Chris and Alan and Wadih and Amanda
http://espdisk.com/alansondheim/adamz.mp3
this is our set after Judy (Wadih and Amanda) Sunday nite
Chris had the baritone break after pipa. it made pipa weird.
I played viola with Wadih but viola wasn't audible on the track.
Then oud with Wadih and Amanda and that worked better.
More later, this is all I could put up at the moment.
new avatar and avatars
http://www.alansondheim.org/newavatar.mp4
the glittering blue jewel-object is a syzygy of four avatars created
in blender from metaballs configured by altered mocap equipment. the
avatars are frozen, moving in circular orbits among themselves and
around a displaced common center located on a standard object; their
shape is determined by their previous behavior through the mocap. so
here are fossils transported from the real physical world into the
virtual; alive in the real physical world, they've petrified here,
petrified in the various stages of their demise. look! look! they
move again!
"The night like a Queen in her purple and lace
With her diamonded brow and imperious grace
As she leads her fair votaries, train upon train
A-dance thro' the feasts of this mystic domain"
...
- James Whitcomb Riley, from Lockerbie Fair
Last Night's Music at Unnameable Books::
http://www.alansondheim.org/adamzoud.mp4
Alan Sondheim, oud
Chris Diasparra, baritone sax
This is a fair amount to watch, but it gives a good idea of the labor
involved in music production, something I've wanted to emphasize.
The oud is plugged in. To 'play like this' requires hours of practice
and an exactness that's difficult for me; I've only been playing
fretless instruments for maybe two years now. So the speed involves
quick stopping and starting (with all the issues of accelerating and
inertia involved), as well as hopefully minute adjustments to bring
the position into tune. Fingers, wrists, arms are involved. To get a
greater reach it's sometimes necessary to move the hand from under
the neck, fretting from above; I gain at least a fourth from that,
most of the time more. All of this, at speed, is exhausting; if it's
not, I need to play faster, so that the envelopes of the sounds
become the primary focus, not the individual notes and their linear
positioning. The video is a good recording of the process as a whole.
Courtesy of Azure Carter, 12/04/11.