…life under hylaster

At 8:04PM tonight I had just sat down with dinner when I heard what sounded like a large truck speeding by outside and then everything started shaking. My first thought was that wind caused by the “truck” was blowing the building around, but I quickly realized that it was, in fact, my first earthquake. Twenty minutes later I am still feeling a little shaky. Apparently this one was centered near Alum Rock between the East and South Bay areas on the Calaveras fault.

According to local news 5.6 magnitude is one of the bigger ones experienced around here in a few years, but it is still considered to be on the high end of the “moderate” range. Nothing fell or broke in my apartment, but everything was definitely wobbling and the floor seemed to turn to mush for a few seconds. It was an eerie feeling and made me realize that I have no idea what to do in a quake. As I type this the local news is pointing out that a moderate Alum Rock quake was a lead-up to the “Big One” in 1989. Great….

This weekend I have two concerts with Pauline Oliveros. Friday night I’m playing at the Sacramento State Festival of New American music. Pauline is the featured composer at the festival this year and Friday night is a program of her music. I’m playing on a piece called “Red Shifts,” for trombone solo (Monique Buzzarté) and four analog oscillators (me and some fellow Mills grad students.) Then on Saturday I’m playing a short improvised set with Pauline and fellow Mills student Suzanne Thorpe at Oakland’s Chapel of the Chimes.

Filed by chuck j at 10:52 pm under events, self-promotion
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(appropriated image)

It’s time to catch up on some recent recordings. There hasn’t been much time since school started, but I’ve made it a personal goal to record a synth jam every couple of days.

I posted something similar a few months ago, but I think this one is a bit more refined: Here is a synthesizer pretending to be “Nature.” Noise -> Sample and Hold.

Here is feedback-generated rhythm. Notice how voltage fluctuations throw you off just as you are getting your dance move down.

This one’s namesake is some bad news I received about my car yesterday.

And here are some pieces that resulted from recent course work:

A soundwalk piece (for a seminar with Zeena Parkins.)

And a piece programmed and performed in Supercollider (for a Computer Music seminar with Chris Brown.) This one makes gratuitous use of an object based on Xenakis’ GENDY program that does “dynamic stochastic synthesis.”

“The lab” circa last week:

Filed by chuck j at 1:55 pm under handmade electronics, sounds, synthesizer, works-in-progress
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