Jane Martin Rumors
Dear Readers,
Let me make one thing clear: Jane Martin is Jane Martin. Jane Martin is NOT, I repeat NOT J.C. Combs. And once and for all, she’s no dummy!
What Jane Martin really is…is really, that is, she is an album. Now trust that I am not mixed up but the album alone is mixed up of mixes and strange, disturbing events. On with the show.
Signed,
JC
Jane Martin
Dear Readers,
I would like to announce an album that I am hosting on my Bandcamp page for a friend of mine named Jane Martin. She recently finished up the minimum of pieces to move forward with the release. She wishes to add all future works to the album over time as one collection, thus simply naming the album Jane Martin.
Jane wanted me to relay this info:
My Biography
Hello everyone. My name is Jane Martin. I live in Fairview, OK, or actually 10 miles on the outskirts of town in a little hobbit hole-type abode. I’m surrounded by many trees and I feel as though they are family. Sometimes I feel more connected to nature than to humans – as we know how humans and their bad sides can be. Anyway, not to ramble too much, but I was lucky in that a distant relative visiting from Eureka informed me about wireless internet and managed to hook me up. This was around three months ago, around the time my composition, music life started. Ever since I’ve been busy working at this album and I’ve managed to finish enough to post it for sale. I intend to add to the collection over time, but the trees have been ignored these last few months due to my obsession with music and now I feel its time to give them the attention they deserve.
Special thanks to J.C. Combs for hosting my album at his Bandcamp page and thanks to the fine citizens of Fairview, OK.
Yours Truly,
Jane Martin
Musical Therapy
Ophelia Steve Layton (feat. Paul Muller, Lee Noyes, Steve Moyes, J.C. Combs)
She Noticed the Color of Her Eyes - JC Combs, Joseph Benzola, Lee Noyes, Benjamin Smith
I would like to share two works from this week’s ImprovFriday session, exact opposites and I have realized they work as therapy, especially if listened to back to back. Heaven and Hell. Lets start with Hell. The first is “She Noticed the Color of Her Eyes.” The exact moment in time where a woman fell in love. Its a big mash of Joseph Benzola, Lee Noyes, and Benjamin Smith with serious tweaking on my part and employing the addition of found sounds. I combined all three of Joe’s works he submitted to IF and at one point spaced two side by side. I tweaked the volume level to lower and rise and switched the sound direction to pan. I also added the effect “a cold house – reverb” . For Lee’s percussion improv, I added “formant frenzy” from the echo chamber. For Ben’s electronic organ impro, I tweaked the volume as well but here’s the catch, I added the sweeping phaser “red pill/blue.”
Once you listened to that, its time to shake off any anxiety or tension with Steve Layton’s “Ophelia.” A mash of Paul Muller, Lee Noyes, Steve Moyes, and myself — Steve says “crazy, but quietly and sweetly so.”
I hope the therapy worked. For more, head over here. ImprovFriday
Flip flopped again (trials & tribulations)
Seeing that I have a horrible preamp (I’m pretty sure its made out of toy parts) I realized that a pair of nice NT5s won’t sound very good until I spend quite a bit more on a preamp. So I canceled the order.
As you may know, I’ve been moving toward the direction of “sound art” for the last several months. So the question really is, what’s more important, recording my piano or sounds of the world? The latter.
However, I did spend an additional hundred dollars on this unit because it has a solid reputation as one of the quieter field recorders with pretty good built-in microphones. We will see just how well it records the Acrosonic.
ImprovFriday is growing up!
ahh, isn’t she so cute? The event ImprovFriday is really flourishing with its own public network. I want to encourage users to use the network features beyond the fun event, especially the blogs to promote themselves and share thoughts, ideas, etc.
So far users have been taking advantage of the photo section to make an art walk.
There are also some pretty nice videos there as well.
And lastly, what makes the place tick, the members.
Some things technically don’t make sense
It has been almost two months in my quest for a microphone to both capture a decent recording of my Baldwin Acrysonic and to use for field recordings. The research has led me to this thought: If I only had five thousand to kill on a matched pair of microphones?
