rocco di pietro

we had the honor to have a guest composer during the winter quarter at ccrma. rocco was advising us on making music and he composed a lot himself too in this period. he even composed a piece for lap top orchestra and we performed it at ccrma and uc irvine. his piece for slork is called 'one stone flow'.  it starts with some nature sounds played by laptops, then leading to drone like sounds played with laptops controlled by joysticks and the chords played at the piano. and finally laptops play interviews with the composers who have had influence on rocco's music, or were his teachers such as maderna, foss, boulez and finally john chowning. then the voices of the composers are manipulated with granular synthesis and build up a chaotic sound. the piece ends with a huge laugh played by all laptops.

if you want to hear rocco's interview with sica check out here.

more composers

last week we had a very interesting guest composer "alvin curran". his music is made of electronic and environmental sounds.  he has compositions from lake concerts featuring musicians in row boats to ship horn concerts. one of my favourite is his "floor plan/notes from underground" which was a holocaust memorial installation at ars electronica in linz.

good news for san francisco and bay area residents: he has a concert coming up this sunday(march 15th) at contemporary jewish museum in san francisco.

guest composers

we have had very interesting composers as guests at ccrma in the last couple of weeks. first "yinam leef" was here for pan asian music festival. we had the honor to have a class with him on composition seminar. i don't need to explain how rich and beautiful his music is, you can just listen to his music yourself but i just mention what moved me in his class was that he and lots of great composers have learned composition in a very classical western style and they are not sure if that's the best way to teach it to the next generations. on the one hand having the luxury of learning harmony and counterpoint in early ages help the composer to get to a deeper level in music, but doesn't it take some of her creativity? for example in  "berlin hochschule der kuenste" the composition students don't go through this classical education and they don't limit themselves to it. what do you think?

tape festival

last weekend i we went to tape music festival in san francisco. it was in cellspace which is a very cool venue but not necessarily for tape music. the acoustic of the room adds another roughness to the sound, which depending on the sound could make it sound cooler or not.

i really enjoyed a piece "etude aux sons animes" by pierre schaeffer. he has made use of very unique fantastic sounds that i could feel myself floating in a metal bowl or dropping metal ball on my ears. another favourite piece of mine was a composition of thom blum which was especially clean and i enjoyed how rich the whole sound was and clean the it moved from one texture to another. and of course my very favourite wave that night was ligeti's artikulation. it was nice to hear them through eight speakers in a new environment.

waves of the week!

i have a very crazy schedule and never have time to listen to music qualitatively during the week. but every weekend i borrow five to ten cds from stanford music library and take time to listen to them and some times analyzing them. if you do the same thing could be great to start some listening discussions on this blog.

one of the cds i have got for this week is voices 1900/2000 a choral journey through the twentieth century. very beautiful sounds. 

another set of waves i listened to this week were tons of gyoergy ligeti's music. having lived in vienna in the last decade of my life, i didn't hear as much ligeti music there as in the last week. but some of his masterpieces were performed in wien-modern (a yearly music festival in vienna on 20th century music.) my favourite ligeti's orchestral piece is atmospheres. this piece has such a thick texture with a huge variety of timbres. you might have heard it in the stanley kubrik's 2001, a space odyssey. enjoy listening to it while looking at the scores. the score is visually as rich and thick as the sound.

why wavelounge?

this blog is devoted to computer music. generating, listening, reading and discussing about electroacoustic music. 

feel free to discuss and add comments and suggestions.
i take part in composing, coding and performance with slork (stanford lap top orchestra). we had a performance a couple of weeks ago at macworld. here a video to warm up this blog.
slork at macworld

who's visda?

i am currently a music, science and technology student at ccrma (centre for computer research in music and acoustics) at stanford university.
i was born in tehran, emigrated to austria/vienna in the second decade of my life, then re-emigrated to california/ san francisco in the third decade of my life. next i am planning to emigrate to saturn to fulfill my childhood dreams.
my passion for astronomy and outer space led me to study physics in undergrad., then the fascination of computer science and new technologies led me to continue my education in computer science. i have always had a passion for music and played piano since childhood. while i improved my knowledge in computer technology, i learnt to use it as a musical instrument to express my passions. in order to get deeper in connecting music and technology i am studying at ccrma.
i also have a personal blog writing about my trips and culture shocks i am dealing with moving around the world: http://twoday.tuwien.ac.at/sfd/