classes start Monday and if all goes well i should have a pretty good schedule for making music on a consistent basis.  last semester i had a 5am call time every day with quite a bit more grading than usual that slowed my progress and was very frustrating.

the main news (at least for some of you who i haven’t seen in a while) is a that i’m going to be performing solo or very small group for the time being. the last few years i have spent quite a lot of time making music with a wide variety of controllers. these days my weapon of choice is the Maschine a 16 pad box that is mainly used as a drum or sample looper but i am mainly using it as a 2.1 octave melodic instrument. 

this should give you a better idea of what i am doing and I’m going to be posting more of these on a regular basis and get back to putting on shows pretty sooon

RIP Steve Jobs 1955-2011

for me the ipod and the itunes playlist have been the most important technological innovation s and devices i have owned. after the first ipod came out i was finally able to study a huge variety of music on my long commute home each day without having be constantly swapping CD’s. it doesn’t sound like much but loading up the 15 different composers in a playlist to get an idea of how they all dealt with string ostinatos used to be a real pain in the ass (especially since many new music scores aren’t that available). these days still i don’t own a proper stereo and prefer to listen to music via my iphone when and wherever i want. Got my first Mac Tower in 2001 and mixed and recorded all 3 albums using your computers.

“That’s what a computer is to me: the computer is the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”"[Y]ou can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” made with monome 64, press cafe, ableton live, and 13′ macbook pro (2011)

“That’s what a computer is to me: the computer is the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”

“[Y]ou can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

made with monome 64, press cafe, ableton live, and 13′ macbook pro (2011)

pics via craigslist links. vibes and trombone pics available on request. email me at paul@paulbailey.us for more details if you are interested.

the explosion and rampant experimentation of form factor in iphone and ipad music apps have made it possible to get hands-on with a wide range of digital “controllers”. my thesis and starting point for this journey begins with an observation and a question:

• it’s interesting that in the electronic music revolution during the last 50 years, much of the music has been performed (at least melodically) based on a 17th C technology (the keyboard)
• the question i pose and am attempting to solve is that if you don’t make electronic music with a keyboard, then how will you make it?

i’m going to be interviewed and a guest DJ on Hobart Taylor’s

tomorrow from around 7-10am (the early bird gets the worm

here is the tentative playlist of the music i should be playing that represents some socal (-ish) music that is important to me.

1. Overture from “The Little Prince”, Lloyd Rodgers (Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra)
2. Orlando, He Dead, Doug Hein (Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra)
3. The Swing, Lloyd Rodgers (Lloyd Rodgers Group)
4. The Shade Never Was, Shane Cadman (The Illustrious Theatre Orchestra)
5. Wheelbarrow Walk, Michael Nyman (Michael Nyman Band)
6. Espresto, Jon Brenner
7. The Black Book, 3/10/01, Lloyd Rodgers
8. Liberation Technology, Killsonic Marching Group
9. Wandermix, Bruce Hamilton
10. Scale One, Paul Muller
11. ImAngryandYoubeToo, Adam Kondor
12. The Little Death: I Don’t Have any Fun, Matt Marks
13. Madison Square, Mikel Rouse
14. Music for Insomniacs, Shane Cadman

also here is a list of the track of mine i’ll probably play. i’ll add the links and some comments later (for all of the music on the page). in general much of this music can be found on the www.alt-classical.com or www.paulbailey.us websites right now.

Music from my latest Alt-Classical EP (2011)

1. Life’s Too Short (Radio Edit) Graphic Libretto
2. An Eye for Optical Theory (Nyman cover)
3. Fearless Leader

Music from Summerland (2002)

1. Summerland
2. Obsessive Love

Retrace Our Steps (2008)

1. Act 2 (texts by Jenny Bitner and Guy Debord) graphic libretto

Music for Controllers

1. A Stable Job is an Oxymoron (2009)

this was also my 2nd review for the blog and i should point out that so far i’m realizing that i’m not that interested in talking about the technical aspects of the performance. as a performer i understand the frustration of not getting any feedback of the show (and my apologies in advance to the pacific symphony and pacific chorus who put on a great show) but unless it was life changing great or consistently inconsistent (or worse) i’m finding i’m mostly interested in writing about the music and how it is being presented.
on the other hand for those who like to keep score i will dish a little on the performance. i did think orchestra was refreshingly well prepared for a new music concert (unlike the hollywood bowl orchestra’s half-hearted attempt at koyyanisquatsi a few summers ago) and my only specific gripes were that the violins were a bit wobbly play ravi shankar’s melody in passages (props to the basses and cellos for being rock solid the whole night), and the tambourine and stick choices by the percussion didn’t really help the orchestra line things up during complex. in the big scheme of things my gripes are pretty much inside baseball and the types of inconsistencies that are pretty common with a mid-level orchestra that is programming a variety of ambitious new music outside the more traditional musical canon. also worth mentioning was that i really liked the acoustics in the hall, but from where i was sitting (third row down front) i might not have been getting the full effect of the pacific chorale. they sounded great but i was having a hard time deciding whether they were singing at a mezzo level the whole evening or it was just because i was too far down front.

Click here to read the whole review “Full Passages and Empty Passions”

i also should also point out that for those who comment without with their email address, it’s just not worth my time to respond. if you don’t want to post that publicly you can always email me privately at paulatpaulbaileydotus

final.final note!
i have been working on an interview with chris rountree of the la based chamber ensemble wild UP and they are playing a concert this saturday night at the bootleg theatre in hollywood. chris and his collaborators andrew tholl and andrew mcintosh have a very interesting take on programming; “all music is valid” and will be performing wide range of music featuring art jarvinen’s egyptian two-step, tom johnson’s naryana’s cows and ravel’s gypsy masterpiece tzigane.
also performing during are a variety of other groups; the seasons, david shane smith, and the entropy ensemble.

concert link and info
Advance tickets are available online for $15 at http://www.ticketfly.com/event/32469/.