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Songs And Views Of The Magnetic Garden
''Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden'' (1975/Catalyst 09026-61823-2 1993) is an album "performed, synthesized, recorded, and mixed by Alvin Curran." Liner notes by Tim Page and Alvin Curran. *"This lush musical landscape, Alvin Curran's first multi-media solo work, intertwines singing and synthesizer, drones and overtones, bells, gamelans, and sounds of nature—a unique tapestry of sound that eloquently introduces a fanciful and original American composer."From the album back. Tim Page and Alvin Curran. ''Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden''. 1975/Catalyst 09026-61823-2 1993. Curran says that he was encouraged by then recent solo works by Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, and Simone Forti, while AllMusic says the album recalls early electronic work involving tape loops, echo, and feedback, and resembles composers Riley, Pauline Oliveros, and Steve Reich.Brenholts, Jim.Songs and Views of the Magnetic Garden, AllMusic. *"Curran interweaves the so ...
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Alvin Curran
Alvin Curran (born December 13, 1938) is an American composer, performer, improviser, sound artist, and writer. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and lives and works in Rome, Italy. He is the co-founder, with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, of Musica Elettronica Viva, and a former student of Elliott Carter. Curran's music often makes use of electronics and environmental found sounds. He was a professor of music at Mills College in California until 2006 and now teaches privately in Rome and sporadically at various institutions. His works include solo performance pieces such as ''Endangered Species'', ''TransDadaExpress'', and ''Shofar''; radio works such as ''Crystal Psalms'', ''Un Altro Ferragosto'', ''I Dreamt John Cage Yodeling at the Zurich Hauptbahnhof'', and ''Living Room Music''; large-scale musical choreographic works such as ''Oh Brass on the Grass Alas'', for 300 amateur brass-band musicians, and the ''Maritime Rites'' series of performances on and ne ...
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Steve Reich
Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." To do so, his music employs the technique of phase shifting, in which a phrase is slightly altered over time, in a flow that is clearly perceptible to the listener. His innovations include using tape loops to create phasing patterns, as on the early compositions '' It's Gonna Rain'' (1965) and '' Come Out'' (1966), and the use of simple, audible processes, as on '' Pendulum Music'' (1968) and '' Four Organs'' (1970). The 1978 recording '' Music for 18 Musicians'' would help entrench minimalism as a movement. Reich's work ...
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Thumb Piano
Mbira ( ) are a family of musical instruments, traditional to the Shona people of Zimbabwe. They consist of a wooden board (often fitted with a resonator) with attached staggered metal tines, played by holding the instrument in the hands and plucking the tines with the thumbs (at minimum), the right forefinger (most mbira), and sometimes the left forefinger. Musicologists classify it as a lamellaphone, part of the plucked idiophone family of musical instruments. In Eastern and Southern Africa, there are many kinds of mbira, often accompanied by the hosho, a percussion instrument. It is often an important instrument played at religious ceremonies, weddings, and other social gatherings. The "Art of crafting and playing Mbira/Sansi, the finger-plucking traditional musical instrument in Malawi and Zimbabwe" was added to the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2020. A modern interpretation of the instrument, the kalimba, was commercially p ...
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Flugelhorn
The flugelhorn (), also spelled fluegelhorn, flugel horn, or flügelhorn, is a brass instrument that resembles the trumpet and cornet but has a wider, more conical bore. Like trumpets and cornets, most flugelhorns are pitched in B, though some are in C. It is a type of valved bugle, developed in Germany in the early 19th century from a traditional English valveless bugle. The first version of a valved bugle was sold by Heinrich Stölzel in Berlin in 1828. The valved bugle provided Adolphe Sax (creator of the saxophone) with the inspiration for his B soprano (contralto) saxhorns, on which the modern-day flugelhorn is modeled. Etymology The German word ''Flügel'' means ''wing'' or ''flank'' in English. In early 18th century Germany, a ducal hunt leader known as a ''Flügelmeister'' blew the ''Flügelhorn'', a large semicircular brass or silver valveless horn, to direct the wings of the hunt. Military use dates from the Seven Years' War, where this instrument was employed as a ...
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Jew's Harp
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The people of the Kingdom of Israel and the ethnic and religious group known as the Jewish people that descended from them have been subjected to a number of forced migrations in their history" and Hebrews of historical History of ancient Israel and Judah, Israel and Judah. Jewish ethnicity, nationhood, and religion are strongly interrelated, "Historically, the religious and ethnic dimensions of Jewish identity have been closely interwoven. In fact, so closely bound are they, that the traditional Jewish lexicon hardly distinguishes between the two concepts. Jewish religious practice, by definition, was observed exclusively by the Jewish people, and notions of Jewish peoplehood, nation, and community were suffused with faith in the Jewish God, ...
