Dubble8 Productions

Mapping the cardinal directions to the space of the Cohen Plaza

The Vigil [all-night music festival]

Saturday, April 28, 2012, at 6:30 PM (until 7:30 AM the following day). RAIN SPACE: Atrium of the Brown Center and Cohen Plaza, 1301 Mount Royal Ave., Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. Free event.

Two years ago I premiered my doctoral dissertation piece, Mandala of the Four Directions, and with it, the first all-night music festival known as The Vigil. Now in its third year on the Cohen Plaza at MICA, The Vigil will feature performances by Baltimore artists and bands including Yeveto, Wendel Patrick, Geodesic Gnome, dead mellotron, Tendrills, jason.sloan, Chris Pumphrey Sextet, Liz Meredith & John Somers, plus performances and installations from students in MICA’s sound courses this semester- Sound Art & Sound Installation Art.

Four stages surround the plaza, representing the cardinal points. Individual performances can thus overlap. At the same time, a few performances (including one by the STEIM Sound Project Studio group: Andrew Scotti, Faith Bocian, Tyler Tamburo, Shawn Cook, Sasha de Koninck, Jason Sloan & myself) will utilize all four sound systems at the same time.

The opening act of The Vigil will take place in the Brown Center atrium- the premiere of my latest piece, ZeroTime Operations, which will use Skype to bring together local performers (representing Mobtown Modern) and a group called Recover Band, based in Rome. From my press release on the work:

The performance is imagined to take place in the future, following a collapse of the global economy, a loss of digital communications for 20 years, and a dark era of isolationist and totalitarian governments across the globe. Following a revolution, an experimental reconstruction of global communications has begun, led by musicians who aim to establish a new international mode of musical communication. The only surviving audio recordings from the past are vinyl records. These form the basis for live improvisation, directed by a graphic score and a system of visual cues between the two groups of performers.

Social media communications between participants – performers and audience alike – will guide digging expeditions in each city’s used record stores, as a preparation for the performance. Twitter users are encouraged to communicate about records that will be brought to the performance, using the hashtag “#stickerloop”. Attendees are invited to bring old records featuring any of the following instruments (solo, or as prominent as possible): clarinet, synthesizer, drum kit, or bass guitar. These correspond to instruments that will be played live by the group in Rome- Recover Band. They, in turn will perform with records featuring instruments to be played by a small group Baltimore musicians, presented by Mobtown Modern Sound Lab at MICA. Students in Spangler’s Sound Art course will collaborate on the turntables and
electronic aspects of the performance.

Full Schedule for The Vigil:

**Sound sculptures & installations from Jason Sloan’s Sound Installation Art class will be placed throughout the space**

6:30 PM – Mobtown Modern presents the premiere of “ZeroTime Operations”, a networked performance in collaboration with Recover Band (Rome), composed by Erik Spangler [Brown Center atrium]

7:40 – STEIM Sound Project Studio: Tyler Tamburo, Sasha de Koninck, Andrew Scotti, Faith Bocian, Shawn Cook, Erik Spangler & Jason.Sloan
[Cohen Plaza- North, South, East & West stages]

8:00 – Geodesic Gnome [South stage]

8:20 – Essays [West stage]

8:40 – Wendel Patrick [North stage]

9:00 – Yeveto [South stage]

9:20 – Chris Pumphrey Sextet [West stage]

9:40 – Tendrills [East stage]

10:00 – dead mellotron [South stage]

**transition to ambient/downtempo stage of the night**
10:20 – Chang Park [North stage]

10:40 – Liz Merideth & John Somers [East stage]

11:00 – jason.sloan & Erik Spangler [West stage]

11:20 – Ray Van Ha [North stage]

11:40 – Shawn Cook & jason.sloan [South stage]

**midnight until dawn: performances by members of Erik Spangler’s Sound Art class**
12:00 – 4 corners improv I

12:20 – Josh Newcomb [East stage]

12:40 – Zoe Burke [South stage]

1:00 – Itay Niv [West stage]

