Concert Planned! Adam’s patches!
Concert Planned! Adam’s patches!
Concerts and patches!
Laptop Orchestral rehearsal was again a fun and productive session. Following a meeting with Michael Oliva, Area Leader for Electroacoustic Music, we have confirmed a concert in collaboration with the RCM Centre for Music and Multimedia (CMM) to include various exciting pieces for instruments and electronics. We have also penciled in a date for the RCM Laptop Orchestra main concert which will feature more pieces after the Easter holiday. The proposed dates are currently
March 17th - CMM Forum + RCM Laptops
May 19th - RCM Laptops in Concert
Rehearsal this week allowed us to plan our rehearsal schedule in preparation for the concert and we discovered some new and exciting ideas for the gig. This included the potential for an performance using 4-5 iPhones/iPod Touch units, practice using Adam Scott Neal’s ‘FreqOut’ and ‘Presets’ Laptop Orchestra pieces, and the further development of our improvisation techniques using ‘open software’.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
The orchestra seemed to very much like the idea of ‘Presets’ though because of what might be bug in the max patch we postponed further rehearsal until the next meeting. We did however very successfully perform ‘FreqOut’ a number of times with valuable ideas and opinions coming after trying out the max patches.
Adam’s piece “FreqOut”, which I performed as part of the Laptop Quartet in Belfast, seemed to very successfully work without a genuine networked connection so long as all players begin the timer at the same time. Over the duration of the piece, each performer’s knobs and dials are programmatically controlled allowing the musicians precious little control over the sound relying heavily on the vibrato speed and depth controls. This is quite a different approach to the ‘open’-ness we’ve come to know in RCM Laptop Orchestra and a welcome change! With the little control allowed, very interesting subtleties were revealed in each of our performances.
The next rehearsal will be February 10th where we’ll be working on the pieces that will feature in the CMM Forum at the end of March.
Adam’s composer website is online at http://www.adamscottneal.com