So I remember giving her my wish list, like, I want records. 172 00:08:33,760 --> 00:08:35,309 And I remember one of the recordings 173 00:08:35,309 --> 00:08:39,386 I got for Christmas was The Beatles White Album. 174 00:08:39,386 --> 00:08:41,010 And The Beatles White Album had a piece 175 00:08:41,010 --> 00:08:42,669 called Revolution Number Nine. 176 00:08:42,669 --> 00:08:44,250 Do anybody know that piece? 177 00:08:44,250 --> 00:08:46,220 Raise your hand if you know that piece. 178 00:08:46,220 --> 00:08:48,520 And goes up, OK, good. 179 00:08:48,520 --> 00:08:51,640 Two, OK, two people know that piece. 180 00:08:51,640 --> 00:08:54,910 John Lennon's wife, Yoko Ono, no was 181 00:08:54,910 --> 00:08:57,890 part of a group called Fluxus artists. 182 00:08:57,890 --> 00:09:03,780 And they were kind of radical, experimental artists 183 00:09:03,780 --> 00:09:06,200 who did all kinds of really fascinating things 184 00:09:06,200 --> 00:09:10,500 with performance, with music, with film, kind of opening up 185 00:09:10,500 --> 00:09:16,440 all genres and medium as tools for them to explore. 186 00:09:16,440 --> 00:09:23,020 And through Yoko Ono, John Lennon knew John Cage. 187 00:09:23,020 --> 00:09:26,982 And one of the things he did upon becoming 188 00:09:26,982 --> 00:09:28,940 in contact with John Cage and these ideas is he 189 00:09:28,940 --> 00:09:29,606 made this piece. 190 00:09:29,606 --> 00:09:32,020 And I'd like to play just a little bit of it that's 191 00:09:32,020 --> 00:09:34,060 called Revolution Number Nine. 192 00:09:34,060 --> 00:09:38,310 Now, I have colleagues who say that this is a song 193 00:09:38,310 --> 00:09:42,180 because John Lennon only made songs. 194 00:09:42,180 --> 00:09:44,420 So you could think of this as a song. 195 00:09:44,420 --> 00:09:47,610 I always sort of thought of as a tape piece, or a sound collage, 196 00:09:47,610 --> 00:09:50,330 because that's the kind of terms I understand it in. 197 00:09:50,330 --> 00:09:52,098 So let me see if I can get this to play. 198 00:09:57,078 --> 00:10:02,058 Can we turn this up? 199 00:10:02,058 --> 00:10:03,552 [MUSIC PLAYING] 200 00:10:28,950 --> 00:10:30,710 NEIL LEONARD: I'm going to stop it here. 201 00:10:33,580 --> 00:10:35,860 The piece is eight minutes and 22 seconds. 202 00:10:35,860 --> 00:10:40,490 So it's a sizable piece from this recording The White Album. 203 00:10:40,490 --> 00:10:43,630 So somehow this stuff was in the air. 204 00:10:43,630 --> 00:10:45,840 And I think it really had an impact on me. 205 00:10:49,000 --> 00:10:50,990 As I was alluding to earlier, did something 206 00:10:50,990 --> 00:10:51,990 to my peripheral vision. 207 00:10:51,990 --> 00:10:54,365 It made me think that there's something interesting there 208 00:10:54,365 --> 00:10:56,686 on the side to think about and investigate. 209 00:10:56,686 --> 00:10:59,060 With The Beatles it wasn't just I Want To Hold Your Hand, 210 00:10:59,060 --> 00:11:01,700 and these wonderful pop tunes that I made, all of which 211 00:11:01,700 --> 00:11:03,510 I really enjoyed. 212 00:11:03,510 --> 00:11:07,060 But there was sort of another world, other ways, 213 00:11:07,060 --> 00:11:09,310 to think about working with sound. 214 00:11:09,310 --> 00:11:12,500 So what I would like to do now is kind of fast forward 215 00:11:12,500 --> 00:11:14,850 and show you fragments of a piece I made, 216 00:11:14,850 --> 00:11:18,090 a long piece I made, in the past few years. 217 00:11:18,090 --> 00:11:20,240 But before I do that, I just want 218 00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:23,610 to invite you, if you have questions or comments, please 219 00:11:23,610 --> 00:11:26,830 just blurt out your questions or raise your hand. 220 00:11:26,830 --> 00:11:30,860 And I'm happy to stop anywhere along the way 221 00:11:30,860 --> 00:11:33,410 and hear what's on your mind. 222 00:11:33,410 --> 00:11:35,180 OK? 223 00:11:35,180 --> 00:11:37,085 And actually, I have a new tactic 224 00:11:37,085 --> 00:11:39,210 which I'm using with my students at Berkeley, which 225 00:11:39,210 --> 00:11:43,370 is I don't let anybody leave the room until they ask a question. 226 00:11:43,370 --> 00:11:45,150 So that works pretty well. 227 00:11:45,150 --> 00:11:46,570 Yes, you're leaving the room? 228 00:11:46,570 --> 00:11:47,861 AUDIENCE: How did he make that? 229 00:11:47,861 --> 00:11:49,270 Did he splice tapes together? 230 00:11:49,270 --> 00:11:50,970 NEIL LEONARD: Splicing tape together, 231 00:11:50,970 --> 00:11:52,470 sometimes the tapes are reversed. 232 00:11:52,470 --> 00:11:54,460 It sounds like snippets of a band 233 00:11:54,460 --> 00:11:56,160 playing that were reversed. 234 00:11:56,160 --> 00:12:01,530 They had a brilliant producer who's 235 00:12:01,530 --> 00:12:04,710 often referred to as the fifth Beatle, George Martin, who 236 00:12:04,710 --> 00:12:06,420 had a background in orchestral writing. 237 00:12:06,420 --> 00:12:09,760 So he had a very robust skill set. 238 00:12:09,760 --> 00:12:13,980 And if they came in with an idea that 239 00:12:13,980 --> 00:12:19,540 was kind of outside the norm of making just pop hits, 240 00:12:19,540 --> 00:12:22,490 or the way popular music had been made, 241 00:12:22,490 --> 00:12:27,050 he was often their collaborator in going on a tangent 242 00:12:27,050 --> 00:12:28,270 and doing things. 243 00:12:28,270 --> 00:12:30,980 One example would be for the piece Penny Lane. 244 00:12:30,980 --> 00:12:32,480 I don't know if you know that piece. 245 00:12:32,480 --> 00:12:35,320 It's a fabulous song of theirs. 246 00:12:35,320 --> 00:12:37,850 I think it was Paul McCartney had seen the London Symphony 247 00:12:37,850 --> 00:12:38,350 Orchestra. 248 00:12:38,350 --> 00:12:41,610 He heard a Piccolo trumpet in a Baroque concerto. 249 00:12:41,610 --> 00:12:43,880 He went back and told George Martin, like, 250 00:12:43,880 --> 00:12:44,905 that was really cool. 251 00:12:44,905 --> 00:12:46,280 And George Martin said, oh, let's 252 00:12:46,280 --> 00:12:49,820 get the Piccolo player from the LSO. 253 00:12:49,820 --> 00:12:51,290 And we'll use him on a piece. 254 00:12:51,290 --> 00:12:54,890 So George Martin probably wrote the part of the Piccolo trumpet 255 00:12:54,890 --> 00:12:56,850 on Penny Lane. 256 00:12:56,850 --> 00:13:00,790 And it doesn't sound like any other track they ever made. 257 00:13:00,790 --> 00:13:05,503 It's a wonderful, idiosyncratic, playful track. 258 00:13:08,371 --> 00:13:09,870 So, yeah, you get to leave the room. 259 00:13:09,870 --> 00:13:13,130 You asked a question. 260 00:13:13,130 --> 00:13:16,090 I should give you a ticket. 261 00:13:16,090 --> 00:13:17,320 So I'm going to fast forward. 262 00:13:17,320 --> 00:13:25,654 And I spent a few years actually working at Mass College of Art. 263 00:13:25,654 --> 00:13:27,570 I thought it was going to be a short-term job. 264 00:13:27,570 --> 00:13:34,640 And it turned out to be an eight year residency there and. 265 00:13:34,640 --> 00:13:37,370 And I kind of went in knowing a little bit 266 00:13:37,370 --> 00:13:40,114 about computers, and some teaching experience, 267 00:13:40,114 --> 00:13:42,030 and a little bit of administrative experience. 268 00:13:42,030 --> 00:13:44,620 And they said, great, you'll do all of that. 269 00:13:44,620 --> 00:13:48,660 And I ended up staying there because they 270 00:13:48,660 --> 00:13:50,820 had a few really interesting people who 271 00:13:50,820 --> 00:13:53,160 came to work with us. 272 00:13:53,160 --> 00:13:56,170 One was this jazz trombonist named George Lois, who 273 00:13:56,170 --> 00:13:59,200 is a seminal person working with jazz and electronics, which 274 00:13:59,200 --> 00:14:03,280 only fueled all this curiosity even more. 275 00:14:03,280 --> 00:14:07,000 John Cage was in town for a year we did the Norton Lectures. 276 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:10,590 And he came to Mass Art a few times 277 00:14:10,590 --> 00:14:12,640 to meet with us, to see what we were doing. 278 00:14:12,640 --> 00:14:14,947 I got a chance to show him my work. 279 00:14:14,947 --> 00:14:17,280 There was a famous video artist named Tony [? Allison ?] 280 00:14:17,280 --> 00:14:18,238 who was on the faculty. 281 00:14:18,238 --> 00:14:20,329 So all this is to say, I ended up staying. 282 00:14:20,329 --> 00:14:22,120 I really didn't think I'd be staying there. 283 00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:22,620 But I did. 284 00:14:22,620 --> 00:14:27,680 I stayed there for eight years, kind of 285 00:14:27,680 --> 00:14:31,200 got involved once again in working with visual artists. 286 00:14:31,200 --> 00:14:33,119 Not so much me making visual art, 287 00:14:33,119 --> 00:14:34,660 but collaborating with visual artists 288 00:14:34,660 --> 00:14:37,650 on all kinds of projects, performances, films, videos, 289 00:14:37,650 --> 00:14:41,780 dance projects, theater projects, happenings, 290 00:14:41,780 --> 00:14:43,010 computer graphics with sound. 291 00:14:45,690 --> 00:14:52,640 And then, eventually, I married a woman who is a visual artist. 292 00:14:52,640 --> 00:14:56,290 And we've done a lot of work around the world. 293 00:14:56,290 --> 00:14:58,060 We're doing a piece in the upcoming Venice 294 00:14:58,060 --> 00:15:00,180 Biennial in May. 295 00:15:00,180 --> 00:15:04,890 We did piece in the Havana Biennial last May. 296 00:15:04,890 --> 00:15:09,780 And so I've kind of worked quite a bit 297 00:15:09,780 --> 00:15:13,490 with people who aren't just playing saxophone, 298 00:15:13,490 --> 00:15:16,120 or just play with saxophonists. 299 00:15:16,120 --> 00:15:18,440 I've been very interested in finding artists outside 300 00:15:18,440 --> 00:15:20,430 of music to collaborate with. 301 00:15:20,430 --> 00:15:25,160 So in this kind of journey of working with artists outside 302 00:15:25,160 --> 00:15:33,880 of music, I was at an Italian estate on top of a mountain, 303 00:15:33,880 --> 00:15:40,550 fantastic villa that had two incredible view. 304 00:15:40,550 --> 00:15:44,420 One is the marble quarries of Carrara. 305 00:15:44,420 --> 00:15:49,300 So across the valley, you can see these mountains of Carrara. 306 00:15:49,300 --> 00:15:52,720 And even though it's summer and it's warm, 307 00:15:52,720 --> 00:15:55,260 there's just white spilling out of the mountains, which 308 00:15:55,260 --> 00:16:01,810 is the fragments of marble that didn't get schlepped away, 309 00:16:01,810 --> 00:16:04,060 but are just kind of like tumbling down the mountains. 310 00:16:04,060 --> 00:16:09,450 So the mountains had these sort of white residual marble, 311 00:16:09,450 --> 00:16:10,870 chunks of marble. 312 00:16:10,870 --> 00:16:13,150 The other side is the Ligurian Sea. 313 00:16:13,150 --> 00:16:15,630 And so my wife and I were asked to make 314 00:16:15,630 --> 00:16:18,650 a permanent installation at this Italian estate. 315 00:16:18,650 --> 00:16:21,740 And the owners, every two years they 316 00:16:21,740 --> 00:16:25,800 would go to the Venice Biennial and pick an artist 317 00:16:25,800 --> 00:16:29,130 to commission to make a permanent, site-specific work 318 00:16:29,130 --> 00:16:30,660 for their estate. 319 00:16:30,660 --> 00:16:32,140 And we met them, they'd say, hey, 320 00:16:32,140 --> 00:16:33,470 would you do something for our estate? 321 00:16:33,470 --> 00:16:35,060 And we said, yep, we got this great idea. 322 00:16:35,060 --> 00:16:37,393 And they said, no, we don't want to see your great idea. 323 00:16:37,393 --> 00:16:39,990 We want you to come to the estate, look at the place, 324 00:16:39,990 --> 00:16:43,160 look at the territory, and think of an idea that 325 00:16:43,160 --> 00:16:44,260 would work for the space. 326 00:16:44,260 --> 00:16:46,790 So its site specific, which is a very important concept 327 00:16:46,790 --> 00:16:49,350 in visual art. 328 00:16:49,350 --> 00:16:53,710 So we developed a relationship with this commissioner 329 00:16:53,710 --> 00:16:59,220 of private sculptures for this private sculpture park. 330 00:16:59,220 --> 00:17:02,230 And one year I was going back to visit them, 331 00:17:02,230 --> 00:17:05,060 and they said, you know, we have this sculpture which you've 332 00:17:05,060 --> 00:17:09,450 seen that is this huge-- maybe you could draw it-- 333 00:17:09,450 --> 00:17:14,390 it's this huge pit that's maybe eight feet across. 