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Chime (bell Instrument)
A chime () or set of chimes is a carillon-like instrument, i.e. a pitched percussion idiophone consisting of 22 or fewer cast bronze bells. Chimes are primarily played with a keyboard, but can also be played with an Ellacombe apparatus. Chimes are often automated, in the past with mechanical drums connected to clocks and in the present with electronic action. Bellfounders often did not attempt to tune chime bells to the same precision as carillon bells. Chimes are defined as specifically having fewer than 23 bells to distinguish them from the carillon. American chimes usually have one to one and a half diatonic octaves. According to a recent count, there are over 1,300 existing chimes throughout the world. Almost all are in the Netherlands and the United States, with most of the remainder in Western European countries. Etymology The word ''chime'' dates back to the 14th-century Middle English word , meaning ' cymbal'. It probably originates from the Old French or directl ...
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Ring Modulation
In electronics, ring modulation is a signal processing function, an implementation of frequency mixing, in which two signals are combined to yield an output signal. One signal, called the carrier, is typically a sine wave or another simple waveform; the other signal is typically more complicated and is called the input or the modulator signal. A ring modulator is an electronic device for ring modulation. A ring modulator may be used in music synthesizers and as an effects unit. The name derives from the fact that the analog circuit of diodes originally used to implement this technique takes the shape of a ring: a diode ring. The circuit is similar to a bridge rectifier, except that instead of the diodes facing left or right, they face clockwise or counterclockwise. Ring modulation is quite similar to amplitude modulation, with the difference that in the latter the modulator is shifted to be positive before being multiplied with the carrier, while in the former the uns ...
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Mbuti
The Mbuti people, or Bambuti, are one of several indigenous pygmy groups in the Congo region of Africa. Their languages are Central Sudanic languages and Bantu languages. Subgroups Bambuti are pygmy hunter-gatherers, and are one of the oldest indigenous people of the Congo region of Africa. The Bambuti are composed of bands which are relatively small in size, ranging from 15 to 60 people. The Bambuti population totals about 30,000 to 40,000 people. Many Batwa in various parts of the DRC call themselves Bambuti as well. There are three distinct subgroups: * The Sua (also Kango, or Mbuti), who speak a dialect (or perhaps two) of the language of a neighboring Bantu people, Bila. They are located centrally and are eponymous of the larger group. * The Efé, who speak the language of the neighboring Central Sudanic Lese. * The Asua, speakers of the Mangbetu (Central Sudanic) Asua language. Environment The Mbuti population live in the Ituri, a tropical rainforest cov ...
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Swallow
The swallows, martins, and saw-wings, or Hirundinidae, are a family of passerine songbirds found around the world on all continents, including occasionally in Antarctica. Highly adapted to aerial feeding, they have a distinctive appearance. The term "swallow" is used colloquially in Europe as a synonym for the barn swallow. Around 90 species of Hirundinidae are known, divided into 19 genera, with the greatest diversity found in Africa, which is also thought to be where they evolved as hole-nesters. They also occur on a number of oceanic islands. A number of European and North American species are long-distance migrants; by contrast, the West and South African swallows are nonmigratory. This family comprises two subfamilies: Pseudochelidoninae (the river martins of the genus ''Pseudochelidon'') and Hirundininae (all other swallows, martins, and saw-wings). In the Old World, the name "martin" tends to be used for the squarer-tailed species, and the name "swallow" for the more fork ...
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Overhead Power Line
An overhead power line is a structure used in electric power transmission and distribution to transmit electrical energy across large distances. It consists of one or more uninsulated electrical cables (commonly multiples of three for three-phase power) suspended by towers or poles. Since most of the insulation is provided by the surrounding air, overhead power lines are generally the least costly method of power transmission for large quantities of electric energy. Construction Towers for support of the lines are made of wood either grown or laminated, steel or aluminum (either lattice structures or tubular poles), concrete, and occasionally reinforced plastics. The bare wire conductors on the line are generally made of aluminum (either plain or reinforced with steel or composite materials such as carbon and glass fiber), though some copper wires are used in medium-voltage distribution and low-voltage connections to customer premises. A major goal of overhead power li ...
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Minimal Music
Minimal music (also called minimalism)"Minimalism in music has been defined as an aesthetic, a style, and a technique, each of which has been a suitable description of the term at certain points in the development of minimal music. However, two of these definitions of minimalism—aesthetic and style—no longer accurately represent the music that is often given that label." Johnson 1994, 742. is a form of art music or other compositional practice that employs limited or minimal musical materials. Prominent features of minimalist music include repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones, consonant harmony, and reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units. It may include features such as phase shifting, resulting in what is termed phase music, or process techniques that follow strict rules, usually described as process music. The approach is marked by a non-narrative, non- teleological, and non-representational approach, and calls attention to the activity of listening by ...
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