The source sounds for my piece were recorded in the Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens in Daylesford.  Here are a couple of photos of the Gardens.

Here are the program notes for my piece:

Made for EMF’s 100xJohn project, this piece combines environmental sounds with algorithmically controlled electronic processing.  100 recordings – 10 second sound snapshots, if you will – were made in the Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens in Daylesford, Victoria, Australia, on the mornings of Monday April 2 (the first 50, on the south side of the hill), and Friday April 6 (the last 50, on the north side of the hill).  Wombat Hill is an extinct (we hope) volcano and the village of Daylesford is built upon its slopes.  The Botanical Gardens were designed in the late 19^th century by Baron Ferdinand von Mueller, and feature deciduous trees from all over the world, including some huge California Redwoods, which have taken to the rich soil and cool moist climate of Daylesford in style, today towering over the surrounding landscape.

For each environmental recording, the direction and location of each recording was determined by the location of a tree in the gardens.  That is, for each recording, the recorder is set facing a different tree.  During the first recording session, in fact, a slight wind sprang up, and the recorder was actually rested against the trees, which acted as rather large windscreens.  So one might say that Baron von Mueller determined the position of the recordings, if not the time of their making.

Tree as windscreen

Recording an auracaria.

Each 10 second recording was processed in two ways.  First, it was put through Richard Orton and Archer Endrich’s “Process Pack” software, using the “Shimmer” process.  Shimmer is a process which divides an incoming sound into 100 frequency bands, and then arranges those bands in a number of different ways, reconstructing a sound by frequency content.  There are a number of parameters which determine the spacing of the frequency bands and how they are then rearranged in time.  The values for these parameters were determined by John Cage and Andrew Culver’s “ic” program. For each sound sample, I plugged the relevant ic determined values into Shimmer, and recorded the output.

The second form of processing was done with the demo version of GRM Tools “Evolution.”  Evolution grabs spectra from an incoming sound, and morphs between successive grabs.  Just as with Shimmer, parameter values for Evolution were made by running ic, and these values were used for each successive recording.

This work (and like some of John Cage’s processes, this involved a LOT of busy work), done on 11 and 12 April, resulted in 300 sound files: 100 originals, 100 Shimmer processed, and 100 Evolution processed.  The original environmental recordings were simply butt-spliced end to end making a 16:40 sequence.  The butt-splicing sometimes results in abrupt transitions from one “scene” to another.  The two processings are mixed with the original environmental recordings, each one beginning in sync with the recording it is derived from.  These were all mixed together, resulting in a multilayered, constantly changing sound-scape, in which the kind of electronic sounds derived from the environmental recordings is continually different – the differences determined by the ic values for the parameters.

It's a very nice crew that contributed, and some of them have already written their scales, and the reasons behind them.  Here's Kraig Grady's explanation of his scale, and the performance, here's Terumi Narushima's explanation of her scale, and the performance, and here is Kyle Gann's explanation of his.  I'd love to be able to give you an erudite explanation of my scale, but the truth is, I've lost the notes, and I can't remember a thing about how I made it.  None the less, here's my tuning for Satie's Vexations:

 0:  C         1/1                0.000  unison, perfect prime

  1:  C#       17/16            104.955  17th harmonic

  2:   Db      128/119        126.219

  3:   D        32/29            170.423  29th subharmonic

  4:   Ebb    8/7                 231.174  septimal whole tone

  5:   D#      39/32            342.483  39th harmonic, Zalzal wosta of Ibn Sina

  6:   Eb      79/64             364.537

  7:   E        5/4                 386.314  major third

  8:   F        4/3                 498.045  perfect fourth

  9:   F#      11/8               551.318  undecimal semi-augmented fourth

 10:  Gb     16/11             648.682  undecimal semi-diminished fifth

 11:   G      3/2                 701.955  perfect fifth

 12:   G#    51/32             806.910

 13:   Ab    8/5                 813.686  minor sixth

 14:   A      209/128         848.831

 15:   Bbb  64/39             857.517  39th subharmonic

 16:    A#   7/4                 968.826  harmonic seventh

 17:    Bb   29/16             1029.577  29th harmonic

 18:    B     119/64           1073.781

 19:    Cb   32/17             1095.045  17th subharmonic

 20:    B#   243/128         1109.775  Pythagorean major seventh

 21:    C     2/1                 1200.000  octave

Anybody who wants to get a PhD in Music Theory is welcome to try and analyse this - the only note I have regarding its genesis is "based on Erv Wilson's Mt Meru scales work," which is not too helpful, but at least points one in the right direction.

There are sound recordings of five other tunings up on the Micro-Fest website - tunings by Bill Alves, Kyle Gann, Ron Nagorcka, John Schneider, and Terumi Narushima.  Listen to them here.

Finally, here's the recording of my piece. Thanks to John and the pianist Richard Valitutto, for permision to post this, and thanks to Richard for his wonderful performance.  By the way, John and Richard recently also made the new, magnificent recording of Harry Partch's Bitter Music on Bridge Records.

John Schneider tells me that there will be a CD release soon of all the tunings from the Vexations project, so I'll let you know about that as soon as I do.  

Erik Satie: Vexations - retuned by Warren Burt - performed by Richard Valitutto.

Enjoy!