334 00:17:14,390 --> 00:17:16,810 It's like a pit that goes straight down the Earth. 335 00:17:16,810 --> 00:17:19,430 And there's just a spiral of church bells, 336 00:17:19,430 --> 00:17:20,660 with no clappers in them. 337 00:17:20,660 --> 00:17:23,130 Very large church bells, I mean, they might be like, 338 00:17:23,130 --> 00:17:26,519 from top to bottom, if the hinge was up here, 339 00:17:26,519 --> 00:17:27,810 the clapper would be down here. 340 00:17:27,810 --> 00:17:29,790 They're very, very big. 341 00:17:29,790 --> 00:17:32,510 But they're turned upside down and they're 342 00:17:32,510 --> 00:17:35,940 arranged in a spiral kind of like facing the sky. 343 00:17:35,940 --> 00:17:38,920 And so the owner said, would you record these bells 344 00:17:38,920 --> 00:17:40,810 and make something with this? 345 00:17:40,810 --> 00:17:43,790 And I thought, well, I have no idea what I'll make of this, 346 00:17:43,790 --> 00:17:45,620 but why not? 347 00:17:45,620 --> 00:17:47,380 I'll record these bells. 348 00:17:47,380 --> 00:17:49,500 So I recorded the sounds of these bells. 349 00:17:49,500 --> 00:17:50,751 And I kind of had them around. 350 00:17:50,751 --> 00:17:52,708 I started to play with them, didn't really know 351 00:17:52,708 --> 00:17:53,800 what I'd do with them. 352 00:17:53,800 --> 00:18:00,910 And I met a choreographer, also Italy, in Naples, 353 00:18:00,910 --> 00:18:06,400 and then she asked me for a composition for a dance piece. 354 00:18:06,400 --> 00:18:10,630 And I thought, OK, well I have these sounds 355 00:18:10,630 --> 00:18:12,620 I made with these bells. 356 00:18:12,620 --> 00:18:17,390 So maybe it would be interesting to do something 357 00:18:17,390 --> 00:18:18,170 with these belts. 358 00:18:18,170 --> 00:18:22,440 So I'm going to play just a fragment of this recording 359 00:18:22,440 --> 00:18:23,845 that I made. 360 00:18:36,260 --> 00:18:38,290 So you know when you take a JPEG image 361 00:18:38,290 --> 00:18:43,110 and you stretch it horizontally, all of a sudden 362 00:18:43,110 --> 00:18:45,050 the image is unrecognizable? 363 00:18:45,050 --> 00:18:47,150 This is sort of what I've done with sound. 364 00:18:47,150 --> 00:18:49,130 And some of this I did with some free software 365 00:18:49,130 --> 00:18:49,960 which I could show you. 366 00:18:49,960 --> 00:18:50,960 There's commercial software. 367 00:18:50,960 --> 00:18:52,020 There's free software. 368 00:18:52,020 --> 00:18:54,394 Lots of different software does time stretching of audio. 369 00:18:54,394 --> 00:18:56,230 So this could be two seconds of audio 370 00:18:56,230 --> 00:18:58,500 that's stretched out for a minute. 371 00:19:06,570 --> 00:19:09,210 The computer's going to kind of sputter. 372 00:19:09,210 --> 00:19:12,597 And then this is sounds of just bells straight because I wanted 373 00:19:12,597 --> 00:19:14,180 the listeners in the dance performance 374 00:19:14,180 --> 00:19:20,068 to be able to hear an actual bell so this wash of sound 375 00:19:20,068 --> 00:19:22,068 in the background would make some kind of sense, 376 00:19:22,068 --> 00:19:24,528 would have some context. 377 00:19:24,528 --> 00:19:25,512 [MUSIC PLAYING] 378 00:19:42,240 --> 00:19:44,255 NEIL LEONARD: Now, the dance performance 379 00:19:44,255 --> 00:19:46,435 was 40 minutes long. 380 00:19:46,435 --> 00:19:49,261 So it's a very kind of slow, kind 381 00:19:49,261 --> 00:19:50,817 of glacially moving performance. 382 00:19:54,090 --> 00:19:55,930 So nothing in the music happens too quickly. 383 00:19:55,930 --> 00:19:58,955 The music goes through a lot of different phases. 384 00:19:58,955 --> 00:20:02,102 But each phase is maybe five minutes. 385 00:20:02,102 --> 00:20:03,590 [MUSIC PLAYING] 386 00:20:39,655 --> 00:20:40,946 NEIL LEONARD: And this goes on. 387 00:20:40,946 --> 00:20:42,904 But essentially, these were recordings of bells 388 00:20:42,904 --> 00:20:45,860 that I put in a program called Spear, which we could look at. 389 00:20:45,860 --> 00:20:51,410 And I began playing with ways to time stretch the audio, 390 00:20:51,410 --> 00:20:53,860 listening to what sounded interesting, 391 00:20:53,860 --> 00:20:55,350 throwing away a lot of stuff. 392 00:20:55,350 --> 00:21:01,040 I kind of went into a phase where when I make a piece, 393 00:21:01,040 --> 00:21:03,770 I want to have a phase in the beginning 394 00:21:03,770 --> 00:21:07,910 where I call it sort of like your work-- a research phase, 395 00:21:07,910 --> 00:21:11,480 research, slash, play, slash, failure. 396 00:21:11,480 --> 00:21:14,935 Meaning, I take sounds, I put them in a software. 397 00:21:14,935 --> 00:21:15,935 I play around with them. 398 00:21:15,935 --> 00:21:21,160 I research what I can do, knowing that I probably 399 00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:23,580 have time to throw a lot of these away. 400 00:21:23,580 --> 00:21:26,192 So I'm not doing this the day before the performance. 401 00:21:26,192 --> 00:21:27,900 This might be a few weeks or a few months 402 00:21:27,900 --> 00:21:29,260 before the performance. 403 00:21:29,260 --> 00:21:32,709 And I want to build in time to experiment, 404 00:21:32,709 --> 00:21:34,750 knowing that a lot of the experiments won't work. 405 00:21:34,750 --> 00:21:37,160 So out of many of those experiments, 406 00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:38,850 I came out with this file. 407 00:21:38,850 --> 00:21:39,830 Sent it to the dancer. 408 00:21:39,830 --> 00:21:42,620 The dancer said, that's really going to work for the idea 409 00:21:42,620 --> 00:21:44,110 that she was thinking of. 410 00:21:44,110 --> 00:21:50,330 And then she proposed a site to do this performance, which 411 00:21:50,330 --> 00:21:52,970 was Mount Vesuvius. 412 00:21:52,970 --> 00:21:59,010 So Mount Vesuvius, as you know, is the volcanic mountain 413 00:21:59,010 --> 00:22:01,660 that erupted and buried Pompeii. 414 00:22:01,660 --> 00:22:03,900 It is still an active volcano. 415 00:22:03,900 --> 00:22:10,000 There are people who occupy the side of the volcano pretty much 416 00:22:10,000 --> 00:22:15,492 against, or in defiance of, kind of zoning limitations 417 00:22:15,492 --> 00:22:17,200 because the authorities don't want people 418 00:22:17,200 --> 00:22:19,190 to live in this volcano because it's dangerous. 419 00:22:19,190 --> 00:22:23,680 The people live there all have gas masks in their house, 420 00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:26,030 because the biggest the problem is 421 00:22:26,030 --> 00:22:28,600 the toxic gas that comes from the volcano. 422 00:22:28,600 --> 00:22:30,234 So in any case, there was an art center 423 00:22:30,234 --> 00:22:31,650 on the side of this mountain where 424 00:22:31,650 --> 00:22:33,830 we staged this performance. 425 00:22:33,830 --> 00:22:40,250 And it kind of grounded the whole piece right then, 426 00:22:40,250 --> 00:22:43,262 because I begin to think of what is it I'm working on? 427 00:22:43,262 --> 00:22:44,470 I'm working with these bells. 428 00:22:44,470 --> 00:22:46,136 We're doing something on Mount Vesuvius. 429 00:22:46,136 --> 00:22:47,850 How am I going to begin to kind of focus 430 00:22:47,850 --> 00:22:49,420 on an idea for this piece? 431 00:22:53,566 --> 00:22:56,807 And there's an author named Murray Schafer who 432 00:22:56,807 --> 00:22:58,890 wrote a book called The Tuning of the World, which 433 00:22:58,890 --> 00:23:01,490 has been republished under the title Soundscape. 434 00:23:01,490 --> 00:23:02,630 You can find it on Amazon. 435 00:23:02,630 --> 00:23:05,360 It's probably in the library here, Murray H. Schafer. 436 00:23:05,360 --> 00:23:07,080 And one of the things he writes about 437 00:23:07,080 --> 00:23:12,940 is that for any environment there's a keynote sound. 438 00:23:12,940 --> 00:23:15,560 There is a sound that we human beings 439 00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:18,090 associate with every environment. 440 00:23:18,090 --> 00:23:21,290 So with this environment right now, 441 00:23:21,290 --> 00:23:27,440 it's probably the sound of the fan on the video projector, 442 00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:29,410 or maybe the hiss coming out of the speakers. 443 00:23:29,410 --> 00:23:31,010 This would be keynote sound here. 444 00:23:31,010 --> 00:23:33,100 Perhaps in the hallway, it's the sound 445 00:23:33,100 --> 00:23:39,770 of footsteps within this space that you know is very long. 446 00:23:39,770 --> 00:23:41,260 It's not very wide. 447 00:23:41,260 --> 00:23:43,705 And it's a fairly reverberant space. 448 00:23:43,705 --> 00:23:46,915 So every place you go, there are sounds 449 00:23:46,915 --> 00:23:50,371 that let you know you're in that place. 450 00:23:50,371 --> 00:23:52,370 When I was standing at the subway the other day, 451 00:23:52,370 --> 00:23:56,310 the metro in Brookline, I was recording the sound 452 00:23:56,310 --> 00:23:58,870 of the train because I've taken that train, the D Line, 453 00:23:58,870 --> 00:23:59,890 for ages. 454 00:23:59,890 --> 00:24:02,640 And if I heard that sound in my sleep, 455 00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:05,750 I would know, Green Line, lightrail vehicle, Green Line. 456 00:24:09,772 --> 00:24:11,480 So I would say that one of the things I'm 457 00:24:11,480 --> 00:24:14,180 really interested in doing is thinking 458 00:24:14,180 --> 00:24:17,980 of pieces that have a particular meaning, 459 00:24:17,980 --> 00:24:20,385 have a meaning that's tied to a particular site. 460 00:24:22,990 --> 00:24:24,100 That fascinates me. 461 00:24:24,100 --> 00:24:27,342 And that's a way to kind of get out of doing what I always do. 462 00:24:27,342 --> 00:24:29,050 So if I'm going to work at Mount Vesuvius 463 00:24:29,050 --> 00:24:30,800 I don't want to do just what I do in Boston. 464 00:24:30,800 --> 00:24:32,299 I want to do something which is kind 465 00:24:32,299 --> 00:24:34,336 of specific to a performance which 466 00:24:34,336 --> 00:24:35,960 is going to premiere at Mount Vesuvius. 467 00:24:35,960 --> 00:24:42,210 If I do something in a rice paddy in Japan, 468 00:24:42,210 --> 00:24:44,470 what's something about a rice paddy in Japan 469 00:24:44,470 --> 00:24:46,660 that I wouldn't think of in Boston? 470 00:24:46,660 --> 00:24:52,400 How can I respond to the site where the work is? 471 00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:55,750 So one of the ways to respond to a site 472 00:24:55,750 --> 00:24:58,230 where you're working as a musician is 473 00:24:58,230 --> 00:25:08,977 to think of the keynote sounds, and play with those. 474 00:25:08,977 --> 00:25:11,310 What are the sounds that are typical to that environment 475 00:25:11,310 --> 00:25:13,850 that kind of tell you you're in that environment 476 00:25:13,850 --> 00:25:17,370 that you can play with? 477 00:25:17,370 --> 00:25:20,790 I should say, very briefly, that one of the things which 478 00:25:20,790 --> 00:25:24,180 is fascinating in Murray Schafer's book and his ideas, 479 00:25:24,180 --> 00:25:33,090 is that he also kind of points to this way of reflecting 480 00:25:33,090 --> 00:25:39,920 on your environment is an integral part of literature 481 00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:42,770 that we know, that we've known for centuries. 482 00:25:42,770 --> 00:25:50,910 So, for example, for Dickens to talk about England 483 00:25:50,910 --> 00:25:56,920 in the period of Oliver Twist, cobblestone streets 484 00:25:56,920 --> 00:25:59,220 have a particular sound, horses on cobblestone streets 485 00:25:59,220 --> 00:26:00,700 have a particular sound. 486 00:26:00,700 --> 00:26:02,810 Those sounds are sounds that Dickens 487 00:26:02,810 --> 00:26:05,330 is very aware of being very important to your understanding 488 00:26:05,330 --> 00:26:06,460 of that place. 489 00:26:06,460 --> 00:26:09,480 Those are parts of Dickens' world. 490 00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:13,990 Tolstoy, same, the example I like most is Dante. 491 00:26:13,990 --> 00:26:17,325 In Dante's Inferno, when Virgil and Dante head off to hell, 492 00:26:17,325 --> 00:26:19,200 they decide they're going to go over to hell, 493 00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:20,116 see what's over there. 494 00:26:20,116 --> 00:26:21,000 They pass Cerberus. 