Hello, ladies and also gentlemen. This is a small announcement concerning my new musical project, Yaoi! Attack, which is shortly going to take the world by storm. Tinny over-compressed electronic tape-noise-psych-soul-boogie for the win! You heard it here first!
The basic technique is: stick itunes on shuffle; make a note of the first 10 songs that get played; sample them; make something new. As such, a small note about the genetic make-up of each song is in order:
Mile zero bison = robert wyatt w/ orchestre national de jazz + squarepusher + steeleye span + hella + marnie stern + the lucksmiths
Yes, I am = mogwai + the byrds + steve reich + volcano! + magic sam + aidan smith + j dilla + louise attaque
Beautiful underwater frond pond = alan r splet + ital tek + frank zappa + herbie hancock + trevor wishart + matthew herbert
Scaling the face of... = robert knight + the coral + esbjorn svensson trio + nosaj thing + doves + tom waits + john coltrane
Befriend me on myspace if you're feeling charitable: www.myspace.com/edwardrmillington
Or find me on the soundcloud: www.soundcloud.com/yaoi-attack
xx
Sweet iplayer linkaroo
For those of you who fancy a listen-again to Then We Came to the End (maybe you tuned in on Friday, but were too excited by the music to catch much of the plot), please use the following handy electronic link...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p6vt9/Friday_Play_Then_We_Came_to_the_End/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00p6vt9/Friday_Play_Then_We_Came_to_the_End/
Then We Came to the End
Then We Came to the End is this Friday's 'Friday Play' on BBC Radio 4. It goes out at 9pm. It features specially-composed music by Ed Millington. Ed Millington is me. Therefore, I thought I'd write a blog post about it.
According to its special BBC web page, the tragi-comic play is about "a dysfunctional company of misfits in an advertising agency [who] try to come to terms with the effects of the downturn, as boom turns to bust and the lay-offs begin."
(...more after the break...)
According to its special BBC web page, the tragi-comic play is about "a dysfunctional company of misfits in an advertising agency [who] try to come to terms with the effects of the downturn, as boom turns to bust and the lay-offs begin."
(...more after the break...)
Wail to God
Hullo. In today's blog, we'll be looking at animation. Or rather, one specific animation: Anthony F Scheppard's cartoon-horror video for the Ape School track Wail to God. Having first stripped the video of its original sonic context, I composed my own sound design to it. I thought it would be interesting to take a piece of footage that had originally been composed to some music, and try to reverse-imagineer the process. Anyhey, the results are below. Enjoy, have fun, and stay safe!
(the original video, featuring the psychy-pop melodies of Ape School (buy! buy! buy!), can be found here)
(the original video, featuring the psychy-pop melodies of Ape School (buy! buy! buy!), can be found here)
Hell yeah, sonic art!
Below is a new piece of mine, which I wrote last week. It's called The Corners Kept Their Secrets Where There Were Claw Marks In The Dust, which is a Dylan Thomas line before y'all start thinking I've become even more pretentious than usual. Granted, I am up my own arse, but in this case my pretension is filtered through that of one of Swansea's favourite sons, which, by my reckoning, makes it acceptable.
Its title aside, the piece exists as an effort, on my part, to write something only using sound-objects sourced from small noises: if left to my own devices, the acousmatic music I write is generally pretty full-on and bombastic, and I wanted to have a turn being a delicate little flower. I let myself down slightly, and there are two loud noises in there (both drum hits), but, generally speaking, I think I managed not to resort to my fall-back position of 'oh this is getting a bit dull, why don't we whack in a scream / some white noise / the sound of a building falling over'...
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think and that.
Its title aside, the piece exists as an effort, on my part, to write something only using sound-objects sourced from small noises: if left to my own devices, the acousmatic music I write is generally pretty full-on and bombastic, and I wanted to have a turn being a delicate little flower. I let myself down slightly, and there are two loud noises in there (both drum hits), but, generally speaking, I think I managed not to resort to my fall-back position of 'oh this is getting a bit dull, why don't we whack in a scream / some white noise / the sound of a building falling over'...
