G.N.O.

CNE Podcast Episode 3 is out

by lawrence

http://www.chinesenewear.com/podcast/

Li Jianhong Interview

Host: Dajuin Yao
Time: November 28, 2006; 3:30 p.m.
Place: Recording Studio, New Media Art Department, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou

Renowned musician, owner of 2pi Records and organizer of the annual 2pi Sound Art Festival (one of the key experimental music events in China and a showcase for the best of the Chinese avant-garde), Li Jianhong talks about the Fourth 2pi Festival (November 25, 2006), his solo performance at the festival, his brand-new CD release - A Brief History of Time (Post-Concrete) and his view on the new Chinese sound in experimental music.

The interview was conducted in Mandarin Chinese. A complete English transcript will be posted here shortly.

A real acousmatic concert, or so it seems

by lawrence

When Dajuin Yao 姚大钧 played at 2pi Festival 2006, people were surprised by the change from his well-known style: No more voice-based drone or mandarin-modulation. Instead, we heard a Terry Riley-like sine wave-based melodious concert! The lid of his laptop was closed (or seemingly so), and Yao was found head-down (probably eyes closed) and busy working with sliders on a MIDI-controller, indeed without touching the laptop at all. It’s also funny that a couple of minutes into the piece, a male voice was heard, but it was only half way through the piece did we (ok, I) see through the dim light a long-hair ghost-like figure standing in front of the microphone - it’s live! Who is this man? Didn’t Yao use the computer at all? Why the style change? Today Yao had a post on his blog demystifying all these issues. Below is my translation of the post (together with original pics), the original (Chinese) can be read here.

My concert at 2pi Festival this time (Nov 25, 2006) has been misunderstood by many people, even those who saw it live. Some said there were human voice samples involved, some even thought it was the air-strike siren sample (I did use such a siren during the final jam session). I think I’ll make a few clarifications here.

Usually Wang Changcun 王长存 and I would poke each other about what you gonna play before such a concert, though no one would disclose. Seeing I played with the laptop lid closed, he said resentfully afterward: “This is hardcore, man.”

I planned my gig in a way that I hope would bring something different to the festival. No typical 2pi-style loud volume, not even a single piece of sample, no human voice, no concrete sounds, no noise. I also tried to avoid rhythm. There was only pitched melody.

Basically it’s a customized instrument I made from scratch. The idea was to play the controller with my hands without looking at the screen of my laptop. The computer program is but the engine or circuit board as seen in traditional electronic instruments: you don’t play those but let them stay there. I even went as far as closing the lid of my laptop. (held it with a pack of cigarettes so that it doesn’t go into sleep mode)

Actually I’ve been thinking about performing like this for a couple of years, which I think would be helpful to self-immune from the pointless debate on either the lack of “visual element in computer music performance” or “body gesture”. In fact, maybe we can once again go back to the very essence of music by shunning these irrelevant discussions. Maybe.

Here is the basic structure of the piece/instrument I finally came up with the last two days before the performance.

The interface I used was Behringer BCF2000 controller. Behringer has always been a big knock-off brand which would certainly embarrass German. It specializes in ripping off the design of all kinds of musical instruments such as mixer or monitor speaker made by the American brand Mackie, and has them outsourced to the factories in China in order to sell at low price. However, BCF2000 is an exceptionally original design. One big selling-point is its unique motorized 8-channel faders.

In this piece I made, Behringer BCF2000 was not just a “controller” used to control the parameters but the instrument that I “played”. This is made possible by its 100mm long-distance faders and the sufficient spaces between the 8 tracks which allow independence of fingers and the precision of their movements. What’s more, the stickiness of the variable resistance is just about right, unlike Evolution UC-33 or Roland MCR-8, which are way too sticky to “play” fast-changing variables. The 16-channel (a number that beats everybody) Peavy PC-1600 could be the ideal controller had it has more spaces between the faders and longer sliding distance.

Also, the motorization feature enables the faders to be restored to their original positions automatically when shifting between pages. This virtually multiplies the number of faders and knobs. As a playing interface, it can be used to control enough number of parameters.

Below is the core tone generation part of my Max/MSP patch. The patch first calculates the frequencies of a just intonation scale as the global variables to feed the whole program. Due to the use of just intonation, the tune sounded a little off-key to the well-tempered ears, which added special flavour to it. This trick has been used by the likes of Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Robert Rich and Jon Hassell for dozens of years.

The main body of the patch was a simple 8-voice synthesizer, with 3 wave generators each voice (that’s 24 altogether). There were two sine waves with adjustable value of detune in-between, which added some richness to the sound. Also at work was a little bit of adjustable square wave in order to make the voice stands out when soloing. All these were written according to the basic rules of synthesizer design.

I also set some widely-adjustable portamento/glide. When used appropriately, it would extend the sound far beyond the limitation of musical notes. There was also a glide button at the lower-right corner of the controller, so that my fingers can add glide effect whenever I want during the glide-free 8-voice passages, resulting in a twisted, psychedelic note-bending sound. Besides, there were also panning control for each voice and reverb control for the main sound-out.

And the rest is the patch connecting the controller and the synthesizer, which can be recycled for future use as a subpatch module.

So you see, I don’t need to look at the screen when playing such an instrument, in fact I can even play it with my eyes closed. Of course, the above is just the instrument itself, content-wise it’s another story. All melodies were improvised manually.

The structure of this piece/instrument is a prototype of what will become a very complex live instrument. In the future I’ll be working on the organic algorithmic composing feature which is capable of generating complex melodies. The playing will still be done on the control interface only, with screen closed.