495 00:26:21,000 --> 00:26:22,540 They make it to the mouth of hell. 496 00:26:22,540 --> 00:26:24,540 There are no stars above hell. 497 00:26:24,540 --> 00:26:26,680 The damned don't get to have stars. 498 00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:29,080 There's a black sky above hell. 499 00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:31,290 And because the sky is black and there's no light, 500 00:26:31,290 --> 00:26:33,505 there are two paragraphs of The Inferno 501 00:26:33,505 --> 00:26:37,320 that the contact with hell is an audio contact. 502 00:26:37,320 --> 00:26:38,960 It's an audible contact. 503 00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:41,190 They hear the sounds of the damned. 504 00:26:41,190 --> 00:26:44,450 And there is a two paragraph description of the sighs, 505 00:26:44,450 --> 00:26:46,400 and the gasping, and the kind of toil 506 00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:50,090 that these people are experiencing in hell. 507 00:26:50,090 --> 00:26:51,970 So all this is fascinating to me because it 508 00:26:51,970 --> 00:26:57,210 means that Dante, Tolstoy, Dickens, were audio artists. 509 00:26:57,210 --> 00:27:02,600 They were interested in oral analysis, or oral reflection, 510 00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:04,580 of their environment. 511 00:27:04,580 --> 00:27:08,530 So this is part of something we can do. 512 00:27:08,530 --> 00:27:10,970 Our environment might be like the vending machines 513 00:27:10,970 --> 00:27:12,319 downstairs. 514 00:27:12,319 --> 00:27:14,610 They may be the sound of going up and down the hallway, 515 00:27:14,610 --> 00:27:16,340 or going up and down the staircases which 516 00:27:16,340 --> 00:27:17,990 have wonderful echoes. 517 00:27:17,990 --> 00:27:19,950 It could be the sound of radiators just 518 00:27:19,950 --> 00:27:21,940 kind of flapping. 519 00:27:21,940 --> 00:27:25,710 But these are sounds which can be 520 00:27:25,710 --> 00:27:27,740 really interesting to work with. 521 00:27:27,740 --> 00:27:30,500 So when I began to work on this piece, which 522 00:27:30,500 --> 00:27:33,750 I'm going to play not the rest of, but more of, 523 00:27:33,750 --> 00:27:36,570 I just wanted to say that it occurred to me that there 524 00:27:36,570 --> 00:27:40,220 was this wonderful opportunity in that one of the most 525 00:27:40,220 --> 00:27:46,900 incredible sounds ever in Italy was Mount Vesuvius blowing up. 526 00:27:46,900 --> 00:27:51,230 And period accounts of that explosion 527 00:27:51,230 --> 00:27:55,722 say that the explosion could be heard 100 kilometers away. 528 00:27:55,722 --> 00:27:57,180 So you could practically be in Rome 529 00:27:57,180 --> 00:28:01,300 and hear the sound of this colossal boom. 530 00:28:01,300 --> 00:28:07,550 The colossal mountain now is kind of like a big mouth 531 00:28:07,550 --> 00:28:11,570 waiting to erupt again, like these bells. 532 00:28:11,570 --> 00:28:13,620 The mouths the bells were all facing the ceiling. 533 00:28:13,620 --> 00:28:18,170 So this became kind of an idea that I 534 00:28:18,170 --> 00:28:23,080 began to play with and work with in the piece, this idea 535 00:28:23,080 --> 00:28:25,600 of a kind of silent tongue. 536 00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:36,200 As the piece evolved-- and I'll play you 537 00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:39,360 maybe five minutes of a kind of finished version of the piece, 538 00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:41,750 of a radio edit of the peace, a short version. 539 00:28:46,910 --> 00:28:52,730 I wanted to also process not just bells, but voice. 540 00:28:52,730 --> 00:28:56,910 And I asked the host if they could find me 541 00:28:56,910 --> 00:28:59,314 a singer who lived on Mount Vesuvius. 542 00:28:59,314 --> 00:29:01,480 And they said, oh, yeah, we've got a singer for you. 543 00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:02,912 So they found a singer. 544 00:29:02,912 --> 00:29:03,620 And it was great. 545 00:29:03,620 --> 00:29:07,840 She was in this metal band. 546 00:29:07,840 --> 00:29:10,310 And she told me her my favorite singer was Diamanda Galas. 547 00:29:10,310 --> 00:29:11,976 I don't know if you know Diamanda Galas, 548 00:29:11,976 --> 00:29:17,970 but she is a very kind of eccentric, powerful force 549 00:29:17,970 --> 00:29:19,920 of a vocalist. 550 00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:24,295 So she came with some people from her band 551 00:29:24,295 --> 00:29:25,670 to the place where I was staying. 552 00:29:25,670 --> 00:29:26,870 I recorded her voice. 553 00:29:26,870 --> 00:29:32,423 And I began to also play around with time stretching her voice. 554 00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:38,490 Kind of moving forward to the final stage of the work, 555 00:29:38,490 --> 00:29:41,300 because there were several versions of this piece. 556 00:29:41,300 --> 00:29:43,532 There was a piece for the opening with a dancer. 557 00:29:43,532 --> 00:29:44,740 There were a couple concerts. 558 00:29:44,740 --> 00:29:47,070 I liked it enough that I use it concerts a few times. 559 00:29:47,070 --> 00:29:50,560 I'll actually play parts of this on Wednesday night. 560 00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:52,570 But I also had this experience where 561 00:29:52,570 --> 00:29:56,470 I was in China for the first time, in Beijing. 562 00:29:56,470 --> 00:30:00,430 And I gave a concert. 563 00:30:00,430 --> 00:30:02,190 Somebody came up to me after the concert 564 00:30:02,190 --> 00:30:05,182 and was really interested in this piece. 565 00:30:05,182 --> 00:30:07,140 Or actually was interested in a piece I played. 566 00:30:10,150 --> 00:30:13,330 So a conversation began. 567 00:30:13,330 --> 00:30:15,110 And it turned out the person who had 568 00:30:15,110 --> 00:30:21,040 come to talk to me after the concert was a singer trained 569 00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:24,020 in kind of Peking opera style, so 570 00:30:24,020 --> 00:30:27,470 very traditional Chinese music. 571 00:30:27,470 --> 00:30:29,990 Does anybody know Chinese music here? 572 00:30:29,990 --> 00:30:31,410 I really don't. 573 00:30:31,410 --> 00:30:35,520 I've just been to China and know some Chinese musicians. 574 00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:38,670 So in any case, I said, OK, would you 575 00:30:38,670 --> 00:30:42,160 be interested in singing a piece? 576 00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:43,040 And she said sure. 577 00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:44,160 I said, here's an MP3. 578 00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:45,390 Come tomorrow night at five o'clock. 579 00:30:45,390 --> 00:30:46,306 We have a sound check. 580 00:30:46,306 --> 00:30:47,580 We'll see how this goes. 581 00:30:47,580 --> 00:30:53,820 So let me find a version of this, 582 00:30:53,820 --> 00:30:56,650 so kind of a later generation of this piece I played you 583 00:30:56,650 --> 00:30:59,600 earlier with the bells, I'll just play an excerpt. 584 00:31:03,060 --> 00:31:06,410 You'll hear three things which are new here. 585 00:31:06,410 --> 00:31:21,900 One is there's a sound of a singer from Napoli singing not 586 00:31:21,900 --> 00:31:24,757 Italian syllables, just kind of making up her syllables. 587 00:31:24,757 --> 00:31:27,090 And then on top of that there's also a Chinese vocalist. 588 00:31:27,090 --> 00:31:30,110 So this kind of became this sort of vocal time collage that 589 00:31:30,110 --> 00:31:34,730 kept on getting elaborated on in the course of a few projects. 590 00:31:34,730 --> 00:31:36,260 And I'm playing saxophone as well. 591 00:31:45,370 --> 00:31:47,930 And the bells are kind of fading out here. 592 00:31:47,930 --> 00:31:49,696 Those are the bells. 593 00:31:49,696 --> 00:31:50,692 [MUSIC PLAYING] 594 00:35:46,537 --> 00:35:49,322 I'll stop that here. 595 00:35:49,322 --> 00:35:50,780 I won't play all of it because I'll 596 00:35:50,780 --> 00:35:52,196 play the whole thing on Wednesday. 597 00:35:52,196 --> 00:35:55,550 So we'll hear the whole thing then. 598 00:35:55,550 --> 00:35:59,600 But that piece turned into kind of a trio voices. 599 00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:00,690 There's a saxophone. 600 00:36:00,690 --> 00:36:04,510 There's this very time stretched processed voice, which 601 00:36:04,510 --> 00:36:07,060 is mostly based on this Italian woman singing. 602 00:36:07,060 --> 00:36:11,290 And there's an improvisation by a person who does Peking opera, 603 00:36:11,290 --> 00:36:15,730 but was interested in doing electronic music 604 00:36:15,730 --> 00:36:18,550 for the first time basically. 605 00:36:18,550 --> 00:36:20,710 And so that piece kind of took its course 606 00:36:20,710 --> 00:36:23,690 through just interacting with people that I found, 607 00:36:23,690 --> 00:36:25,710 a choreographer, a singer, a collector 608 00:36:25,710 --> 00:36:28,894 who had interest in a sculpture that he thought 609 00:36:28,894 --> 00:36:29,685 might make a sound. 610 00:36:34,270 --> 00:36:37,821 Actually nobody was a jazz musician except for me. 611 00:36:37,821 --> 00:36:39,320 So that's just an example of a piece 612 00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:43,805 I did in which these interests I have kind of coalesce. 613 00:36:43,805 --> 00:36:45,930 There's an interest in working with artists outside 614 00:36:45,930 --> 00:36:47,870 of music, choreographer. 615 00:36:47,870 --> 00:36:51,780 There's interest in fine art, working with a collector 616 00:36:51,780 --> 00:36:54,990 to get his idea for materials that 617 00:36:54,990 --> 00:36:58,880 might be interesting to play with sonically. 618 00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:00,750 And I'm still playing the saxophone 619 00:37:00,750 --> 00:37:03,250 in a way which is not completely unlike how 620 00:37:03,250 --> 00:37:06,140 I play in a jazz setting. 621 00:37:06,140 --> 00:37:08,710 Any questions, comments thus far? 622 00:37:08,710 --> 00:37:09,210 Yeah? 623 00:37:09,210 --> 00:37:13,162 AUDIENCE: So did you get both the singers first and then 624 00:37:13,162 --> 00:37:16,126 decide whether [INAUDIBLE] and how did you do your sax part? 625 00:37:16,126 --> 00:37:17,620 Is that what came last? 626 00:37:17,620 --> 00:37:22,190 NEIL LEONARD: Well in this case it did come last. 627 00:37:22,190 --> 00:37:25,000 There was a lot of sound design work. 628 00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:32,430 I guess for the premiere that we did in Napoli-- I'm 629 00:37:32,430 --> 00:37:33,960 not worried about playing the sax. 630 00:37:33,960 --> 00:37:35,890 I can play the sax for 40 minutes no problem. 631 00:37:35,890 --> 00:37:39,030 I was concerned about having enough electronic material, 632 00:37:39,030 --> 00:37:41,800 enough of the sound collage. 633 00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:47,290 So I invested a lot of time in getting that happening first. 634 00:37:47,290 --> 00:37:50,300 And that probably took for the premiere, 635 00:37:50,300 --> 00:37:53,120 I had and some fragments of it made, 636 00:37:53,120 --> 00:37:56,620 but there was a couple weeks of work nonstop 637 00:37:56,620 --> 00:37:58,410 on the electronic score. 638 00:37:58,410 --> 00:38:00,346 And then probably two days before the concert, 639 00:38:00,346 --> 00:38:02,220 I began to play around the saxophone and kind 640 00:38:02,220 --> 00:38:05,010 of find where it fit in, although I kind of intuitively 641 00:38:05,010 --> 00:38:07,500 knew here's a place I left for me to fit in. 642 00:38:07,500 --> 00:38:08,968 Here's a place for me to fit in. 643 00:38:11,840 --> 00:38:13,131 Other questions? 644 00:38:13,131 --> 00:38:13,630 Yeah 645 00:38:13,630 --> 00:38:16,055 AUDIENCE: What sort of [INAUDIBLE]. 646 00:38:18,335 --> 00:38:19,460 AUDIENCE: Vocal recordings? 647 00:38:19,460 --> 00:38:24,570 I did one which I'll show you, which is really-- 648 00:38:24,570 --> 00:38:28,280 I'll do a very quick version of it. 649 00:38:28,280 --> 00:38:32,280 I found out that a piece of software that worked really 650 00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:38,330 well, is a piece of software that's free. 651 00:38:38,330 --> 00:38:39,540 It's Windows and PC. 652 00:38:39,540 --> 00:38:41,060 It's called Spear. 653 00:38:41,060 --> 00:38:43,262 And I'll show you one of the things. 