Almias app!

Just a small note to say the Almias app is now available for Android phones. There are a few features that need to be dropped in over the next week, but it is stable and performed very well in my field test earlier this week. You can get it free from Google Play via the Almias website – enjoy!

There are also photos and info on the press page.

Almias app, credit: Layla Smith

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‘Difficult’ 19th album…

Took a break from Almias-related activities to spend some time working on the new Xenis Emputae Travelling Band album ‘Three Spirits’ this afternoon. It’s going through that painful ‘almost ready but not quite’ phase, but here are a few brief samples from it as it stands so far:

I hope to be sending demos out in the next month since I’d love this to be a nice edition, ideally on vinyl. I’ve got a few ideas about who might dig it, but any suggestions welcome in the comments.

Loitering in a long barrow. Photo by Layla Smith.

A Tale of Two Conferences (and a presentation)

Last week I spent two days at Leeds University, first attending the CePRA (Centre for Practice-Led Research in the Arts) Study Day on Tuesday and the twelth Sonic Arts Forum on Saturday. Below are a few notes on each day, along with a couple of thoughts on a presentation closer to home by Kinglsey Ash (a fellow academic at the School of Film, Music and Performing Arts at Leeds Met).

The CePRA Study Day was organised by postrgraduates Lauren Redhead and Marcello Messina and divided into four sessions – composition and technology; aural and visuial; lecture recitals and a keynote speech by Bryan Matthews, senior research fellow at Leeds’ Institute for Transport Studies. Unfortunately I had to leave before the keynote speech, but enjoyed the rest of the sessions, which are summarised below.

Scott McLaughlin (University of Leeds) started the day by talking about Resonant Systems – or to give the work it’s full title Resonant Systems: multiphonic resonance complexes in sine-wave excited cymbal clusters. Here Scott had a system based on one or more cymbals mounted on a transducer, which generated sinusoidal waves courtesy of a Max/MSP patch. It looked something like this:

Two Cymbals and transducer (photo by Scott McLaughlin)

Sonic Arts Forum

A quick note to say that Simon and I are making a brief presentation on our work with oral history, sonic art and locative media at the twelfth Sonic Arts Forum at Leeds University tomorrow.

I went to a few of these while working on my MSc (genetic algorithms for real-time music generation) and always found it a very pleasant and relaxed atmosphere. Looking forward to seeing old faces and meeting new ones!

Here’s the itinerary for interest:

Sonic Arts Forum Event – Saturday 7th of July all welcome.

9.30am tea and coffee
10.00am David Hindmarsh – Acousmatic with psychoacoustic effects
10.27am Paul Wilson – Field Recordings
10.54 Stuart Russell – Live keyboard work
11.21 tea break
11.48 Phil Legard/Simon Bradley – Locational audio
12.03 Carey Nutman – Visual to audio
12.30 lunch
1.15 Free Improv session (all comers welcome)
1.42 Frederico Macedo – fixed media instrument piece
2.09 Anton Jidkov/Ian Gibson – Spatialisation work
2.36 Michael Lau – Acousmatic hydrophone work
3.03 Chris Lillywhite – Text based work
3.30 tea break
3.45 Patrick McGlynn – Gesture based work
4.12 Rosanne Robertson – Locational sound art
4.39 Francesco Sani – Birth of a Star
5.07 decamp somewhere local, to be determined on the day, for food and drink.

Directions to Leeds University can be found here
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/contact/

and a campus map here
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/site/custom_scripts/campus_map.php

We will be in the music department – which is no. 75 on the map.