Time-Folding V.22, Solo Live Electronics

By JyKang in Ji's, SuperCollider, [EA]ComputerMusic 0 Comment

I, as a composer, had been quite skeptical about improvised music until some time ago. I love to listen and experience of course, but I always thought that it should be done after a number of ‘formal music’ performances. In a way I still think that playing ‘formal’ music could help to give insight on the way music flows.

However, the  improvisation itself also needs practices : not only about musical practices, but also trusting your intuition, showing the moments, what you are aiming to throughout what you are playing. So I tried as well.

It’s been just a couple of years that I seriously started making my own solo project, using the instruments that I can play, and still treat them in the way that I do in my own composed music.

Here I’d like to share one recording of those. Recently I performed at Studio Loos in Den Haag, and this recording is made with the same setup. The only difference is that I used the ground noise at the beginning, without touching any devices, I only ‘approach’ toward the device with one hand, while the other hand was touching a different electronic device, connected to the same ground.

I liked the result. There was a big plan behind, but not all the details.

The process:

Benjolin, the chaotic analog sound generator, gives an input signal to the computer system, which was developed in SuperCollider. The signal not only works as the sound input, but also as the control rate, manipulating the buffer that was live-sampled inside the computer endlessly. The performer -me- is constantly choosing the moment for the live sampling, and looping the samples. There are 4 layers doing the same. The 1st layer as more aiming toward the base line, and the 2nd layer receives the first layer as the input. The 3rd layer is directly receiving the Benjolin sound as the input without any treatment, and 4th layer receives the 3rd layer. All the buffer lengths are different.

Those 4 layers are then processed, treated as an instrumental sound. The processings include  -several wave shapings and distortion, -spectrum manipulation, -binaural spatialization. An interesting aspect could be that I used a single output channel as the input channel for the processing. That means when the processing starts, it will also give a feedback to the result itself.

This is how the setup looks like:

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And the Recording:

This was performed recently in Seoul, South Korea at the event,  “Unsold Art.”

Hope you enjoy!

Female Effects Spain tour

By JyKang in Concert/Festival, Ji's, People, [EA]ComputerMusic 1 Comment

I’d like to share an awesome picture of my performance from the first Spain tour of Female Effects!

Jing

The performance in Cordoba, Spain.
Photo by Erin Mckinney

Female Effects is a project consisting of new pieces for acoustic instruments and electronics, composed by female composers and curated by the harpist/performer Angélica Vázquez.

The musicians involved are: Yamila Ríos, Lula Romero and Maria José Belenguer from Spain, Kate Moore (Australia), Barbara Ellison (Ireland), Marie Guilleray (France), Fani Konstantinidou (Greece), Ji Youn Kang (Korea), Meiyi Lee (Taiwan), Wen Chin (Taiwan) and Marisol Jimenez (Mexico).

We made the second concert as a group, and this happened in Spain at 23~24th of November, 2012.

It was quite cool that all those female composers/performers got together and made a new music performance in combination between Acoustics and Electronics together. We played in two cities: first in Cadiz, and the second in Cordoba. I brought ‘Jing – A traditional Korean gong-like instrument-‘ and I felt good as well that I brought this Korean instrument there. The piece is called ‘Jing’ for Jing and Computer. 

This was also my first trip to Spain so that I wanted to look around too as much as possible, but this tight schedule was quite crazy. We slept almost nothing for two days because we needed to move all the time. The time for the soundcheck takes very long due to the technical needs and the amount of the pieces. But we had lots of fun.

When we perform at Cadiz, it was a part of the contemporary music festival Festival de Música Española de Cádiz. This means that we can expect the kind of audience who is quite interested in listening to the new music. However, the second concert was completely local concert. We played at Iglesia de la Magdalena, in a medium size old church. We were a bit worried if people would like this. One of my friends from Spain commented on my Facebook advertisement of the concert : “You play an electronic music in Cordoba??? ”

This scared me a bit, because we wanted to have some audiences involved. We worked hard to make this happen.

Then wow. There were tons of audiences from Children to Seniors. They really filled the whole church. No one left in the middle of the concert, rather they came closer and closer toward the stage. This made us so excited. People liked it very much and we had a very nice performance.

Of course we didn’t forget to have a party after all. Everyone was quite tired but we had some drinks and even went to a club to celebrate.

Now our organizer Angelica is making the second plan to Spain again. This time in Sevilla, and probably happens in April. I wish all of us to go, but in this moment we are not sure.

It is quite hard to survive as a woman Electronic music composer. There sill are prejudices that woman cannot handle computer and cables, and they would make a pretty music. This female effects throw a rock into that pool. We are very active composers mostly involving electronics to their works, have a new, charming idea on their works,  have knowledge and ability to realize it. So yes. We are female, but we are NOT feminists. We are those kind of people who just do what we’d like to do, and we met together in one field.

Should male involve in this group? Maybe and Maybe not. Not because we hate guys around here, but women composers would need a bit more of  support and more stages and opportunities to perform, and we believe that this group add a small action into that.

More information on Female Effects

 

A Recent Piece performance “Hui-Mo-Ri” for a new instrument+Live Electronics

By JyKang in Ji's, [EA]ComputerMusic 0 Comment

I haven’t taken care so much for few months of my blog, but I am happy to come back with this new video recording of my new piece, “Hui-Mo-Ri.”

The instrument was built by a friend of mine Wenchin. She’s a performer/artist, and this is the first instrument she has  ever built. Due to its complications that all the woods should have holes and metal strings/motors should be attached to them, and so on, it is quite fragile, but it worked at the performance. 🙂

The instrument itself should vibrate itself by the motor, but the connection was not strongly attached enough to do so. So the live electronics was quite essential. There are two microphones attached (a DPA and a Piezo) underneath the spinning wooden plates, and under the metal plate in the middles, there is a transducer that is supposed to create a feedback with the body.

I gave some additions to this: two sticks with the contact microphone attached. Those two sticks include metal pins and iron strings too that can interact well with the feedback.

Mainly you cannot hear the original ‘instrument’ sound there. I gave all additional processing with electronics. All are realtime processing programmed on SuperCollider(of course).

I was quite happy with the sound results and the structure. There is no very detailed score, but the entire structure that I composed.

In this première of the piece, I am playing with the percussionist MeiYi Lee, my dearest friend and we make a number of performance together as a duo.

Oh, and ‘Hui-Mo-Ri’ is one of the traditional Korean Rhythm structure, that is supposedly the fastest in tempo. It also means ‘blowing all together’ as a strong wind would possibly do.

I hope you enjoy.

**people who is around Utrecht in the Netherlands at 8th of Feb, This piece will be played by Sonolab Duo at RASA. Here’s the info.