654 00:38:43,262 --> 00:38:44,970 I don't want to spend too much time on it 655 00:38:44,970 --> 00:38:47,060 because it's really fun. 656 00:38:50,570 --> 00:38:52,405 It's a lot of fun. 657 00:38:52,405 --> 00:38:53,280 But there it is. 658 00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:55,790 This is a recording of the trombonist 659 00:38:55,790 --> 00:38:57,190 I'm playing with on Wednesday. 660 00:38:57,190 --> 00:38:59,450 It's a solo trombone track. 661 00:38:59,450 --> 00:39:04,570 And what the software's going to do-- just 662 00:39:04,570 --> 00:39:06,970 going to say yes to the defaults. 663 00:39:06,970 --> 00:39:10,840 It's going to do an analysis of the sound. 664 00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:14,980 And the analysis takes the sound. 665 00:39:14,980 --> 00:39:20,520 And it describes the sound. 666 00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:24,380 Try and shrink this, zoom out as far as possible. 667 00:39:24,380 --> 00:39:25,260 It's freeware. 668 00:39:25,260 --> 00:39:27,810 It's kind of clunky, but it works. 669 00:39:27,810 --> 00:39:34,380 So this file, let me see if I can just play it. 670 00:39:37,820 --> 00:39:38,754 [TROMBONE] 671 00:39:44,358 --> 00:39:46,540 NEIL LEONARD: So just a trombone. 672 00:39:46,540 --> 00:39:54,370 Now, just a trombone-- you really don't see everything 673 00:39:54,370 --> 00:39:57,290 on the projector, but that's OK. 674 00:39:57,290 --> 00:40:02,530 These are frequencies from zero Hertz up 8,500 Hertz. 675 00:40:02,530 --> 00:40:04,860 And this, of course, is a timeline over here. 676 00:40:04,860 --> 00:40:13,780 And it deconstructs the sound into a plot of sine waves. 677 00:40:13,780 --> 00:40:15,670 So without really getting too far into it, 678 00:40:15,670 --> 00:40:17,336 let me just do one thing to convince you 679 00:40:17,336 --> 00:40:19,100 that it's really doing that. 680 00:40:19,100 --> 00:40:20,272 So we'll go over here. 681 00:40:20,272 --> 00:40:22,230 And I'm going to take some of these sine waves. 682 00:40:22,230 --> 00:40:25,480 I'm going to select them just by control clicking on them. 683 00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:28,250 And I'll just grab some of them. 684 00:40:28,250 --> 00:40:28,910 There they are. 685 00:40:32,420 --> 00:40:35,449 And now I'll go to New from Select. 686 00:40:35,449 --> 00:40:36,990 We'll make a new file from selection. 687 00:40:36,990 --> 00:40:40,710 And there's only the sine waves I selected. 688 00:40:40,710 --> 00:40:44,230 Let's play those and see what it sounds like. 689 00:40:44,230 --> 00:40:45,120 [SOUNDS] 690 00:40:49,189 --> 00:40:51,230 NEIL LEONARD: Those are sounds that are in there. 691 00:40:51,230 --> 00:40:54,550 Now, there happen to be hundreds of sine waves at a given 692 00:40:54,550 --> 00:40:56,020 moment. 693 00:40:56,020 --> 00:40:57,540 What we just heard is this. 694 00:40:57,540 --> 00:41:00,680 [TROMBONE] 695 00:41:00,680 --> 00:41:03,160 NEIL LEONARD: If we grab some more sine waves-- 696 00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:04,450 actually I'll do it like this. 697 00:41:07,100 --> 00:41:09,010 What's the first letter of your name? 698 00:41:09,010 --> 00:41:09,745 AUDIENCE: V. 699 00:41:09,745 --> 00:41:14,403 NEIL LEONARD: OK, we'll make a V. Not a great V, 700 00:41:14,403 --> 00:41:16,570 you could do better. 701 00:41:16,570 --> 00:41:20,470 And I can select them that way just to have fun with this. 702 00:41:20,470 --> 00:41:22,092 And there we go. 703 00:41:26,700 --> 00:41:28,072 And we can play this. 704 00:41:28,072 --> 00:41:29,036 [SOUNDS] 705 00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:42,020 NEIL LEONARD: You can probably see it on my laptop better. 706 00:41:42,020 --> 00:41:44,050 The greys show up better on this. 707 00:41:44,050 --> 00:41:45,080 But do you get the idea? 708 00:41:48,472 --> 00:41:50,055 That sound, the sound of the trombone, 709 00:41:50,055 --> 00:41:54,340 the trombone performance, is deconstructed 710 00:41:54,340 --> 00:41:56,880 into a series of sine waves. 711 00:41:56,880 --> 00:41:59,700 If we play them all, we hear the whole trombone performance. 712 00:41:59,700 --> 00:42:03,820 If we take out certain ones, then it 713 00:42:03,820 --> 00:42:06,260 sounds like a filtered trombone. 714 00:42:06,260 --> 00:42:09,520 Now, here's one of the things I did quite a bit, 715 00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:11,600 in terms of, what did you do with voice. 716 00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:13,750 And what was the question you asked me? 717 00:42:13,750 --> 00:42:15,150 AUDIENCE: Yeah, what sort of things did you play? 718 00:42:15,150 --> 00:42:16,358 NEIL LEONARD: OK, here's one. 719 00:42:16,358 --> 00:42:17,038 [TROMBONE] 720 00:42:27,302 --> 00:42:28,560 NEIL LEONARD: Let's take that. 721 00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:31,190 Let's go right there where I think he kind of changes a note 722 00:42:31,190 --> 00:42:32,523 and gets a bit more complicated. 723 00:42:36,970 --> 00:42:38,270 I want to time stretch it. 724 00:42:38,270 --> 00:42:41,180 So I'm going to say Transform, Time Stretch. 725 00:42:41,180 --> 00:42:46,200 And I'm going to make it four times longer, times four. 726 00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:47,150 So. 727 00:42:47,150 --> 00:42:47,859 [TROMBONE] 728 00:42:52,260 --> 00:42:56,130 NEIL LEONARD: So you can also hear him move from one note 729 00:42:56,130 --> 00:42:56,630 to another. 730 00:42:56,630 --> 00:42:57,390 All of a sudden it doesn't sound so clean. 731 00:42:57,390 --> 00:42:59,446 He's a very articulate player. 732 00:42:59,446 --> 00:43:01,070 But all of a sudden you get this moment 733 00:43:01,070 --> 00:43:03,030 of transition, which is pretty cool. 734 00:43:03,030 --> 00:43:08,260 In fact, if I thought that I really wanted more of that, 735 00:43:08,260 --> 00:43:10,410 I'll Time Stretch the same thing again times four. 736 00:43:10,410 --> 00:43:12,568 What do we get now? 737 00:43:12,568 --> 00:43:13,560 [TROMBONE] 738 00:43:23,810 --> 00:43:25,560 NEIL LEONARD: It's like a tri tone. 739 00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:27,850 It's a pretty difficult to play and you kind of 740 00:43:27,850 --> 00:43:29,674 get some of that tension of him playing it. 741 00:43:29,674 --> 00:43:31,590 There are many different ways to time stretch. 742 00:43:31,590 --> 00:43:32,669 They all have artifacts. 743 00:43:32,669 --> 00:43:33,710 None of them are perfect. 744 00:43:33,710 --> 00:43:35,290 But some of the artifacts I like. 745 00:43:35,290 --> 00:43:38,570 So some ways of stretching it are useful. 746 00:43:38,570 --> 00:43:41,810 And other ways just sound bad. 747 00:43:41,810 --> 00:43:44,540 So there was quite a bit of time stretching. 748 00:43:47,150 --> 00:43:49,640 But I guess that piece is not really that extravagant. 749 00:43:49,640 --> 00:43:52,370 I also sort of collaged at this level. 750 00:43:52,370 --> 00:43:58,710 So, for example, we can make a collage of just these partials. 751 00:43:58,710 --> 00:44:01,540 We can take these lines and treat it like a drawing, 752 00:44:01,540 --> 00:44:03,520 and rearrange where the lines are. 753 00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:05,170 So, in fact, I think I can, again, 754 00:44:05,170 --> 00:44:09,000 without going too far in this, I can offset this time. 755 00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:10,750 And I'll push all that stuff over here. 756 00:44:10,750 --> 00:44:11,830 Now, it's probably going to be a mess 757 00:44:11,830 --> 00:44:13,538 because you can hear two notes at a time. 758 00:44:13,538 --> 00:44:17,010 Or we're going to see what you can here. 759 00:44:17,010 --> 00:44:17,978 [TROMBONE] 760 00:44:29,760 --> 00:44:32,890 NEIL LEONARD: So all this is to say that, like in Photoshop, 761 00:44:32,890 --> 00:44:35,470 you have this sort of incredible facility 762 00:44:35,470 --> 00:44:38,390 for rearranging the pixels in an image. 763 00:44:38,390 --> 00:44:40,860 This is like dealing with sound at the pixel level. 764 00:44:40,860 --> 00:44:42,850 Every component sine wave of sound 765 00:44:42,850 --> 00:44:45,410 can be stretched independently, shrunk independently, 766 00:44:45,410 --> 00:44:46,070 transposed. 767 00:44:46,070 --> 00:44:48,850 In face, we could take some of these sounds-- actually 768 00:44:48,850 --> 00:44:51,810 I won't go any further because I'll just go on and on. 769 00:44:51,810 --> 00:44:55,660 And none of this will be what we really want to listen to. 770 00:44:55,660 --> 00:44:56,860 But you get the idea. 771 00:44:56,860 --> 00:45:01,440 So I used off the shelf software you pay for. 772 00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:04,500 I used freeware, spent hours, and hours, 773 00:45:04,500 --> 00:45:07,090 and hours in that play, research, failure, 774 00:45:07,090 --> 00:45:09,510 mode of just trying more stuff out. 775 00:45:09,510 --> 00:45:16,447 Let me just see if I begin to experiment, what will I get? 776 00:45:16,447 --> 00:45:17,530 How are we doing for time? 777 00:45:17,530 --> 00:45:18,385 We're probably OK. 778 00:45:22,030 --> 00:45:25,860 I guess where George Martin and The Beatles were, is 779 00:45:25,860 --> 00:45:27,930 they did this by tape manipulation, 780 00:45:27,930 --> 00:45:31,820 as you had pointed us to earlier. 781 00:45:31,820 --> 00:45:34,850 And now, of course, nobody's using tape. 782 00:45:34,850 --> 00:45:35,930 It's expensive. 783 00:45:35,930 --> 00:45:37,480 It's not as flexible. 784 00:45:37,480 --> 00:45:40,100 It has a particular sound that people love. 785 00:45:40,100 --> 00:45:42,400 But nobody's using it. 786 00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:43,380 I work at Berkeley. 787 00:45:43,380 --> 00:45:45,740 There's a Department of production engineering 788 00:45:45,740 --> 00:45:47,255 which is like the tape tribe. 789 00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:52,920 They still worship reel-to-reel reel tape decks. 790 00:45:52,920 --> 00:45:54,790 They grew up with reel-to-reel tape decks. 791 00:45:54,790 --> 00:45:57,040 They learned their craft with reel-to-reel tape decks. 792 00:45:57,040 --> 00:45:59,350 They edited Bruce Springsteen's recordings 793 00:45:59,350 --> 00:46:01,290 on reel-to-reel tape decks. 794 00:46:01,290 --> 00:46:04,060 They think it has to be understood. 795 00:46:04,060 --> 00:46:06,430 But they can't use it either because it's 796 00:46:06,430 --> 00:46:08,780 big, and expensive, and slow. 797 00:46:08,780 --> 00:46:10,780 And production has to be cheap and fast. 798 00:46:10,780 --> 00:46:14,046 So we're doing it in the computer now. 799 00:46:17,730 --> 00:46:20,035 But quite a bit of this is being done. 800 00:46:23,027 --> 00:46:25,110 Other than the time stretching, a lot of that work 801 00:46:25,110 --> 00:46:26,470 was not that extravagant. 802 00:46:26,470 --> 00:46:30,530 And what I wanted to do was take the phrases of that singer 803 00:46:30,530 --> 00:46:33,120 and really kind of distort her lines in time. 804 00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:37,400 So when she sang, some lines were held for a very long time. 805 00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:40,960 Some syllables went at the natural sung rate. 806 00:46:40,960 --> 00:46:43,790 So they appeared normal, so to speak. 807 00:46:47,820 --> 00:46:51,040 But I'll also point out something 808 00:46:51,040 --> 00:46:53,390 that Mark and I talked about on the telephone 809 00:46:53,390 --> 00:46:56,600 when we were discussing this class 810 00:46:56,600 --> 00:46:59,310 and your assignment, which is the next we'll talk about, 811 00:46:59,310 --> 00:47:08,460 is that this semester I hosted a composer named Hans Tutschku. 812 00:47:08,460 --> 00:47:11,250 Hans Tutschku is the director of the computer music 813 00:47:11,250 --> 00:47:13,300 program at Harvard. 814 00:47:13,300 --> 00:47:16,400 And if you ever get a chance, there's 815 00:47:16,400 --> 00:47:22,430 probably a concert coming up probably at the end of April. 816 00:47:22,430 --> 00:47:26,950 And he does concerts with what he calls the hydra system. 817 00:47:26,950 --> 00:47:31,400 The hydra system is a collection of 40 speakers. 818 00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:34,100 And you sit inside the 40 speakers. 