1:20 – Devon Brown [North stage]

1:40 – James Padham [East stage]

2:00 – Greg Murphy [West stage]

2:20 – Katie Ball [North stage]

2:40 – Amanda McMicken [South stage]

3:00 – Tsai Lian [West stage]

3:20 – Sophie Monosmith [East stage]

3:40 – Joshua Nissim [South stage]

4:00 – Alex Leggin [North stage]

4:20 – Michelle Shen [West stage]

4:40 – Matthew Thompson [South stage]

5:00 – 4 corners improv II

5:20 – Rachel Jones [East stage]

5:40 – Rose He [North stage]

6:00 – Jeremy Cain [South stage]

6:20 – Josh Burke [West stage]

6:40 – Caitlin Reid [East stage]

7:00 AM – Robin Foster [West stage]

7:30 – end

MICA sound students Tyler Tamburo, Shawn Cook, and Sasha de Koninck

During spring break at Maryland Institute College of Art, sound concentration chair Jason Sloan and I took a group of five students to STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam for a 10-day residency. I came to STEIM for an orientation workshop back in 2010, and had been interested in making this residency happen for awhile. Through my discussions with STEIM program coordinator Jonathan Reus, plus Jason and I meeting a few times with the Continuing Studies office at MICA, we were able to make it a reality. We now have a course number for this and will hopefully be making this trip every year. We are also working on how to bring artists from STEIM over to give a series of workshops at MICA, hopefully starting in the next school year.

At the end of the residency, the students had all developed their own instruments, using various types of sensors, and performed on a STEIM Concept Stage show. Incidentally, while we were over there, we learned that we were the first group of undergraduates from any institution to do a residency at STEIM. They truly rocked it.

Check out the video below for a view into the inaugural Sound Project Studio.

On the same show, in residence at STEIM at the same time by chance, were composer/vocalist Ken Ueno and clarinetist Gregory Oakes. Ken and I went to grad school together and had last collaborated in performance in 2004, while Greg and I were meeting for the first time- finally transitioning from Facebook friends to real friends. Jason and I got to do a short improv set with Ken and Greg at the beginning of the Concept Stage show. The video is posted below.

One of the more original options for a Valentine’s Day night out in Baltimore was presented this past February by Mobtown Modern at the 2640 Space, as pianist Adam Tendler was in town to perform John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano. Tendler performed the work from memory, beautifully and with a real sense of owning it, drawing out those emotional qualities that were still a conscious part of Cage’s music in this early stage.

My role at the concert was in three parts: I was DJing before and after the performance, I played some of my own tracks that I had created the day before and the day of the show based on Cage prepared piano samples, and I set up microphones to record the performance- so that my students at MICA could create remixes or sample-based beats from samples of the recording.

I talked with Adam after the performance about the idea of doing a live remix of the Cage Sonatas and Interludes at some point, and we both agreed that we should make it happen. As a first step toward this collaboration, I made a fourth prepared piano-based beat, this one based on Adam’s performance. In tribute to Cage, my choices for many of the shorter snippets and more percussive bits of sound to use in the patterns were selected by SoundCloud’s display of which tracks from the performance had been least downloaded by my students. The main loop, however, was selected by virtue of my really liking it- very un-Cage.

Here is the EP of all four beats, with the Tendler-based track placed first:

Back in January I performed on an all-night sleep concert organized by the Contemporary Museum at the SoftHouse (in the Copy Cat Building, Baltimore). It was an amazing evening all around, with a great turnout and an immersive multimedia environment. My half-hour performance was a new inter-generational version of my piece Grandpa Dale Songs, incorporating (in addition to samples of my grandfather Dale Spangler’s music) samples of my great-grandmother’s piano playing, my own parts recorded on melodica, digital keyboard, and (my great-grandfather’s) violin, my daughter Mila’s harp playing.

In the video documentation of the event below, you can find an excerpt from my performance at 12:10-14:53.

::DRIFT STATE:: from Contemporary Museum on Vimeo.