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think and that.
Memory Tapes - 'Seek Magic': a Review thereof.
Hullo crazy crew,
Ceri got us writing reviews in contextual studies last week. I thought I'd share mine with you- it's a review of the album 'Seek Magic' by Memory Tapes. Enjoy!...
Ceri got us writing reviews in contextual studies last week. I thought I'd share mine with you- it's a review of the album 'Seek Magic' by Memory Tapes. Enjoy!...
Anarchic Transformations: Trevor Wishart & Vox 5
Hola my lovelies! After the break is the text of an essay comprising my thoughts on Trevor Wishart's seminal work Vox 5, which has been a massive inspiration to me. Wishart's stereo mix of the piece itself is embedded just here, for your listening pleasure:
(PS ...I apologise for the lack of footnotes, but seriously, what do you want for nothing? Rubber biscuit?)
(PS ...I apologise for the lack of footnotes, but seriously, what do you want for nothing? Rubber biscuit?)
Notes on an installation
Hey! It's me!
So we pretty much put an installation on yesterday, as part of RWCMD's Open House Day & 60th Birthday celebrations. It was super-rad, and anyone who missed it really should take a long hard look at themselves.
...but wait! By expedient chance, latecomers and the infirm have an opportunity to watch the following short video, which gives one the opportunity to experience the performance as if one had really been there! And all at no extra cost to the viewer!
Here it is: 'Bored Meeting'..
The idea was to recreate the quasi-hallucinatory dream state that the human mind often chooses to occupy during particularly long and tedious meetings. We've all been there I'm sure: it's where we are when we doodle on our expensive-looking jotters, or look out of the window, or try to see how many staplers we can fit up one nostril without the boss noticing.
(...more after the break...)
So we pretty much put an installation on yesterday, as part of RWCMD's Open House Day & 60th Birthday celebrations. It was super-rad, and anyone who missed it really should take a long hard look at themselves.
...but wait! By expedient chance, latecomers and the infirm have an opportunity to watch the following short video, which gives one the opportunity to experience the performance as if one had really been there! And all at no extra cost to the viewer!
Here it is: 'Bored Meeting'..
The idea was to recreate the quasi-hallucinatory dream state that the human mind often chooses to occupy during particularly long and tedious meetings. We've all been there I'm sure: it's where we are when we doodle on our expensive-looking jotters, or look out of the window, or try to see how many staplers we can fit up one nostril without the boss noticing.
(...more after the break...)
Experiment 2: in which I done a video
Bonjour, mes amis. These 3 videos are going to form part of another installation I'm doing at college next Saturday. They're going to be played on 3 video screens in one corner of an office room- the idea being that they're each one side of a corporate video-conferencing session that's going a bit wrong.
There'll be other stuff going on inside the room as well. Super secret stuff. The sound was made using a motion-tracking pd patch very similar to the one below, except this time it's to pre-composed video rather than a live stream.. anyway here are the videos. Enjoy!
(for best results, please feel free to watch all 3 at the same time...)
Sophie Tilley, live from Madrid
Jack Melham, all the way from sunny San Francisco
Matt McDade, lost and confused in Tokyo
There'll be other stuff going on inside the room as well. Super secret stuff. The sound was made using a motion-tracking pd patch very similar to the one below, except this time it's to pre-composed video rather than a live stream.. anyway here are the videos. Enjoy!
(for best results, please feel free to watch all 3 at the same time...)
Sophie Tilley, live from Madrid
Jack Melham, all the way from sunny San Francisco
Matt McDade, lost and confused in Tokyo
Experiment 1: in which a live video is streamed and gibberish is heard
Blatantly not been updating this here, mainly due to watching far too many Rodney Mullen videos on youtube over the past couple of weeks. However, I have been doing stuff, and stuff.