819 00:47:34,100 --> 00:47:37,850 And it's a little bit like going to a cathedral, where there's 820 00:47:37,850 --> 00:47:42,340 like a dome, and the dome has a painting on it. 821 00:47:42,340 --> 00:47:44,530 If you ever go to the Vatican, for example, there's 822 00:47:44,530 --> 00:47:46,130 this beautiful dome, with this ring, 823 00:47:46,130 --> 00:47:49,290 with this text which is really important. 824 00:47:49,290 --> 00:47:51,330 And it's just a great experience. 825 00:47:51,330 --> 00:47:52,209 It's an installation. 826 00:47:52,209 --> 00:47:53,000 It's a work of art. 827 00:47:53,000 --> 00:47:54,460 The dome is a work of art. 828 00:47:54,460 --> 00:47:56,320 This is the sonic dome. 829 00:47:56,320 --> 00:48:00,250 And there are three rings of speaker. 830 00:48:00,250 --> 00:48:02,210 One's at ear level. 831 00:48:02,210 --> 00:48:05,180 One kind of maybe six feet above ear level, 832 00:48:05,180 --> 00:48:06,580 and like 12 feet above ear level. 833 00:48:06,580 --> 00:48:10,180 And the rings the rings go really wide, smaller, 834 00:48:10,180 --> 00:48:12,880 and smallest. 835 00:48:12,880 --> 00:48:14,700 So he came to Berkeley. 836 00:48:14,700 --> 00:48:16,222 And the students were all excited. 837 00:48:16,222 --> 00:48:17,430 Here's this guy from Harvard. 838 00:48:17,430 --> 00:48:18,650 He's got to be important. 839 00:48:18,650 --> 00:48:19,736 And he uses 40 speakers. 840 00:48:19,736 --> 00:48:21,610 So he's got to be more sophisticated than us. 841 00:48:21,610 --> 00:48:23,300 He knows things we don't know. 842 00:48:23,300 --> 00:48:27,690 And the fascinating thing was he showed us these pieces he made, 843 00:48:27,690 --> 00:48:30,150 which were fantastic piece of music. 844 00:48:30,150 --> 00:48:31,610 He made them like-- I'm recording 845 00:48:31,610 --> 00:48:34,485 this lecture on this little Sony handheld recorder. 846 00:48:34,485 --> 00:48:36,700 it's not that expensive. 847 00:48:36,700 --> 00:48:39,300 He made all his recordings with a little Zoom 848 00:48:39,300 --> 00:48:42,120 handheld recorder, like $400. 849 00:48:42,120 --> 00:48:45,720 And he was saying one of things he likes to do is wave it. 850 00:48:45,720 --> 00:48:49,170 So if he's playing an antique piano, 851 00:48:49,170 --> 00:48:50,280 which is all out of tune. 852 00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:51,900 And he's recording the sound. 853 00:48:51,900 --> 00:48:56,530 He'll move, he'll sweep, like a visual artist 854 00:48:56,530 --> 00:48:57,610 would move a camera. 855 00:48:57,610 --> 00:49:02,010 If a visual artist is going to shoot a video of a rock, 856 00:49:02,010 --> 00:49:04,400 they're probably not going to put the video on a tripod 857 00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:05,250 to shoot the rock. 858 00:49:05,250 --> 00:49:06,750 I mean, there's a pretty good chance 859 00:49:06,750 --> 00:49:10,210 they'll want to move to show us different aspects of this rock. 860 00:49:10,210 --> 00:49:12,620 Well, this is what Hans loves to do with microphones, 861 00:49:12,620 --> 00:49:14,630 move them across the surface. 862 00:49:14,630 --> 00:49:16,880 Because his argument is if you have a gone, 863 00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:19,720 and you hit the gong, and you move it by your ear, 864 00:49:19,720 --> 00:49:22,130 the gong sounds one way if it's 30 feet away, 865 00:49:22,130 --> 00:49:24,775 one way if it's 10 feet away, and one way it it's very soft 866 00:49:24,775 --> 00:49:26,120 and you're right next to it. 867 00:49:26,120 --> 00:49:28,530 Those are three completely different sounds. 868 00:49:28,530 --> 00:49:29,880 They're all gong. 869 00:49:29,880 --> 00:49:34,390 But the details you get are radically different. 870 00:49:34,390 --> 00:49:38,160 So one thing I want to point out is 871 00:49:38,160 --> 00:49:40,850 that the selection of the materials 872 00:49:40,850 --> 00:49:42,820 is a major part of the work. 873 00:49:42,820 --> 00:49:49,160 And one of the things Hans said, which I also had been doing, 874 00:49:49,160 --> 00:49:52,410 but I'd never really thought about in quite the way he 875 00:49:52,410 --> 00:49:56,540 was discussing it, was he only uses sounds he records himself. 876 00:49:56,540 --> 00:49:58,910 And he's been doing this for a long time, decades. 877 00:49:58,910 --> 00:50:00,630 And so he has all kinds of sounds 878 00:50:00,630 --> 00:50:02,620 he's made all over the world. 879 00:50:02,620 --> 00:50:05,740 But the important thing about all the sounds 880 00:50:05,740 --> 00:50:08,770 is that he has a memory of recording 881 00:50:08,770 --> 00:50:12,140 each one, of choosing to record each one. 882 00:50:12,140 --> 00:50:16,540 So of these thousands of sounds he might have, 883 00:50:16,540 --> 00:50:20,290 he has a visceral experience that's 884 00:50:20,290 --> 00:50:22,560 associated with every sound. 885 00:50:22,560 --> 00:50:27,580 So those bells I recorded, are bells I recorded. 886 00:50:27,580 --> 00:50:29,680 And I know the weight of the bell. 887 00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:30,895 I know the color of the bell. 888 00:50:30,895 --> 00:50:32,270 I know where it was in the Earth. 889 00:50:32,270 --> 00:50:33,860 I remember what it was like to put the mic on there. 890 00:50:33,860 --> 00:50:35,450 I remember how hot it was that day. 891 00:50:35,450 --> 00:50:37,535 I remember how we kind of hit them with hammers, 892 00:50:37,535 --> 00:50:39,922 did all kinds of things to try to get a sound out of them 893 00:50:39,922 --> 00:50:41,880 because they weren't free standing bells really 894 00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:44,300 made to be struck. 895 00:50:44,300 --> 00:50:48,560 Same with the vocalist, I remember hearing this vocalist, 896 00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:50,820 and we had a discussion about getting something 897 00:50:50,820 --> 00:50:52,830 that would work in this piece. 898 00:50:52,830 --> 00:50:56,325 So all those memories are valuable when you go back 899 00:50:56,325 --> 00:50:57,950 to your material because otherwise it's 900 00:50:57,950 --> 00:50:59,900 just a sound file. 901 00:50:59,900 --> 00:51:02,400 Like every other sound file, maybe I like it, maybe I don't. 902 00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:09,740 But because you have been involved in physically 903 00:51:09,740 --> 00:51:12,520 recording and capturing that sound, 904 00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:14,490 it's as if it was in your hands. 905 00:51:14,490 --> 00:51:16,970 You have a kind of tactile relation 906 00:51:16,970 --> 00:51:18,900 to the sound that you wouldn't have otherwise. 907 00:51:18,900 --> 00:51:21,990 Now here's what I'm going to ask you guys to do. 908 00:51:30,230 --> 00:51:33,600 So I understand you've worked not only with Mark, 909 00:51:33,600 --> 00:51:35,800 but you've work with my colleague Tom Hall. 910 00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:39,330 And I'm actually playing a concert with Tom Hall on Sunday 911 00:51:39,330 --> 00:51:42,150 at a place called The Outpost with a bassist named 912 00:51:42,150 --> 00:51:45,044 Jamaaladeen Tacuma, who is known for his work 913 00:51:45,044 --> 00:51:46,710 with Ornette Coleman, very good bassist. 914 00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:53,660 Mark has also told me that you work 915 00:51:53,660 --> 00:51:56,610 in pairs, or sometimes groups of three. 916 00:51:56,610 --> 00:52:00,545 And with your pair, I'm going to ask 917 00:52:00,545 --> 00:52:03,830 you to make a collaborative improvisation 918 00:52:03,830 --> 00:52:05,710 with audio recordings. 919 00:52:05,710 --> 00:52:09,720 And your goal is to, with your partner or partners, 920 00:52:09,720 --> 00:52:13,595 create small sound library to utilize 921 00:52:13,595 --> 00:52:15,220 in a two to three minute improvisation. 922 00:52:18,965 --> 00:52:21,340 And you're going to prepare a performance that integrates 923 00:52:21,340 --> 00:52:22,930 the playback of some of the sounds 924 00:52:22,930 --> 00:52:25,360 you record in this performance. 925 00:52:30,260 --> 00:52:34,060 So let me ask you one thing. 926 00:52:34,060 --> 00:52:35,680 How do you like to improvise? 927 00:52:35,680 --> 00:52:37,770 And how do you improvise in this class? 928 00:52:37,770 --> 00:52:41,200 Is it more along the lines of free improvisation? 929 00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:45,840 Are people improvising with a chord, or with a tonic, 930 00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:47,460 or is it all of the above? 931 00:52:47,460 --> 00:52:50,470 PROFESSOR: We've done modal improvisation. 932 00:52:50,470 --> 00:52:54,080 We've done graphic notation, like Cage's notations. 933 00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:58,390 We've created our own scripts for that, and then done that. 934 00:52:58,390 --> 00:53:01,570 We've done a lot of free. 935 00:53:01,570 --> 00:53:05,940 We've done a lot of with small little parameters. 936 00:53:05,940 --> 00:53:08,370 Indian concepts of Phil Scarf too. 937 00:53:08,370 --> 00:53:11,460 NEIL LEONARD: So all of those are fine. 938 00:53:11,460 --> 00:53:15,840 Any of the approaches to improvisation 939 00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:17,720 that you have been working with this semester 940 00:53:17,720 --> 00:53:20,080 that you want to use for the improvisation you do for me 941 00:53:20,080 --> 00:53:24,964 next week, or I'll do with you next week, is welcome. 942 00:53:24,964 --> 00:53:27,130 It's going to be much more interesting for all of us 943 00:53:27,130 --> 00:53:29,312 if you're doing something which you like to do so. 944 00:53:29,312 --> 00:53:30,770 And I don't know you that well so I 945 00:53:30,770 --> 00:53:34,900 don't want to tell you what to do with the improvisation 946 00:53:34,900 --> 00:53:40,010 except I want you to use whatever technology you have 947 00:53:40,010 --> 00:53:43,560 at your disposal, which might be your iPhone-- probably 948 00:53:43,560 --> 00:53:45,760 everybody has a phone that can record audio. 949 00:53:45,760 --> 00:53:46,770 It could be a phone. 950 00:53:46,770 --> 00:53:48,230 It could be an iPad. 951 00:53:48,230 --> 00:53:52,620 It could be a portable recording device. 952 00:53:52,620 --> 00:53:56,220 And I want you to make a collection of sounds. 953 00:53:56,220 --> 00:53:58,170 Say how many, it could be four. 954 00:53:58,170 --> 00:54:00,800 It could be 10. 955 00:54:00,800 --> 00:54:04,630 And I want you to use this original material 956 00:54:04,630 --> 00:54:07,750 as source material for this improvisation. 957 00:54:07,750 --> 00:54:14,500 So it can be valuable to go to the internet, 958 00:54:14,500 --> 00:54:19,744 and find an audio archive, and get audio, and do a piece based 959 00:54:19,744 --> 00:54:21,160 on what you found on the Internet. 960 00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:22,980 And I can think of some really cool examples. 961 00:54:22,980 --> 00:54:24,896 But I'm going to encourage you not to do that. 962 00:54:24,896 --> 00:54:31,480 So I actually want you to think about the sounds 963 00:54:31,480 --> 00:54:37,780 that-- you don't have to leave where you live, where you work, 964 00:54:37,780 --> 00:54:39,490 where you study. 965 00:54:39,490 --> 00:54:44,490 Within this part of the world that you travel in, 966 00:54:44,490 --> 00:54:47,850 you can get the sounds there. 967 00:54:47,850 --> 00:54:51,080 So plan a recording in a location that you frequent 968 00:54:51,080 --> 00:54:53,362 daily, your walk to school, your apartment, your job. 969 00:54:53,362 --> 00:54:55,070 The idea is to listen to your environment 970 00:54:55,070 --> 00:54:57,867 and discover new details that help divert the audience's 971 00:54:57,867 --> 00:54:59,700 attention from the typical mode of listening 972 00:54:59,700 --> 00:55:00,640 to everyday sounds. 973 00:55:00,640 --> 00:55:05,720 So when you think of the role of audio, 974 00:55:05,720 --> 00:55:12,905 of using audio recordings, in improvisation, 975 00:55:12,905 --> 00:55:13,780 you get a few things. 976 00:55:13,780 --> 00:55:15,790 One is you get what Luciano Berio said 977 00:55:15,790 --> 00:55:19,650 is we open the sound pallet up to everything. 