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Extended Horizons with Julio Lopez 8.25.2014

So I have already broken two of my own rules: first of all, this track is late, having been posted on Monday instead of Saturday.  I have an excuse!  I’ve been super busy and really tired!  (Yeah, yeah, excuses excuses.  All ya had to do was post the track!)

The second broken rule is the one of time.  This one is seven minutes long – but it’s worth it.  For this recording, I was lucky enough to have, at my place one week ago today, the fabulous violinist and composer Julio Lopez (look him up at https://soundcloud.com/juliolopez-11).  It was the first time we had ever played together outside of class, and the first time we had done a free improvisation together.  We did several that day, and the one I present before you is the cream of that delicious crop.  There were times when it was very hard to play because I wanted to grin so badly – Julio has a way of playing exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment.  The effect is divine.  Now, if only I could smile while playing the flute…

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Extended Horizons, 8.16.2014

Here it is August already, and school is about to start.  Not that I will be going this year – instead, I am busy putting together my portfolio to apply for Grad School.  I am not sure what my Master’s will actually be in, but I do know that one way or another I will be studying composition, improvisation and the flute.  I could end up in Northern California, Southern California or even New York.  So stay tuned, there will be more about that process to come.  In the meantime, here is the first official installment of Extended Horizons.  For this improvisation, I used an unconventional fingering that produces several different multiphonics.  With this fingering, and similar ones, I created a kind of ‘bamboo’ melody which I then interspersed with tremolo sections in which I experimented with some of the multiple tones that can be produced by this fingering.  I recorded this improvisation on the top floor of Kerry Hall at Cornish College of the Arts, the same room in which Nellie Cornish slept when she still ran the school.  This isn’t the most ideal for practicing because it makes you sound so good, but it worked well for recording, because it made me sound pretty good!  So while the sun set over glittering blue-grey Seattle, I played this little number for you….

 

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Clean Up: Extended Horizons

I have been looking over my work for the past month and have decided that it is time to take my improvisation project to the next level. One pattern I have noticed is the tendency to improvise for long stretches of time, often including multiple ‘pieces’ in one shot. While there is nothing wrong with that, it’s time to shift gears.  One of my long term goals is to learn to make coherent pieces when I improvise; free improvisation is not, and should never be confused with, idle noodling.  Another pattern I have noticed is how freely I can wander into wildly different material, riding whatever wave is coursing through my brain at the time.  Again, not a problem per se, but the more material I include at once, the harder it is to create those coherent pieces.  One last thing I picked up on – I often discover new sounds in the middle of improvising, and immediately forget what I did when it’s all over.

So to take all this to the next level, I am now setting two parameters for myself:

1) Each improvisation will be no longer than four minutes

2) Each improvisation will include the use of a handful of pre-determined sounds.  This way, the improvisation will hopefully be more focused and will explore the possibilities of the sounds and techniques in question without them going in one ear and out the other.

I will continue to post recordings once a week on Saturdays.  With each recording, I will include a description of my process and what inspired me on that particular day.  In doing this, I hope to grow as a musician, but also to create a piece of artwork (s) for you, my dear listeners.  Any feedback is welcome.  And in case you are wondering, the title of this project is ‘Extended Horizons’.  Thankyou for listening and please enjoy.

 

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Sonic Exploration

Alright, finally here is another of my forays into solo flutelandia.  For this one, I began with a multiphonic in the first register.  The multiphonic is a major second apart.  I then explored the other possibilities of this fingering and others similar to it, finding some interesting timbres and intervals in the process.  It is amazing how much beauty can be found in the airy, imperfect spaces of the flute tone that we train so hard to smooth away.  In fact, at the moment I wonder why we strive so hard for that perfect tone, practicing and practicing for homogeneity in all registers instead of striving for greater knowledge and control of the flute’s sonic capabilities.  If we did this, I think we would have the freedom to create the sound that is right for any occasion whether it be a Bach Sonata or a an ethereal exploration of the spaces between conventional tones.

At any rate, this is my personal favorite recording so far.  I hope you enjoy hearing it as much as I enjoyed playing it.