Here is some of it.
This is a test patch I've made in PureData for one of a pair of installations I'm aiming to put on in college at the open house day next week. At the moment it's called 'Catchphrase', after the BBC learn-Welsh podcast many of the samples are from.
Audio samples containing an instruction, suggestion or Welsh-based fact are set off at random intervals between 3 and 9 seconds. Meanwhile, a gem window detects movement in front of a fixed camera, tracking the image's centre of gravity. This tracker sets off letters from the Welsh alphabet (ordered from right to left in the above video, but left to right for the user), banging out a midi note in Logic at the same time. The alphabet-samples are pitchshifted higher if the movement is at the top of the screen, and lower as the centre of gravity moves further towards the bottom. Oh, and there's a bit of reverb and delay. And the next alphabet-sample won't get set off until the one before it has finished (it just got silly otherwise). And, err.. that's it.
It's not fantastically musical or anything, but it has a certain level of interaction, and given another week will hopefully be quite good, and also fun for people to wander past in the CMT corridor.
More experiments and, eventually, finished business to follow. Also, we absolutely have to video the boomwhacker piece and get that shit on youtube.
(edit - good lord, that video really doesn't need to be 3 minutes long, does it?)
Here is some of it.
This is a test patch I've made in PureData for one of a pair of installations I'm aiming to put on in college at the open house day next week. At the moment it's called 'Catchphrase', after the BBC learn-Welsh podcast many of the samples are from.
Audio samples containing an instruction, suggestion or Welsh-based fact are set off at random intervals between 3 and 9 seconds. Meanwhile, a gem window detects movement in front of a fixed camera, tracking the image's centre of gravity. This tracker sets off letters from the Welsh alphabet (ordered from right to left in the above video, but left to right for the user), banging out a midi note in Logic at the same time. The alphabet-samples are pitchshifted higher if the movement is at the top of the screen, and lower as the centre of gravity moves further towards the bottom. Oh, and there's a bit of reverb and delay. And the next alphabet-sample won't get set off until the one before it has finished (it just got silly otherwise). And, err.. that's it.
It's not fantastically musical or anything, but it has a certain level of interaction, and given another week will hopefully be quite good, and also fun for people to wander past in the CMT corridor.
More experiments and, eventually, finished business to follow. Also, we absolutely have to video the boomwhacker piece and get that shit on youtube.
(edit - good lord, that video really doesn't need to be 3 minutes long, does it?)
Avey Tare & Panda Bear vs Federico Fellini
So here's a little video I made for Avey Tare & Panda Bear's song 'April & The Phantom', using bits cut out of 'La Dolce Vita'...
I was trying to be a bit William Burroughs and make something like those videos the Books do for their music. It's a bit raggedy round the edges, but then so's the song itself, and that's why I like it.
Declaration of intent
Hello, happy internet wanderers. My name's Ed and this is my blog. I've recently graduated with Distinction from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, having been awarded an Mmus in Creative Music Technology.
I've had work commissioned by BBC Radio 4, and been played on BBC 6 Music in Britain and RTE Radio na Gaeltachta in Ireland. I have an invitation from the legendary Barry Truax to go and work under him for a month or two next summer, and am basically awesome all round.
What they say:
"[Ghosts Before Breakfast is...] an excellent EP... we would also recommend his wide-ranging writings and his projects with archive film" - Tom Robinson, BBC 6 Music
"I felt an instant affinity to your approach... technically masterful... very evocative" - Barry Truax, internationally-renowned composer and pioneer of granular synthesis
"multi-layered, thought-provoking work... have you considered entering the Turner Prize?" - Jonathan Hardy, multiple BAFTA-winning composer
This blog is intended to act as a showcase of my current research and other work, although I might just throw some random stuff up here as well; we'll see how it goes.
To see my current portfolio, please click here.
To see my current portfolio, please click here.