978 00:55:19,650 --> 00:55:24,670 Now, you could prepare your guitar, for example. 979 00:55:24,670 --> 00:55:27,400 If you play acoustic guitar, or cello, or piano, or whatever, 980 00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:28,685 you could prepare your guitar. 981 00:55:28,685 --> 00:55:32,020 Do you know that is to prepare your guitar in the John Cage 982 00:55:32,020 --> 00:55:33,120 sense? 983 00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:35,070 In the John Cage, preparing a piano 984 00:55:35,070 --> 00:55:37,660 meant like putting bolts in the strengths. 985 00:55:37,660 --> 00:55:41,120 I'm not going to encourage you to do that with this piano. 986 00:55:41,120 --> 00:55:46,560 But people put paper clips, erasers, and screws and stuff 987 00:55:46,560 --> 00:55:47,150 in the piano. 988 00:55:47,150 --> 00:55:48,524 And it changed the way it sounds. 989 00:55:48,524 --> 00:55:51,710 There's a beautiful Cage recording of prepared piano. 990 00:55:51,710 --> 00:55:54,110 It makes it sound kind of like a gamelan. 991 00:55:54,110 --> 00:55:56,840 You could prepare your instrument. 992 00:55:56,840 --> 00:55:59,220 As long as you're making the recording, 993 00:55:59,220 --> 00:56:01,540 I'm probably not going to say, you can't do that. 994 00:56:01,540 --> 00:56:04,470 You could record sounds of cars whizzing 995 00:56:04,470 --> 00:56:08,040 by you on Memorial Drive. 996 00:56:08,040 --> 00:56:10,920 But one of the things which I didn't really 997 00:56:10,920 --> 00:56:14,030 put in writing here, but I think is important, 998 00:56:14,030 --> 00:56:20,930 is if you can find either one keynote sound, or one 999 00:56:20,930 --> 00:56:25,430 idea about sound, that you'd like to play with, it might 1000 00:56:25,430 --> 00:56:36,780 be-- you might get more out of that then 1001 00:56:36,780 --> 00:56:38,872 recording like 15 completely different sounds. 1002 00:56:38,872 --> 00:56:41,080 If you want to record 15 completely different sounds, 1003 00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:43,955 I'm not going to stop you, but I'm actually encourage you to-- 1004 00:56:43,955 --> 00:56:44,830 Think of it this way. 1005 00:56:47,820 --> 00:56:50,680 If you had a play, if we were doing theater for next week, 1006 00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:53,440 and we said, let's make a play. 1007 00:56:53,440 --> 00:56:58,050 And there are going to be five actors. 1008 00:56:58,050 --> 00:57:01,450 The first actor is probably not going to come on the scene 1009 00:57:01,450 --> 00:57:03,261 and then never come back again. 1010 00:57:03,261 --> 00:57:05,260 They're probably not going to just say one thing 1011 00:57:05,260 --> 00:57:05,884 and then leave. 1012 00:57:05,884 --> 00:57:11,090 Although, now that I say this, I can think of some examples 1013 00:57:11,090 --> 00:57:11,900 where that happens. 1014 00:57:11,900 --> 00:57:15,100 In fact, I went to go see Mahler's Third at the BSO. 1015 00:57:15,100 --> 00:57:18,640 And there's a singer who sang literally five lines. 1016 00:57:18,640 --> 00:57:20,580 And she came out halfway. 1017 00:57:20,580 --> 00:57:23,600 This is 100 minute symphony. 1018 00:57:23,600 --> 00:57:27,931 She came out halfway through, sang literally five lines, 1019 00:57:27,931 --> 00:57:29,930 and stood on the stage for the rest of the time. 1020 00:57:29,930 --> 00:57:31,850 It was really weird. 1021 00:57:31,850 --> 00:57:33,100 It was a great piece of music. 1022 00:57:33,100 --> 00:57:34,750 But it was weird. 1023 00:57:34,750 --> 00:57:40,205 But the point is this, if you're thinking prepared guitar, 1024 00:57:40,205 --> 00:57:46,370 or if you're thinking of the sound of opening and closing 1025 00:57:46,370 --> 00:57:48,400 windows in your apartment, or whatever 1026 00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:51,660 it is that you're interested in, what does it 1027 00:57:51,660 --> 00:57:55,870 sound like in the quad, or between the buildings here? 1028 00:57:58,590 --> 00:58:03,740 You get sort of a theme and variation potential, or a kind 1029 00:58:03,740 --> 00:58:10,440 of multiple perspective feature in your piece, if you will, 1030 00:58:10,440 --> 00:58:16,320 if you have more than one recording of a certain thing. 1031 00:58:16,320 --> 00:58:17,425 So let me ask you. 1032 00:58:17,425 --> 00:58:19,300 I'm just going to pick your brains right now. 1033 00:58:19,300 --> 00:58:23,840 If you were to choose something to record 1034 00:58:23,840 --> 00:58:26,790 to include in an improvisation-- I 1035 00:58:26,790 --> 00:58:28,636 don't want your final answer now. 1036 00:58:28,636 --> 00:58:30,510 But I'm just going to pick on all of you guys 1037 00:58:30,510 --> 00:58:32,420 just to kind of get the conversation going. 1038 00:58:32,420 --> 00:58:32,970 What's your name? 1039 00:58:32,970 --> 00:58:33,620 AUDIENCE: James. 1040 00:58:33,620 --> 00:58:35,078 PROFESSOR: James, so what would you 1041 00:58:35,078 --> 00:58:36,652 do if you had to pick right now? 1042 00:58:36,652 --> 00:58:39,564 AUDIENCE: I think the sounds of riding 1043 00:58:39,564 --> 00:58:43,090 the bus would be interesting, the doors opening and closing, 1044 00:58:43,090 --> 00:58:46,022 or stop requests. 1045 00:58:46,022 --> 00:58:48,740 I feel like you could play a lot with all the different sounds 1046 00:58:48,740 --> 00:58:49,320 involved. 1047 00:58:49,320 --> 00:58:51,130 PROFESSOR: For sure, and it would also 1048 00:58:51,130 --> 00:58:55,700 have the built in connotation of the piece's emotion. 1049 00:58:55,700 --> 00:58:56,784 The piece is stopping. 1050 00:58:56,784 --> 00:58:57,700 The piece is starting. 1051 00:58:57,700 --> 00:58:59,562 The motion of the piece is stopping. 1052 00:58:59,562 --> 00:59:00,520 The motion is starting. 1053 00:59:00,520 --> 00:59:03,490 I had a teacher who when I went back to my master's degree, 1054 00:59:03,490 --> 00:59:09,290 a really wonderful composer named Bob Brookmeyer. 1055 00:59:09,290 --> 00:59:11,240 And he said music is motion. 1056 00:59:11,240 --> 00:59:13,880 Anything you do to impede the motion has to be questioned. 1057 00:59:13,880 --> 00:59:16,740 It doesn't mean to you can't impede the motion. 1058 00:59:16,740 --> 00:59:21,890 But think twice if you're going to impede the motion. 1059 00:59:21,890 --> 00:59:24,050 Well, this is a piece about a bus. 1060 00:59:24,050 --> 00:59:26,240 Or a piece that's including sounds from the bus, 1061 00:59:26,240 --> 00:59:29,140 so that's kind of like a built in idea. 1062 00:59:29,140 --> 00:59:32,530 The bus has stops. 1063 00:59:35,380 --> 00:59:35,950 Good. 1064 00:59:35,950 --> 00:59:37,820 Perfect. 1065 00:59:37,820 --> 00:59:38,930 Your name again? 1066 00:59:38,930 --> 00:59:42,185 AUDIENCE: Vineet. 1067 00:59:42,185 --> 00:59:43,268 The sounds of an elevator. 1068 00:59:43,268 --> 00:59:48,020 NEIL LEONARD: Elevator, sure, good. 1069 00:59:48,020 --> 00:59:49,660 And there must be different elevators 1070 00:59:49,660 --> 00:59:50,950 in different places on campus. 1071 00:59:50,950 --> 00:59:52,340 Hopefully old, clunky ones. 1072 00:59:52,340 --> 00:59:56,400 And ones that are not so old and clunky. 1073 00:59:59,310 --> 01:00:01,120 When I got this new recorder, that's 1074 01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:03,120 the first thing I think I recorded was elevator. 1075 01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:05,290 I was in a hotel that made a really strange sound. 1076 01:00:05,290 --> 01:00:07,950 So I figured, OK, I've got to grab this. 1077 01:00:07,950 --> 01:00:09,990 And I'll see if I make something out of it? 1078 01:00:09,990 --> 01:00:12,210 What is your name? 1079 01:00:12,210 --> 01:00:16,240 AUDIENCE: Sarah, I think I'd do my roommate cooking. 1080 01:00:16,240 --> 01:00:18,800 NEIL LEONARD: Roommate cooking, great, good. 1081 01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:19,940 The piece is cooking. 1082 01:00:19,940 --> 01:00:24,880 There's kitchen, lots of stuff. 1083 01:00:24,880 --> 01:00:26,520 There is a teacher at Berkeley who 1084 01:00:26,520 --> 01:00:27,910 has his students do a piece. 1085 01:00:27,910 --> 01:00:30,360 I think the piece is in their kitchen. 1086 01:00:30,360 --> 01:00:32,120 It's found sound in the kitchen. 1087 01:00:32,120 --> 01:00:35,840 There's so many things to rattle, and shake, 1088 01:00:35,840 --> 01:00:38,330 and make stuff out of, good. 1089 01:00:38,330 --> 01:00:40,720 And, again, what we're thinking of doing is 1090 01:00:40,720 --> 01:00:42,310 we're not making a grand opus. 1091 01:00:42,310 --> 01:00:44,560 We're making a piece that's two or three minutes long. 1092 01:00:44,560 --> 01:00:49,320 So you definitely have a few minutes of sound from cooking. 1093 01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:50,150 What is your name? 1094 01:00:50,150 --> 01:00:51,780 AUDIENCE: Jacob. 1095 01:00:51,780 --> 01:00:54,720 I was thinking various machines around a dorm, 1096 01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:57,595 so washing machine, microwave, people typing. 1097 01:00:57,595 --> 01:00:58,540 NEIL LEONARD: Good. 1098 01:01:01,510 --> 01:01:02,880 That would be fine. 1099 01:01:02,880 --> 01:01:07,230 Tons of automation, which is a really interesting topic. 1100 01:01:07,230 --> 01:01:09,280 When I first got into computers, one 1101 01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:13,130 of the things that they seem to offer to music, 1102 01:01:13,130 --> 01:01:19,220 which was a big question mark, was automation. 1103 01:01:19,220 --> 01:01:22,997 You can automate a musical process with a computer. 1104 01:01:22,997 --> 01:01:25,330 If you're writing software, if you're creating software, 1105 01:01:25,330 --> 01:01:30,590 you can describe a process of generating notes or sounds 1106 01:01:30,590 --> 01:01:33,220 and have it do that. 1107 01:01:33,220 --> 01:01:35,390 So automation sounds, fine. 1108 01:01:35,390 --> 01:01:39,630 So all of these four ideas that we just touched on 1109 01:01:39,630 --> 01:01:44,590 are exactly what I was kind of hoping to get to, 1110 01:01:44,590 --> 01:01:47,969 where you have an idea of something you can play with. 1111 01:01:47,969 --> 01:01:48,760 These are all fine. 1112 01:01:48,760 --> 01:01:50,522 Your name is in the orange shirt? 1113 01:01:50,522 --> 01:01:51,406 AUDIENCE: Ben. 1114 01:01:51,406 --> 01:01:52,290 NEIL LEONARD: Ben? 1115 01:01:52,290 --> 01:01:54,090 What do you think would you record? 1116 01:01:54,090 --> 01:01:57,240 AUDIENCE: I was thinking maybe the sounds of the locker room, 1117 01:01:57,240 --> 01:01:59,080 which the loudest of which are probably 1118 01:01:59,080 --> 01:02:00,380 people slamming their lockers. 1119 01:02:00,380 --> 01:02:03,730 NEIL LEONARD: Yeah, good. 1120 01:02:03,730 --> 01:02:04,582 Percussion piece. 1121 01:02:07,984 --> 01:02:11,020 PROFESSOR: I want to clarify something for myself and maybe 1122 01:02:11,020 --> 01:02:11,890 for others. 1123 01:02:11,890 --> 01:02:14,540 So when we've had these other assignments, 1124 01:02:14,540 --> 01:02:16,650 I've called them design assignments. 1125 01:02:16,650 --> 01:02:18,190 And that's what we talked about. 1126 01:02:18,190 --> 01:02:22,882 So should we be thinking about how we design the framework? 1127 01:02:22,882 --> 01:02:24,340 In other words, you had a framework 1128 01:02:24,340 --> 01:02:26,880 with your certain phases, certain segments. 1129 01:02:26,880 --> 01:02:29,410 Should we be thinking that way? 1130 01:02:29,410 --> 01:02:30,960 NEIL LEONARD: Absolutely, and we want 1131 01:02:30,960 --> 01:02:33,430 to think about how to use these sounds. 1132 01:02:36,490 --> 01:02:39,850 So before we get to framework, let just say, 1133 01:02:39,850 --> 01:02:42,890 in terms of the playback of these sounds, 1134 01:02:42,890 --> 01:02:46,190 it's kind of flexible. 1135 01:02:46,190 --> 01:02:50,620 I mean, a simple thing that you could do 1136 01:02:50,620 --> 01:02:54,990 is you could make a playlist in iTunes of sounds you've created 1137 01:02:54,990 --> 01:02:58,970 and play with this playlist. 1138 01:02:58,970 --> 01:03:02,260 You also probably want to make some sound of silence. 1139 01:03:06,690 --> 01:03:09,280 The sound might be more effective if you're not 1140 01:03:09,280 --> 01:03:12,030 hearing your recorded sounds all the time, 1141 01:03:12,030 --> 01:03:15,870 but you're hearing the sounds some of the time. 1142 01:03:15,870 --> 01:03:19,150 So you don't have to inundate us with recorded sound. 