 

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Riff for Solo Flute

Here is another recent recording of a solo improvisation of mine.  Just prior to recording this one, I had finished another solo improvisation and had a rhythm suddenly stuck in my head.  I’m not sure where it came from, but that rhythm is the vehicle for this recording.  The opening rhythm functions as a riff that remains present throughout the way it would in a pop song – a pop song with dark and funky twist.  As I listen again, I can hear the beginnings of other instrumental parts accompanying the flute; this may very well become a piece in the future…

 

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Beginning of a New Project

I have been doing a lot of solo improvisation at home lately.  Just by myself in my room – a luxury I haven’t had since last summer.  And this time, it comes with the strangeness of my new freedom.  I have been out of school before but this time, I have a degree.  I am working towards applying for grad school, but I also realize I don’t have to.  I should if I want a better “job” to pay off the debt I will be in until I hit retirement age – but I don’t have to.  I feel like I’m free-floating.  At any rate, I have been pumping out solo improvisations that use some of the new extended techniques I’ve learned as well as some I’ve know for a while.  I dive into the new stuff just to see what will happen; I experiment with familiar material to see where I can take it.  This is the first recording I have uploaded so far.  I began this improvisation with a long held note using an unconventional fingering.  I often use this technique to get me started: hold a tone and wait until I hear something before I play it.  The results are always surprising.  In this recording, what begins as hollow tones and delicate multiphonics becomes a wild exploration of a quote from a Robert Dick piece I learned a few years ago.  This quote takes me in a totally different direction than either the improvisation or Robert’s piece did, leaving me with a piece that sounds like a circus gone haywire. There will be more of this coming soon since I will be making a project out of recording my improvisations and documenting my process and the results.  I hope you enjoy this recording and the material to come.

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Flute Player Tackles Technology!

Finally, after weeks (yes, weeks) of frustration, I have finally learned how to cut off parts of a sound file I don’t want, add fade outs and export the newly fixed file as a .wav.  I am not computer savvy, and I have a bunch of recordings lying around that just need a little patching up.  For me, this is a victory.

The first track I have chosen to unleash upon the digital world is a recording of one of the first free improvisations I ever did.  Recorded in 2009 in Denver Colorado, it features my wooden or “Native American” flute.  The other musicians in the recording are members of the band Still Light.  They were fascinated by my flute and asked me to just start playing and that they would follow along.  I complied despite feeling nervous and exposed, and this track is the result of that experiment.  It is interesting to look back at some of my earlier work as a flute player and see how far I have come as a performer and improviser.  Not to mention the instrument itself, which is beautiful in its own right.

There will be more of this soon, since I have finally figured out how to make recordings presentable for the internet.  Thank you for listening, hope you enjoy!

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And the Video

Also, here is the video of my recital. The sound quality is not as good as the Soundcloud version which I posted previously but hey, being able to watch it is kind of cool, right?

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Recording Posted

I have just posted the Souncloud version of my senior recital, Medieval is a Two Way Choro, under SoundBits. I have also included it in this post. Thanks again to all who came and I hope to have more for you soon!

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The Big Night Looms Near

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As of today there are exactly thirteen days left until the big event of Saturday April 5, 2014.  I swing back and forth between waves of anxiety and surges of excitement as it creeps closer.  I feel like I’m juggling strangely shaped objects as I scramble to put the rest of the pieces of the big night together and yet somehow they are all still in the air.  My senior recital has been a long time in coming, and there have been many peaks and valleys on the way both in and out of school.  While I have “technically” been in college now for five years, it really has taken nine years to get to this point.  Five years ago a close friend told me that I was “an amazing flute player,” and that I should try to get into to a nice school somewhere.  I didn’t believe him; in fact my heart sank when he told me this because I wanted so badly for it to be true.  At the time I was stuck in a real mess and had very little hope for the future.  I remember all this as I write out the acknowledgments for my program and the emotions are making it really hard to say what I want to say.  In brief, I never thought I would make it to this point.  But here I am, and I look forward to the night of April 5th with eager anticipation.  I hope you all have marked your calendars and I look forward to celebrating this special event with all of you.