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or spare money, please leave a comment or get in touch via email: e.r.millington@dunelm.org.uk
Ed Millington - Portfolio
Audio-Visual Art!
Writing!
Send me electronic letters: e.r.millington@dunelm.org.uk
I've had work commissioned by BBC Radio 4, and been played on BBC 6 Music in Britain and RTE Radio na Gaeltachta in Ireland. I have an invitation from the legendary Barry Truax to go and work under him for a month or two next summer, and am basically awesome all round.
What they say:
"[Ghosts Before Breakfast is...] an excellent EP... we would also recommend his wide-ranging writings and his projects with archive film" - Tom Robinson, BBC 6 Music
"I felt an instant affinity to your approach... technically masterful... very evocative" - Barry Truax, internationally-renowned composer and pioneer of granular synthesis
"multi-layered, thought-provoking work... have you considered entering the Turner Prize?" - Jonathan Hardy, multiple BAFTA-winning composer
Writing!
Send me electronic letters: e.r.millington@dunelm.org.uk
I've had work commissioned by BBC Radio 4, and been played on BBC 6 Music in Britain and RTE Radio na Gaeltachta in Ireland. I have an invitation from the legendary Barry Truax to go and work under him for a month or two next summer, and am basically awesome all round.
What they say:
"[Ghosts Before Breakfast is...] an excellent EP... we would also recommend his wide-ranging writings and his projects with archive film" - Tom Robinson, BBC 6 Music
"I felt an instant affinity to your approach... technically masterful... very evocative" - Barry Truax, internationally-renowned composer and pioneer of granular synthesis
"multi-layered, thought-provoking work... have you considered entering the Turner Prize?" - Jonathan Hardy, multiple BAFTA-winning composer
Sound for radio!
Audio-Visual Art!
'An Evening of Music and Film'
A compendium of kinetophonic curiosity. Curated by me. An evening's programme that was performed at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama on 16 March 2010. Related blog posts, including more examples of the work on show, here.
'Ghosts before Breakfast'
New music and sound design to the Hans Richter short from 1927. Related blog post here.
(click here to return to my portfolio hub)
A compendium of kinetophonic curiosity. Curated by me. An evening's programme that was performed at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama on 16 March 2010. Related blog posts, including more examples of the work on show, here.
'Ghosts before Breakfast'
New music and sound design to the Hans Richter short from 1927. Related blog post here.
(click here to return to my portfolio hub)
Installations!
Contemporary composition!
Untitled Piece for Flute Trio & Electronics
I have been commissioned to write a piece for flute trio and tape, to be performed at the British Flute Society Convention 2010, an event which will take place at the Royal Northern College of Music in August. The following are some initial studies for the piece. Related blog post here.
'The Corners Kept Their Secrets Where There Were Claw-Marks In The Dust'
The stereo mix of an octophonic surround-sound piece that was premiered at RWCMD in November 2009. The piece exists as an effort, on my part, to write something mainly using sound-objects sourced from small noises Related blog post here.
Yaoi! Attack
Tinny over-compressed electronic tape-noise-psych-soul-boogie. Shortly to take the world by storm. Related blog posts here.
www.myspace.com/edwardrmillington
(click here to return to my portfolio hub)
I have been commissioned to write a piece for flute trio and tape, to be performed at the British Flute Society Convention 2010, an event which will take place at the Royal Northern College of Music in August. The following are some initial studies for the piece. Related blog post here.
'The Corners Kept Their Secrets Where There Were Claw-Marks In The Dust'
The stereo mix of an octophonic surround-sound piece that was premiered at RWCMD in November 2009. The piece exists as an effort, on my part, to write something mainly using sound-objects sourced from small noises Related blog post here.
Yaoi! Attack
Tinny over-compressed electronic tape-noise-psych-soul-boogie. Shortly to take the world by storm. Related blog posts here.
www.myspace.com/edwardrmillington
(click here to return to my portfolio hub)
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