1143 01:03:19,150 --> 01:03:20,410 It could be very, very poetic. 1144 01:03:20,410 --> 01:03:27,990 It might just be that a few moments of recorded sound 1145 01:03:27,990 --> 01:03:31,280 add another dimension to improvisation. 1146 01:03:31,280 --> 01:03:36,250 So that would be the simplest way to use the sounds. 1147 01:03:36,250 --> 01:03:38,070 Is everybody OK with that? 1148 01:03:38,070 --> 01:03:41,000 I mean, everybody has iTunes. 1149 01:03:41,000 --> 01:03:42,490 So you could do it that way. 1150 01:03:42,490 --> 01:03:46,540 Everybody can record a sound which is basically really, 1151 01:03:46,540 --> 01:03:49,360 really quiet or silent, so to speak. 1152 01:03:49,360 --> 01:03:51,350 So you can also put in blocks. 1153 01:03:51,350 --> 01:03:53,950 You can space out silence. 1154 01:03:53,950 --> 01:03:55,900 That kind of would be a composition. 1155 01:03:55,900 --> 01:03:58,090 The other way to think of this would be-- and then 1156 01:03:58,090 --> 01:04:00,340 let's make sure we have time to talk a little bit more 1157 01:04:00,340 --> 01:04:05,430 about context-- is when you're working in pairs, 1158 01:04:05,430 --> 01:04:09,620 one person could use the iPhone, or the computer, or the iPad. 1159 01:04:09,620 --> 01:04:11,580 And the other person could play. 1160 01:04:11,580 --> 01:04:15,750 So the two of you don't have to improvise simultaneously. 1161 01:04:15,750 --> 01:04:21,700 One person could be more working the computer. 1162 01:04:21,700 --> 01:04:23,950 And one person could do the playing. 1163 01:04:23,950 --> 01:04:28,410 So, for example, if-- what's your name? 1164 01:04:28,410 --> 01:04:29,336 AUDIENCE: Forest. 1165 01:04:29,336 --> 01:04:31,500 NEIL LEONARD: And what instrument is that? 1166 01:04:31,500 --> 01:04:32,258 Is that yours? 1167 01:04:32,258 --> 01:04:34,090 AUDIENCE: No, I play the piano. 1168 01:04:34,090 --> 01:04:36,260 NEIL LEONARD: So Forest, for example, 1169 01:04:36,260 --> 01:04:37,934 who would your partner be? 1170 01:04:37,934 --> 01:04:39,855 AUDIENCE: Austin. 1171 01:04:39,855 --> 01:04:42,513 NEIL LEONARD: Austin, OK, good, so if Forest and Austin 1172 01:04:42,513 --> 01:04:46,310 did a piece, and Forest is playing piano and improvising, 1173 01:04:46,310 --> 01:04:48,210 and Austin is working the computer, 1174 01:04:48,210 --> 01:04:50,900 one thing you could do, Austin, is 1175 01:04:50,900 --> 01:04:57,830 you could trigger the sounds at your discretion 1176 01:04:57,830 --> 01:04:58,900 in a spontaneous way. 1177 01:04:58,900 --> 01:05:00,180 You could improvise. 1178 01:05:00,180 --> 01:05:01,870 It won't be like playing the piano 1179 01:05:01,870 --> 01:05:05,480 where there's a whole lot of finger motion. 1180 01:05:05,480 --> 01:05:09,910 But you could choose in relation to Forest's performance 1181 01:05:09,910 --> 01:05:11,191 when to trigger the sounds. 1182 01:05:11,191 --> 01:05:12,940 So you're not triggering them all at once. 1183 01:05:12,940 --> 01:05:15,810 You're not triggering them in a sequence that's predetermined. 1184 01:05:15,810 --> 01:05:17,210 You could trigger them as you go. 1185 01:05:17,210 --> 01:05:18,251 So does that makes sense? 1186 01:05:18,251 --> 01:05:22,730 So I think in order for this to be successful-- in order 1187 01:05:22,730 --> 01:05:25,410 for the use of the recorded playback of sound 1188 01:05:25,410 --> 01:05:28,540 to be more robust and to give you more flexibility, 1189 01:05:28,540 --> 01:05:32,560 it probably make sense, unless you think otherwise 1190 01:05:32,560 --> 01:05:37,560 and have a difference scheme, but my first suggestion 1191 01:05:37,560 --> 01:05:41,890 would be to have one person improvising 1192 01:05:41,890 --> 01:05:45,630 with these sound files and another person 1193 01:05:45,630 --> 01:05:47,910 improvising on the traditional instrument. 1194 01:05:47,910 --> 01:05:49,156 Yeah? 1195 01:05:49,156 --> 01:05:52,114 AUDIENCE: In your performances, is it 1196 01:05:52,114 --> 01:05:54,086 usually balanced like that? 1197 01:05:54,086 --> 01:05:56,544 Where one person is operating some part of the electronics? 1198 01:05:56,544 --> 01:05:59,016 The electronics are also improvised? 1199 01:05:59,016 --> 01:06:04,190 Or it more just straight recording. 1200 01:06:04,190 --> 01:06:06,380 NEIL LEONARD: It's a very good question. 1201 01:06:06,380 --> 01:06:09,630 Because I only have two hands, and the saxophone, really, 1202 01:06:09,630 --> 01:06:12,580 you can't do it with one hand. 1203 01:06:12,580 --> 01:06:14,870 Piano, you could probably pull it off a little better. 1204 01:06:14,870 --> 01:06:17,819 But I'm usually doing three things, playing the saxophone, 1205 01:06:17,819 --> 01:06:20,360 doing live audio processing of the saxophone, which we didn't 1206 01:06:20,360 --> 01:06:22,651 touch on, which I don't think we'll have time to today, 1207 01:06:22,651 --> 01:06:24,500 but we could touch on it next time. 1208 01:06:24,500 --> 01:06:26,240 And then playing back sound files. 1209 01:06:26,240 --> 01:06:31,180 So at certain times, I tried to improvise everything, and write 1210 01:06:31,180 --> 01:06:32,620 software to improvise everything. 1211 01:06:32,620 --> 01:06:35,260 And I've sort of moved away from that approach 1212 01:06:35,260 --> 01:06:39,250 in favor of building these sound collages which I know very well 1213 01:06:39,250 --> 01:06:40,280 and perform with. 1214 01:06:40,280 --> 01:06:43,500 But I do live sax processing which is improvised. 1215 01:06:43,500 --> 01:06:46,460 And that's what I'll do on Wednesday. 1216 01:06:46,460 --> 01:06:47,910 But I wan to go back to the issue 1217 01:06:47,910 --> 01:06:51,735 that Mark raises about a formal structure. 1218 01:06:54,330 --> 01:06:58,210 And I'm going to ask you to help with this as well because I 1219 01:06:58,210 --> 01:07:09,851 didn't come today with a very exact formal structure. 1220 01:07:09,851 --> 01:07:11,850 Or really I didn't come with a formal structure. 1221 01:07:11,850 --> 01:07:15,530 So one of the things that comes to mind 1222 01:07:15,530 --> 01:07:17,440 is-- and actually maybe Mark you should 1223 01:07:17,440 --> 01:07:18,940 help with the brainstorming of this. 1224 01:07:18,940 --> 01:07:21,490 But one of the things that does come to mind 1225 01:07:21,490 --> 01:07:27,540 is do the sounds you record suggest any kind of structure? 1226 01:07:27,540 --> 01:07:31,230 So, for example, if you're thinking locker room, 1227 01:07:31,230 --> 01:07:35,614 if I go to the gym, I have a combination lock. 1228 01:07:35,614 --> 01:07:37,030 I don't how much noise that makes. 1229 01:07:37,030 --> 01:07:38,155 It's probably pretty quiet. 1230 01:07:38,155 --> 01:07:40,182 But the bang of the lockers. 1231 01:07:40,182 --> 01:07:42,140 What do you do with the banging of the lockers? 1232 01:07:45,430 --> 01:07:48,740 They can be kind of cacophonous, as they sort of are. 1233 01:07:48,740 --> 01:07:50,830 They don't really kind of open and close 1234 01:07:50,830 --> 01:07:51,890 with any kind of logic. 1235 01:07:51,890 --> 01:07:56,870 If I go to the gym at 6 o'clock, and a lot of people are there, 1236 01:07:56,870 --> 01:07:59,310 there's a lot of opening and closing of doors. 1237 01:07:59,310 --> 01:08:02,630 But because you're recording, potentially you 1238 01:08:02,630 --> 01:08:05,310 could trigger things live, who would your partner be in this? 1239 01:08:08,350 --> 01:08:10,760 Who was your last partner in an improv project? 1240 01:08:10,760 --> 01:08:11,385 AUDIENCE: James 1241 01:08:11,385 --> 01:08:13,345 NEIL LEONARD: And James is you? 1242 01:08:13,345 --> 01:08:16,510 So if you did this with James, James 1243 01:08:16,510 --> 01:08:21,060 could do something which is not typical of a locker room, 1244 01:08:21,060 --> 01:08:24,140 where things are opening and closing periodically. 1245 01:08:24,140 --> 01:08:28,560 So you're making a rhythm out of these lockers. 1246 01:08:28,560 --> 01:08:33,850 I do want to mention something about that. 1247 01:08:33,850 --> 01:08:37,479 But I want to talk about a slamming door 1248 01:08:37,479 --> 01:08:42,821 piece, or a banging piece that maybe I can bring next time 1249 01:08:42,821 --> 01:08:43,529 and play for you. 1250 01:08:47,710 --> 01:08:49,620 But maybe it's a binary form. 1251 01:08:49,620 --> 01:08:51,240 One part is more free. 1252 01:08:51,240 --> 01:08:55,010 And the banging feels like less-- just 1253 01:08:55,010 --> 01:08:56,979 seems a little random. 1254 01:08:56,979 --> 01:09:00,479 And another other part seems decisively not random. 1255 01:09:00,479 --> 01:09:02,010 Mark, what do you think? 1256 01:09:02,010 --> 01:09:06,755 What have they done with form that would be applicable here? 1257 01:09:06,755 --> 01:09:09,470 PROFESSOR: I think we've done a lot of these things. 1258 01:09:09,470 --> 01:09:15,155 So I would say leave it up to people's ideas. 1259 01:09:15,155 --> 01:09:18,470 NEIL LEONARD: OK, that's fine. 1260 01:09:18,470 --> 01:09:20,120 I have the impression anything you've 1261 01:09:20,120 --> 01:09:26,640 thought about with form already probably is still-- 1262 01:09:26,640 --> 01:09:27,969 could be applicable here. 1263 01:09:27,969 --> 01:09:29,510 PROFESSOR: And we could apply things. 1264 01:09:29,510 --> 01:09:32,870 I think what I would say is if you could think of a way 1265 01:09:32,870 --> 01:09:36,910 to have a beginning and an ending, 1266 01:09:36,910 --> 01:09:40,710 and maybe a middle marker of some sort. 1267 01:09:40,710 --> 01:09:41,833 If that makes sense. 1268 01:09:41,833 --> 01:09:44,720 NEIL LEONARD: Good, good. 1269 01:09:44,720 --> 01:09:48,770 I do want to say one thing about noise and banging doors. 1270 01:09:48,770 --> 01:09:54,920 I just want to say a couple that does 1271 01:09:54,920 --> 01:10:03,870 sound art, Janet Cardiff and George Miller is her partner. 1272 01:10:14,090 --> 01:10:16,490 And Janet Cardiff just did a piece in a New York armory 1273 01:10:16,490 --> 01:10:17,850 in the last 12 months. 1274 01:10:20,700 --> 01:10:23,820 But she's famous for making these pieces where 1275 01:10:23,820 --> 01:10:27,600 they were like audio walks, where you would headphones on. 1276 01:10:27,600 --> 01:10:29,920 And it would be like she was on the walk with you. 1277 01:10:29,920 --> 01:10:31,378 And she would tell you where to go. 1278 01:10:31,378 --> 01:10:32,940 There was a Central Park one. 1279 01:10:32,940 --> 01:10:36,200 And as you're walking with this person who's not there, 1280 01:10:36,200 --> 01:10:42,620 it's like a disembodied voice, she begins to tell you a story. 1281 01:10:42,620 --> 01:10:45,040 And you're getting kind of wrapped up in the story. 1282 01:10:45,040 --> 01:10:47,560 And the next thing, a helicopter flies right by you. 1283 01:10:47,560 --> 01:10:49,226 And you turn around, and it's not there. 1284 01:10:49,226 --> 01:11:01,390 So it's a kind of a talk kind of reshapes 1285 01:11:01,390 --> 01:11:04,990 your audio experience on a specific 1286 01:11:04,990 --> 01:11:06,720 walk that she's designed it for. 1287 01:11:06,720 --> 01:11:09,840 So, again, a site-specific piece of art. 1288 01:11:09,840 --> 01:11:13,590 But she and George Miller were invited 1289 01:11:13,590 --> 01:11:19,710 to do a piece at the Eastern State Penitentiary 1290 01:11:19,710 --> 01:11:21,740 in Pennsylvania, which is in Philadelphia. 1291 01:11:21,740 --> 01:11:25,120 It's a penitentiary which is infamous 1292 01:11:25,120 --> 01:11:28,340 for, among other things, it was maybe 1293 01:11:28,340 --> 01:11:30,274 the first penitentiary in the United States 1294 01:11:30,274 --> 01:11:31,690 where they had this big experiment 1295 01:11:31,690 --> 01:11:33,140 in solitary confinement. 1296 01:11:33,140 --> 01:11:37,810 So one of the wings, or maybe in all of the wings, 1297 01:11:37,810 --> 01:11:41,280 prisoners were isolated in cells by themselves 1298 01:11:41,280 --> 01:11:43,970 with only a Bible with the idea that if they were by themselves 1299 01:11:43,970 --> 01:11:46,300 with a Bible they would have nothing 1300 01:11:46,300 --> 01:11:47,950 to do but reform themselves. 1301 01:11:47,950 --> 01:11:51,580 And I think that it did not become the model for reform. 1302 01:11:56,720 --> 01:11:59,880 But they now commission artworks in the Eastern State 1303 01:11:59,880 --> 01:12:00,770 Penitentiary. 