What could be better than a warm summer night, with an audience on the lawn in front of the Conservatory (the greenhouse) in Rosalind Park, listening to electronic sound and seeing experimental videos projected from inside the Conservatory? Well, that would have been nice, but the rains started in the afternoon, and by evening, it was pouring. Fortunately, thanks to the resourceful folks at the City of Greater Bendgo and Undue Noise, part of the Conservatory was cleared, and the event went ahead, inside the Conservatory. Undeterred by the inclement weather, a crowd of about 50 watched as an improvising quartet performed. Jacques Soddell, the head of Undue Noise, projected his video works (on the right). Paul Fletcher projected video (on the left) and played sound. Ross Healy played his homemade synthesizers, and Warren Burt played a table full of Android Pad, Netbook, iPhones, and other gear. The video was made by Catherine Schieve on her iPhone. Rather than just look at the screen, she moved about freely, even braving the downpour to go outside the Conservatory on occasion and give us the view from outside. So this represents the feeling of what it was like for an audience member to be at the event. Despite the rain, it was still a very pleasant summer gig. I've wanted to play inside a Conservatory for many, many years. Now that I've done it, I want to do more of it. As one of the other performers noted - it was one of the first times we played to such a big audience, 50 of whom even happened to be human. The rest, of course, were our green buddies. And a good time was had by all.

1. 1st Februrary 2012, SEENSOUND - visual music performance organised by Brigid Burke and Mark Pedersen.  At LOOP - back room - 23 Meyers Place, Melbourne - 7:30 pm - Entry $10/$5.  Videos by many good folks, including yours truly.

More info: http://seensound.com

2. 10 Februrary 2012 - 8-10 pm, SUMMER IN THE PARK, Bendigo - at the Conservatory, Rosalind Park, Bendigo.  Organised by Undue Noise.  Featuring a concluding quartet of Jacques Soddell, Paul Fletcher, Ross Healy, and Warren Burt.  (I've been wanting to perform at the Bendigo Conservatory for many many years.  Thanks to Jacques, I now get the chance!)

More info: http://undue.cajid.com/blog/?p=306

3. 15 Feb 2012, "Making Misteaks" a talk and discussion at St Ali Coffeehouse, 12-18 Yarra Place, South Melbourne, 8pm, $5 entry.

4. 23 FEB 2012 - Felix Werder at 90 - Iwaki Auditorium, ABC Southbank, 7:30 PM, FREE Admission. (It's going to be an absolute pleasure to celebrate our dear friend Felix at a concert of mostly new works of his!)

More info: www.joltarts.org

To read the interview with Chris Meigh-Andrews on video, click here.

To read the interview with Nina Sofo on improvisation, click here.

To read the inteview with Tegan Nicholls on extended vocal techniques, click here.

I hope you enjoy them!

The second one, upcoming, on January 29, is a performance of my electronic piece "for Anne, who broke my heart" from 1974 as part of the Welcome Inn Time Machine performances.  Here's a description of the whole event:

The Society for the Activation of Social Space Through Art and Sound (SASSAS) transforms Eagle Rock’s Welcome Inn into a venue for live performances creating a free, six hour event featuring experimental music originating in Southern California, 1949 - 1977.  Micro concerts take place in individual rooms allowing key moments in sound and music history to be experienced simultaneously and sequentially in a single location.  (One of the featured events is a performance/re-creation of Arnold Schoenberg's 1949 "Draft of a String Quartet.")

The event I'm part of celebrates the Theater Vanguard's "Currents" series, which was curated by Barry Schrader from 1973-78.  Barry has put together a selection of pieces from that series and it will play as a 2 hour repeating program throughout the day.  Thanks, Barry, for including my work!

So if you're in Los Angeles this Sunday, you could do worse than to drop into the Welcome Inn at Eagle Rock.  If I were in LA on Sunday, that's where I would be!

Here's some links:

http://www.logosfoundation.org/concerts/concerts2012.html

http://www.sassas.org/welcomeinn/ (click on "Currents Series" for more information.)

Warren Burt: Harmonic Colour Fields: https://ganxy.com/i/22942

(A set of five very slowly moving pieces from the 90s exploring different tuning systems)

Felix Werder: The Tempest: https://ganxy.com/i/22546

(A collection of Felix's electronic music - three pieces from the 70s, and his only computer piece, from the early 90s.)

KIVA: https://ganxy.com/i/22512

(KIVA was the improvisation group of Keith Humble, Jean-Charles Francois, and John Silber - this 2 cd set is a selection from a number of their sessions from the late 80s and early 90s.

Kenneth Gaburo: Maledetto: http://www.pogus.com/g47.html

(Maledetto is Gaburo's masterful, fun, and slightly smutty celebration of the speaking voice - exploring innumberable facets of the word "screw" it's a masterpiece of extended vocal writing and sound poetry.)

So if you've been wondering where you can buy any of the above, now you know!

Warren Burt: Three Movements for Fokker Organ - 1: Time Lock Puzzles in the Random Oracle Model

Warren Burt: Three Movements for Fokker Organ - 2: Guaranteed Repetition Free, or Double Your Drachmas Back

Warren Burt: Three Movements for Fokker Organ - 3: Being Generous With Those Genera

Warren Burt: Fokker Organ Wren

Each movement lasts about 3 and 1/2 minutes.  If you want to download them, for each movement you can click 1: HERE, 2: HERE, 3: HERE, and for the Fokker Organ Wren, HERE.  Enjoy!