I was glad to have met my pisces new media friend Shen Ligong 沈立功 a few minutes before the performance. After jerking around for a bit I suddenly came up with the idea of inviting him to collaborate with me. I asked him to do anything he wants, regardless of medium. Be it modern dance or performance art, whatever. Art must be dangerous to be interesting. So we started without knowing what’s in each other’s mind. And there you had: Ligong the wicked pisces opened his voice and had a wicked time in the wicked just intonation pond I built.

[Photos: Wang Changcun, Wang Ke 王可. All photos were published on 潜艇日志 SUB LOG first.]

Blogging Emperor

by lawrence

Even The First Emperor, Tan Dun 谭盾’s new opera to be premiered at The Metropolitan Opera, New York within a few days, has a blog. “Artists from the production team share their backstage experiences bringing this world-premiere production to life.” - TFE’s official website.

Yan Jun’s blog: new address

by lawrence

Beijing-based sound artist/critic/curator Yan Jun’s blog has a new URL:

http://www.yanjun.org/blog/

Please update your bookmark. The blog is in Chinese.

Two or three things I know about Little Sound

by lawrence

Little Sound is a Chinese sound art label founded by avid listener LI Pengfei 李鹏飞, better known as “Tmdbbc“, in August, 2006. As of this writing, it has already put out 14 releases, which makes it so far the Chinese label with the shortest releasing cycle. All these releases, however, are three-inch CDR limited to 20 copies, and as a result, the first 9 are already out-of-print.

They are:

[LS001] Hitlike: In
[LS002] Tmdbbc: Earain
[LS003] Tmdbbc: Warning
[LS004] Torturing Nurse: Prurient shower
[LS005] Ronez: Summer
[LS006] Shenggy: Born to go, into space
[LS007] Yang Tao 杨韬 & Earweego: Improvisation #4
[LS008] Shiz 柿子: Yin 隐 (the Retreat)
[LS009] K1973: Xiao Pang Xian 小胖线 (Little Fatty Line)

As much as I acknowledge Tmdbbc’s actionist strategy in terms of label running, it will be a real pity that some of the above releases were to be eternal hidden gem. For instance, Xiao Pang Xian is the most convincing Chinese-language phonography work I’ve heard until now (although a strong challenge is coming soon from Post-Concrete).

I suggested to Tmdbbc about possible “gem-rescue” solution, namely, with the consent of the artists themselves, uploading the 9 items online in lossless format, together with hi-res artworks. I’m looking forward to the realization of this idea.

In the meantime, you can order other items from the label through their online shop. The latest releases come from Li Jianhong 李剑鸿 (Hangzhou), Alok & LWTV (Hong Kong), and Zhou Risheng 周日升 (Datong). Also check out their website for complete discography.

[Live recording] Livescope live at 2pi Festival 06

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 15.6 MB).

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

Recorded by Lin Zhiying.

[Live recording] Li Jianhong live at 2pi Festival 06

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 18.3 MB).

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

Recorded by Lin Zhiying.

[Live recording] Tsai Hsinyuan live at 2pi Festival 06

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 34.5 MB).

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

Recorded by Lin Zhiying.

[Live recording] Lin Zhiying, Zhong Minjie at 2pi Festival 06

by lawrence

Download the recording (MP3 format, 87.2 MB, 1 hour 3 mins and 31 seconds).

China-based users can download it from here for better speed. (thanks Hitlike for mirroring).

This set is a bit different:

• Part 1 (00:00 - 18:19), by Zhong Minjie
• Part 2 (18:20 - 48:44), by Zhong Minjie & Lin Zhiying
• Part 3 (48:45 - 1:03:31), by Lin Zhiying

[Gig] Yang2, Me:Mo, Lowfish

by lawrence

The three will perform on the open ceremony of the exhibition Lv Xiao and its Friends.

Time: 20:30, Dec 2, 2006
Address: Opposite Gate 12, Worker Stadium, Chaoyang district, Beijing.
Tel：+86 10 6551 1632

MP3 samples of new Post-Concrete CDs

by lawrence

With the approval of the artists and the label, Hitlike has shared two three-minute segments of Wang Changcun’s Parallel Universe and Li Jianhong’s A Brief History of Time.

Download sample of Universe BJ from Parallel Universe.
Download sample of the first track from A Brief History of Time.

You can also read Li’s own thoughts on the album here.

These two brand new releases from Post-Concrete can be purchased at Sugar Jar, 798, Beijing. If you are not in Beijing, you can order from their online shop at Taobao (the equivalent of eBay in China).

If you are not in China, please order by writing to ear [at] chinesenewear.com.

Related: Coming releases from Post-Concrete

Subscribe with email:

  RSS feed

Recent Comments:

• mabuya: this is undoubtly not 2007 but 2006.
• Simon: Another good gig happening in Beijing that week is a Noise Festival at D22. Torturing...
• Tyrrell: Your work is both informative and intelligent. I have a few thoughts of my own I would...
• Bob Gluck: This is not a response to this particular issue, but rather to the rather insulting...
• Antidote Management: The Antidote at C’s Bar Shanghai. 685 Dingxi Lu, near Fahuazhen Lu....
• nowhereblue: 有趣的巧合~
• sin:ned: hi du yisa, “Yao made specific claims concerning the listening practices of...
• du yisa: Dear sin:ned Thank you for your comment. However, I must disagree with you. It seems...
• sin:ned: i think we are getting too far away from what yao means…i am not saying that what...
• du yisa: Dear DaveX I don’t know what ‘music makers’ are, I don’t know...