Seven Melbournisms & A Fantasy

for "Electric" Gamelan Degung

SOUND CLIP COMING SOON!

Written at Monash University and performed at a Composer's Concert in December 2003, 7 Melbournisms brings old and new together: traditional instruments and notation of Javanese gamelan and live computer processing. The instruments are appropriately mic'ed and their sounds fed into a program written in Max/MSP which allows real-time alteration of that sound. Each movement alters the gamelan sound in a different way. The final movement explores all the manipulations together, and is a small tip-o-the-hat to composer Elliot Carter's Eight Etudes and a Fantasy.

Each movement conjures a unique aspect of life in Melbourne, Australia. Their titles are:

1. skylines of clouds

2. lousy public transport

3. anzac biscuits

4. bourke st. mall

5. the pony

6. trees where cars should be

7. music scene

8. fantasy

I also wrote an essay describing my intentions and inspirations behind the piece, which seems to be a fairly standard practice in Australia. CLICK HERE to download the backstory behind this piece!

The Max/MSP patches are available upon request.