For about a week at the end of November, beatboxer extraordinaire Shodekeh basically moved in upstairs as we hammered out his contribution to MONK MIX: Remixes and Interpretations of Meredith Monk. Shodekeh chose Dolmen Music, Pt. 1 as the source composition to remix for the album, which was curated by DJ Spooky for Meredith Monk’s House Foundation. My role was primarily as lead producer- recording, editing and automating, while also adding some scratches and cuts on the digital turntables. Some sections where I contributed overtone whistling (a vocal specialty of mine that occasionally drives my wife up the wall), ended up being cut from the much shortened version of the remix that ended up on the album. Yes, we have a Director’s Cut version, that we cannot reveal just yet.

After I did some tempo adjustments (“warping” in Ableton Live) of the original recording to fit sections of the piece to the beatbox patterns that would be added, the first stage of working with the material creatively was a collaboration beween Shodekeh and Max Bent (a.k.a. Max Beats), another local producer as well as beatboxer. Max chopped up some samples from the original piece and assembled them into some patterns that he played on the drum pads as Shodekeh recorded some initial beats to go with these remix sections. The project came back to me for the stage of recording parts by vocalist Bonnie Lander and cellist/vocalist Kate Porter. I also recorded new versions of Shodekeh’s beatbox patterns and vocal “record static”. Scratched it up in a couple of sections. The editing process was intensive, and ended up as a 15-and-a-half-minute epic journey that couldn’t fit on the album. We had to edit the piece down to under 6 minutes for MONK MIX. The full version will have to wait a year before we can release it through our own channels.

Shodekeh, Max, Kate and I performed a live alternate remix at the album release party on February 19th at Joe’s Pub in New York.

Check out this sweet documentary by Michael Faulkner about the project:

DJ Dubble8 and Wendel Patrick

I am very happy to be introducing a new music series and collective, the Baltimore Boom Bap Society. Our mission:

Baltimore Boom Bap Society Improvised Hip Hop Session 3 promo vid from Wendel Patrick on Vimeo.

In the last two months of 2011 I found myself with four very different projects, occupying very different cultural spheres. The first project was a set of video game music that I composed under contract with Day 1 Studios based in Chicago. My job was to score the cinemas, which were basically fixed video files, while the surrounding game-engine music was being created by the dubstep producer Klaypex. While the scoring experience went well, the game was ultimately cancelled. I put together most of the music I created for the project into a playlist on SoundCloud:

Music For An Abandoned Video Game by Dubble8

Shortly after finishing the game music, I began working with Baltimore beatboxer Shodekeh on a remix of Dolmen Music by Meredith Monk. Shodekeh was commissioned to contribute a track to Meredith Monk Remixes & Interpretations, which is slated for release on February 19, 2012. I worked with Shodekeh as producer (alongside production work by Max Bent), recording and mixing beatboxing parts as well as vocal and cello contributions by Kate Porter and Bonnie Lander, and “warping” the original recording to a variety of purposes. I also contributed some cuts & scratching on DJ controller. The full remix, as Shodekeh envisioned it, turned out to be over 14 minutes long. This was deemed too long for the compilation album, so we had to cut it down to something substantially smaller. We hope to be able to share the full version some day soon! In the meantime, look for the Remixes & Interpretations album coming out this February.

In the midst of these recording projects, I got a new live music series off the ground at The Windup Space: Baltimore Boom Bap Society, a collective for improvised and collaborative Hip Hop, with co-founder Wendel Patrick. Our first several shows were just the two of us, playing a 30-40 minute set in between other bands. Coming into 2012, we introduced our first full evening show with three additional guest artists. More on that later!

The last major performance of the year was the premiere of my piece for youth orchestra and DJ controller, with the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra. The piece, Five Levels of the Watershed was a long time in the making, but well worth its lengthy digestive process. The student performers and conductor Julien Benichou put a lot of work into this, and it payed off beautifully in the amazing acoustics of Kerr Auditorium at Annapolis Area Christian School. My only regret is that I was too busy when setting up my gear to coordinate with the recording engineer about micing the sound coming from my speakers (which were pointed toward the audience, while the only mics were directly above the front of the orchestra). In short, my live contribution to the piece comes off as a bit subtle in the recording. Have a listen:
Five Levels Of The Watershed by Dubble8

It’s been a busy past couple of months, leaving hardly an opportunity to pause and write about it.