I’d be curious to know if there is really that much more involved in manufacturing a higher quality microphone that would change the price tag so drastically. Maybe so, but in any case I’ve decided to go with a matched pair of Rode NT5s.
I was going for a pair of large condenser microphones to capture a fuller medium range, with the piano in mind. I ordered a pair of Marshal V87s on Ebay. The seller had a 99 percent rating, so I found it strange that the microphones weren’t delivered at the two-and-a-half-week mark. I canceled the order and maybe it was a good thing. Over the last couple weeks I have been thinking more and more about capturing my own field recordings. I think using other people’s sounds is a must, so sites like Freesound.org have my utmost respect. But I have a strong feeling that getting out there in the field, imagining the way the recording will work in the piece as I record, is going to be a great experience.
The next step…. what mini-digital recorder? Ahrrggg!!
ImprovFriday Site Launch – CD, etc.
A little history. I founded ImprovFriday back in March. It was a boring Friday. I was improvising and thought, I like this improvisation and I want to post it to Twitter. But I had no reason to. I thought, if I announce its ImprovFriday, that reason would be sufficient. The first reply was from Twitkarl. He replied “improvfriday?” Soon after David Toub posted the first improvisation and the rest is history.
Look at the right side here for every blog post of every week’s IF program with audio links. It has steadily grown and with the help of social networks like Facebook and Twitter it has been pretty successful. I would like to thank everyone on the collaboration CD that is in the works and give a nod to David Toub, the first participant. David has has given great feedback regarding ImprovFriday as well. I would lastly like to thank Dennis Bathory-Kitsz for pushing me to get rid of a feature which was making the event difficult to participate in, which was the use of blip.fm/ (no offense blip!).
But alas, we finally reached a point where we need our own site and I’m happy to announce ImprovFriday. Its not going to be a NNM part 2, but it is going to be a place where I hope people show up to post nice music.
Only this, and nothing more
Someone tipped me on to P22 text-based composition. I found it pretty fun to experiment with. I noticed the more I typed in gibberish like “adslfks” the better chance the music would sound pleasing to my ears. This is probably because the generator is designed to sound “chancy” and by typing random letters I’m performing a function of chance.
After numerous experiments I decided to punch some classic literature into the generator. I download the MIDI file and touched it up on my end. Here is the end result.
The Raven (audio link)- By Edgar Allan Poe as Realized by JC Combs and P22 TBS
This is what’s going on
It came in through the bathroom window or backdoor, unlike the infamous Beatles tune (another Scanner Darkly reference).
By the way, I’ve been noticing I spend too much time on social networking sites and not enough time blogging. I think I need to budget my blogging time more efficiently. Since I haven’t been blogging as much, you probably don’t know what I’ve been up to besides “ImprovFriday.” This is how the mashup works out thus far:
I’ve been looking toward the electroaccoustic, accousmatic, soundscape direction and fellow Seattle composer/improviser/field technician and Stranger classical/jazz columnist, Christopher Delaurenti, has been kind enough to answer quite a few questions. He also steered me in the direction of composer/pianist/improviser/instructor, Gust Burns, whom I ended up studying piano with for a month. The main thing I learned from the lessons was that I was on the right track. That’s not exactly the correct wording; maybe not alone is better. Doing your own thing outside the big scene can sometimes make you wonder if you are off in outer space or here on Earth. Perhaps both Gust and I are off in outer space.
After this period of research, I decided to move forward focusing on traditional instrument and non-traditional instrument, the two working in tandem. I’ve purchased a little Baldwin Acrosonic (another thanks to Christopher Delaurenti for the suggestion) and a used matched pair of Oktavas MK-012 from the highly esteemed composer Dennis Bathory-Kitsz .
The non-traditional instrument works will consist of sample-based music. Although this area has been explored in the past, there is still much to be discovered. This “field” of music is what I consider the future of amaranth music.
2008
2009
2010
2011
2011
2011
2012
2011
2010