1304 01:12:00,770 --> 01:12:08,950 And so what they did is they made these kind of robots-- 1305 01:12:08,950 --> 01:12:12,670 I won't call them robots-- but these beaters that 1306 01:12:12,670 --> 01:12:14,600 were motorized. 1307 01:12:14,600 --> 01:12:18,120 And they were maybe in this one corridor 1308 01:12:18,120 --> 01:12:22,470 there were like 162 cell blocks, both sides 1309 01:12:22,470 --> 01:12:25,010 of the corridor, first and second floor. 1310 01:12:25,010 --> 01:12:28,844 And they had at least one of these beaters 1311 01:12:28,844 --> 01:12:30,260 in every one of these cell blocks. 1312 01:12:30,260 --> 01:12:32,850 Now, this corridor had not been renovated. 1313 01:12:32,850 --> 01:12:35,240 It was still like totally dilapidated, paint 1314 01:12:35,240 --> 01:12:37,300 chipping all over the place, water damage. 1315 01:12:37,300 --> 01:12:38,560 But they never cleaned it out. 1316 01:12:38,560 --> 01:12:39,976 So there was still some furniture, 1317 01:12:39,976 --> 01:12:42,420 which means like beds, bed pans, whatever it as. 1318 01:12:42,420 --> 01:12:44,609 So they put beaters in every cell block. 1319 01:12:44,609 --> 01:12:45,650 And they controlled them. 1320 01:12:45,650 --> 01:12:47,680 They were controlled by computer. 1321 01:12:47,680 --> 01:12:50,370 And they did exactly what I was saying, 1322 01:12:50,370 --> 01:12:53,260 which is where I got the idea, is 1323 01:12:53,260 --> 01:12:55,430 they made this 16 minute score. 1324 01:12:55,430 --> 01:12:57,110 And they did it with a computer. 1325 01:12:57,110 --> 01:12:58,480 And they did it in a sequence. 1326 01:12:58,480 --> 01:13:00,000 They did it actually in the same one 1327 01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:02,450 I'm using now, Logic, and the piano roll notation. 1328 01:13:02,450 --> 01:13:04,820 And everyone little note in the piano roll 1329 01:13:04,820 --> 01:13:08,440 was a different hammer in a different cell. 1330 01:13:08,440 --> 01:13:11,190 So in some parts of the recording. 1331 01:13:11,190 --> 01:13:13,840 It's very pointalistic. 1332 01:13:13,840 --> 01:13:17,374 You would hear a sound from one cell, then 1333 01:13:17,374 --> 01:13:19,290 something from the other side of the corridor. 1334 01:13:19,290 --> 01:13:21,370 There's kind of a race section where 1335 01:13:21,370 --> 01:13:23,680 they're all pounding out a rhythm. 1336 01:13:23,680 --> 01:13:27,614 But they're kind of different sounds 1337 01:13:27,614 --> 01:13:30,030 that-- I mean, you can only imagine what the inmates would 1338 01:13:30,030 --> 01:13:35,120 have thought if whatever it would be, 1339 01:13:35,120 --> 01:13:37,255 really 150 years later. 1340 01:13:37,255 --> 01:13:43,910 This is long-- this is like totally over, pretty 1341 01:13:43,910 --> 01:13:44,580 horrible place. 1342 01:13:48,490 --> 01:13:49,790 But it was a banging piece. 1343 01:13:49,790 --> 01:13:50,650 Lockers bang. 1344 01:13:50,650 --> 01:13:53,530 So it was a piece that was all about banging, 1345 01:13:53,530 --> 01:13:57,480 banging in a corridor, kind of almost like a prison riot 1346 01:13:57,480 --> 01:14:01,570 kind of vibe from the recording I've heard of it. 1347 01:14:01,570 --> 01:14:03,700 I didn't actually see the piece. 1348 01:14:03,700 --> 01:14:05,090 But they had a structure too. 1349 01:14:05,090 --> 01:14:06,930 And part of the structure was have a rave. 1350 01:14:06,930 --> 01:14:09,061 So there was kind of a beat, or I 1351 01:14:09,061 --> 01:14:11,590 don't know if you could call it a recognizable groove. 1352 01:14:11,590 --> 01:14:15,952 But there was sort of like a periodic thumping 1353 01:14:15,952 --> 01:14:17,410 happening at one part of the piece. 1354 01:14:17,410 --> 01:14:19,284 Other parts were more noisy and pointalistic. 1355 01:14:21,990 --> 01:14:25,010 So given that I don't know what you're going to record, 1356 01:14:25,010 --> 01:14:27,010 and I also don't want to make the piece for you, 1357 01:14:27,010 --> 01:14:28,190 I'm kind of open to form. 1358 01:14:28,190 --> 01:14:31,330 But I would say this, open to your ideas about form. 1359 01:14:31,330 --> 01:14:37,480 But be prepared to tell us why you recorded these sounds, what 1360 01:14:37,480 --> 01:14:40,272 was attractive about recording the sounds, what it was 1361 01:14:40,272 --> 01:14:42,730 like after you recorded them because everything's different 1362 01:14:42,730 --> 01:14:44,680 after you record it. 1363 01:14:44,680 --> 01:14:46,940 The classic example are gunshots. 1364 01:14:46,940 --> 01:14:48,956 You think a gunshot would be powerful. 1365 01:14:48,956 --> 01:14:50,580 But when they made the film Terminator, 1366 01:14:50,580 --> 01:14:54,420 they took Howitzer's, and cannons, and bazookas, 1367 01:14:54,420 --> 01:14:57,320 and they put them all together to make these guns that Arnold 1368 01:14:57,320 --> 01:15:00,660 Schwarzenegger would shoot to make them sound like comic book 1369 01:15:00,660 --> 01:15:02,240 big, larger than life. 1370 01:15:02,240 --> 01:15:04,800 But guns don't sound larger than life. 1371 01:15:04,800 --> 01:15:07,260 They sound smaller than life, just like a little pop. 1372 01:15:10,110 --> 01:15:13,420 In Hollywood, there is a job in Hollywood, 1373 01:15:13,420 --> 01:15:17,630 should you be interested, in making guns sound big. 1374 01:15:17,630 --> 01:15:19,850 Many of my students go and do that stuff. 1375 01:15:24,770 --> 01:15:26,640 So why did you want to record these? 1376 01:15:26,640 --> 01:15:29,098 What was your initial thought about recording these sounds? 1377 01:15:29,098 --> 01:15:32,170 Like, the kitchen, my roommate makes all this, 1378 01:15:32,170 --> 01:15:34,690 boiling, there's sauteing, there's stuff coming out 1379 01:15:34,690 --> 01:15:38,140 of the toaster, there's water boiling, all that. 1380 01:15:38,140 --> 01:15:40,280 And that seemed like it's a pallet which 1381 01:15:40,280 --> 01:15:41,586 could be interesting. 1382 01:15:41,586 --> 01:15:42,960 Whatever your reason is, whatever 1383 01:15:42,960 --> 01:15:45,230 your experience is after. 1384 01:15:45,230 --> 01:15:50,060 And then also going back to what mark suggested, how did you 1385 01:15:50,060 --> 01:15:51,890 think about organizing the sound? 1386 01:15:51,890 --> 01:15:55,160 Because I'm not so much interested in right or wrong, 1387 01:15:55,160 --> 01:15:57,667 but what were your thoughts about putting 1388 01:15:57,667 --> 01:15:58,500 this stuff together? 1389 01:15:58,500 --> 01:16:01,490 Did you have a thought before you improvised 1390 01:16:01,490 --> 01:16:05,170 about how to arrange this improvisation 1391 01:16:05,170 --> 01:16:06,245 with your partner? 1392 01:16:06,245 --> 01:16:08,370 Did you guys just plunge into it? 1393 01:16:08,370 --> 01:16:11,940 If you had a thought about how to use it, with the bus, 1394 01:16:11,940 --> 01:16:13,580 does it begin with starting the bus? 1395 01:16:13,580 --> 01:16:15,094 Does it end with the bus stopping? 1396 01:16:15,094 --> 01:16:15,885 It doesn't have to. 1397 01:16:18,570 --> 01:16:22,940 But that would be another valuable part 1398 01:16:22,940 --> 01:16:28,325 of your experience to bring to the discourse. 1399 01:16:28,325 --> 01:16:31,900 Once you had those sounds, how did you 1400 01:16:31,900 --> 01:16:33,510 go from there to finishing a piece? 1401 01:16:33,510 --> 01:16:36,110 So as you see with me, it's like, I come up 1402 01:16:36,110 --> 01:16:37,080 with some cool sounds. 1403 01:16:37,080 --> 01:16:38,820 I record some elevators, some bells. 1404 01:16:38,820 --> 01:16:41,270 And sometimes I just start messing with the stuff. 1405 01:16:41,270 --> 01:16:44,245 But at some point, it's actually got to finish a piece. 1406 01:16:44,245 --> 01:16:47,230 So once I start to set out to make a piece, 1407 01:16:47,230 --> 01:16:51,004 then typically I'm beginning to think of what kind of shape 1408 01:16:51,004 --> 01:16:51,920 should the piece have? 1409 01:16:51,920 --> 01:16:53,500 I have a degree in music composition 1410 01:16:53,500 --> 01:16:57,170 so I kind of neurotically have to deal with it that way. 1411 01:16:57,170 --> 01:16:57,920 You don't have to. 1412 01:16:57,920 --> 01:17:02,940 And I think any way you deal with it can potentially 1413 01:17:02,940 --> 01:17:04,640 be successful. 1414 01:17:04,640 --> 01:17:10,590 But one of the things I learned from a teacher I had was 1415 01:17:10,590 --> 01:17:13,940 that the first thing you do when you write a piece of music 1416 01:17:13,940 --> 01:17:16,810 is you decide the duration. 1417 01:17:16,810 --> 01:17:20,610 The second you can do is can could think about the form. 1418 01:17:20,610 --> 01:17:23,560 And when you're thinking about the form, the order in which 1419 01:17:23,560 --> 01:17:27,410 stuff's going to happen, you're actually preparing, 1420 01:17:27,410 --> 01:17:29,350 if you call this composition, you're 1421 01:17:29,350 --> 01:17:32,180 actually composing music without hearing a sound. 1422 01:17:32,180 --> 01:17:35,860 I could think start soft, end loud. 1423 01:17:35,860 --> 01:17:38,830 I could think, start fast, end slow. 1424 01:17:38,830 --> 01:17:42,300 And those are really compositional decisions 1425 01:17:42,300 --> 01:17:44,820 which I can make without making a sound. 1426 01:17:44,820 --> 01:17:49,280 I can think of only lockers opening 1427 01:17:49,280 --> 01:17:51,960 at the beginning, only lockers closing at the end. 1428 01:17:51,960 --> 01:17:54,110 That's a compositional decision. 1429 01:17:54,110 --> 01:17:57,030 That came from George Russell. 1430 01:17:57,030 --> 01:18:00,750 You can compose. 1431 01:18:00,750 --> 01:18:03,140 Or, because this is a class in improvisation, 1432 01:18:03,140 --> 01:18:08,370 you can create sonic ideas without making a sound. 1433 01:18:08,370 --> 01:18:14,185 And my neurosis as a composer and as a lifelong student 1434 01:18:14,185 --> 01:18:20,470 of composition, is I want to use that approach, at least 1435 01:18:20,470 --> 01:18:21,090 to some level. 1436 01:18:21,090 --> 01:18:23,650 Not in everything I do, but I'm often 1437 01:18:23,650 --> 01:18:28,880 trying to think about what are some ideas about these pieces 1438 01:18:28,880 --> 01:18:32,995 before I roll up my sleeves and start making stuff? 1439 01:18:32,995 --> 01:18:33,870 PROFESSOR: I'm sorry. 1440 01:18:33,870 --> 01:18:34,835 We're going to have to call time because we have to leave. 1441 01:18:34,835 --> 01:18:36,918 NEIL LEONARD: I think that's a good place to stop. 1442 01:18:36,918 --> 01:18:40,250 PROFESSOR: Thank you very much. 1443 01:18:40,250 --> 01:18:42,230 I just have one practical question. 1444 01:18:42,230 --> 01:18:46,870 We should think about how we're going to present these 1445 01:18:46,870 --> 01:18:48,840 because we're going to wind up with 16. 1446 01:18:48,840 --> 01:18:50,256 Does that mean we're going to have 1447 01:18:50,256 --> 01:18:52,880 six computers with individual sound files or what? 1448 01:18:52,880 --> 01:18:55,590 NEIL LEONARD: I think so, because it's probably 1449 01:18:55,590 --> 01:18:57,280 easiest for you just to set it up 1450 01:18:57,280 --> 01:19:00,420 on your phone, or your iPad, or your computer, 1451 01:19:00,420 --> 01:19:02,745 and plug them in here. 1452 01:19:02,745 --> 01:19:04,120 The only thing about that is this 1453 01:19:04,120 --> 01:19:07,480 seemed to behave better when video is plugged in as well. 1454 01:19:07,480 --> 01:19:09,750 But maybe we can just plug video into my machine 1455 01:19:09,750 --> 01:19:13,780 and swap in and out of this cable if need be. 1456 01:19:13,780 --> 01:19:17,170 PROFESSOR: OK, so in each team, one person 1457 01:19:17,170 --> 01:19:19,435 should bring some device. 1458 01:19:19,435 --> 01:19:20,410 Is that OK? 1459 01:19:22,930 --> 01:19:24,820 Great. 1460 01:19:24,820 --> 01:19:28,020 Assignment for Wednesday, I got inspired. 1461 01:19:28,020 --> 01:19:29,620 I'm improvising. 1462 01:19:29,620 --> 01:19:31,470 We're going to bring our instruments. 1463 01:19:31,470 --> 01:19:36,460 I want you to think between now and then of at least one sound 1464 01:19:36,460 --> 01:19:40,426 that is not a conventional sound on your instrument. 1465 01:19:40,426 --> 01:19:41,800 If you can think of two or three, 1466 01:19:41,800 --> 01:19:43,840 that's great, but at least one sound that 1467 01:19:43,840 --> 01:19:47,690 not conventional to your instrument. 1468 01:19:47,690 --> 01:19:49,240 OK?