I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned the new electronic music series started by my friend Chang Park, DEUS EX MACHINA, which will soon have its third event (this Saturday) at the 3rd floor lounge of Dionysus bar & restaurant. I had the pleasure of playing on the first one, back on August 12th, on which I collaborated with Liz Meredith on amplified viola. DEUS EX MACHINA is filling a vital role in the Baltimore musical community, providing a well-attended space for all flavors of experimental live electronic music. This Saturday a few of my students from MICA will be performing a group improvisation on the series.

September 8- DJ set with Chang Park at the Nomad Gallery, another awesome community art enterprise to come out of MICA, putting down (nomadic) roots here in Baltimore.

Setember 14- Prelude and postlude DJ sets for the first Mobtown Modern concert of the season, featuring the JACK Quartet playing the complete string quartets of Iannis Xenakis, in the immensity of 2640 Space.

September 27- I kicked off my latest free improv binge on the Out Of Your Head series at the Windup Space, with two vocalists- Amanda Bloom and Lauren Shusterich.

October 2- Collaborative performance with mezzo-soprano Megan Ihnen and cellist Emily Wright at the Metro Gallery. This performance built upon a previous performance with Megan, our arrangement of a collection of Afro-American spirituals through a Trip-Hop lens.

October 8- Collaborative performance with fellow beatmaker/multi-instrumentalist Wendel Patrick (a.k.a. Kevin Gift) at the Windup Space. Focusing on improvisation and experimentation within a Hip-Hop framework, this was the first in what we hope will be an ongoing and expanding series of collaborations to be known as Baltimore Boom Bap Society.

October 13- DJ set for the Fall Festival at Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School.

October 14- Collaborative performance with meta-saxophonist/composer Matthew Burtner, as part of his guest performance at MICA (third guest artist of the budding Sound Art program).

October 15- Collaborative performance with Matthew Burtner and saxophonist Michael Straus on the Sonic Circuits series at Pyramid Atlantic, in Silver Spring, MD.

October 16- Collaborative performance with violist/electronic musician Liz Meredith at 2640 Space. Liz organized this performance to focus on ambient and experimental electronic music. The show also featured excellent performances by Chang Park, Jason Sloan, and Ayako Kataoka.

Looking forward to a week or two of keeping my gear in the studio.

Planning out digital DJ techniques (in Traktor) to be notated

Just before the beginning of the school year I finished my large composition project of the past year, Five Levels of the Watershed, for the Chesapeake Youth Symphony Orchestra. I am looking forward to performing with the orchestra on the premiere on December 17th (details below). For my part I will be using a combination of 2 controllers (Traktor Kontrol S4 and Korg padKontrol) to manipulate field recordings, spoken text, and samples of the students’ playing as part of a collaborative composition workshop. The orchestral score incorporates phrases composed by the students and extends them in a variety of textures relating to aspects of the Chesapeake Bay.

CYSO Winter Concert

December 17, 2011

7 PM

Annapolis Area Christian School

Beginning this Fall, students at Maryland Institute College of Art will be able pursue a concentration in Sound Art, within the Interaction Design and Art department. Available classes will include Introduction To Sound, Sound Art, Live Electronic Music & Multimedia, Sound Installation Art, and Studio Techniques & Recording. While the first three of these classes have been offered previously, this new concentration provides an opportunity for students to focus their work on sound art and electronic music throughout their time at MICA, with expanded resources. The Sound Art concentration was formulated over the past year by Jason Sloan, with whom I first co-taught the Live Electronic Music class in Spring 2010. Jason and I have collaborated on stage and in the studio on several occasions, and I’m inspired to be working with him to advance this new program. Visit our page on Facebook!