Sam Grinsell

RPM Recorded!

Sat, 23 Feb 2013 19:48:03 +0000

Dear listeners,

All the pieces for my RPM2013 album have now been recorded! The album will consist of two suites: ‘The Orton Road Suite’ and ‘Ten Failed Photographs’. The former is a five part exploration of a two-part melody, borrowing ideas from raga and twelve-tone music; the latter consists of ten miniatures inspired by photographs I have taken which ended up with more darkness than picture. This will be my first purely solo acoustic album, and the music represents a real progression in my musical ideas. I am currently wrestling the recordings into a releasable form, which may take a little while due to technological frustrations (and my own limitations).

The album page is already up, though obviously no music yet. Hopefully I’ll have it ready for the official RPM release date of 1st March.

thanks for listening and reading…

RPM Composing Update

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 22:17:01 +0000

The RPM challenge is about when you record the music rather than when you compose it, so I’ve been working more on the pieces I’ll be playing. Things have moved on from my last post! I have ideas for two separate suites, one based around melodic improvisation, and another around short pieces based on photographs I’ve recently taken.

I’ve been working on the first idea for a while, and it’s coming along pretty well. I could record a perfectly good version of it now, but I think living with the idea for longer will bring more things out of it, and anyway it isn’t even February yet!

The second idea I just started working on today. I have been playing around with analogue photography, and received my first set of prints back. Ten of them immediately struck me as making an interesting set, as they were all in various states of darkness. In some almost nothing is visible, in others some features stand out clearly while others are swallowed by darkness. Given my interest in failure, and imperfection, I knew I wanted to start interpreting these images in sound. I’ve just been scribbling initial notes down this evening, and I’m pretty excited about this idea :)

I’m not yet sure how these suites will interact. The first idea is probably long enough for a short album in itself. If I have composed the photo pieces in time, I will probably also record them and it will be an album of two halves, an idea I’ve always rather liked. If not then I’ll continue writing those pieces, and they can be their own release or become part of another project. If both these suites get recorded for RPM, that would probably be the longest release I’ve ever done!

I’ll be updating this blog with more composing stuff as things progress…

RPM Challenge 2013...

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:16:21 +0000

It’s been a while since I made any new music, partly because computer issues mean I don’t currently have access to any recording software I actually know how to use effectively. This makes adding to the One Year project impossible at the moment, though I may return to it, or at least works in a similar vein, in the future. I have been having ideas for a rather different album for some time though, and I will start work on this soon!

For those unfamiliar with the RPM Challenge, it’s a pretty straightforward concept:

This is The Challenge - Record an album in 28 days, just because you can.

(from rpmchallenge.com)

Throughout February, all kinds of different musicians take part. I think I first heard of it in 2011, but only became really aware of it in 2013 when several of my twitter friends took part, including Chrissie Caulfield and Stuart Russell. I even played on Caitlin Rowley’s album! I feel like I’ve forgotten some people, but anyway that’s enough to be going on with :)

For a while I have wanted to record an alum of just me and guitar. I spent a long time waiting for my new guitar, which I new would be more suited to solo acoustic work, and since then I have been very busy. Also I lacked any real musical idea of what I wanted to do. I am now beginning to come up with a loose kind of structure, based on two different improvisatory approaches. For a while I have been working on an approach to building melody-based improvisations by starting with a pentatonic scale and progressively adding notes. Half the album will be made up of pieces using this basic idea, the other half will be more free-form improvisations. I may come up with a theme for those, at the moment I am undecided. I am also unsure how the album itself will be structured: I may choose to alternate the two kinds of piece, or have an album with two ‘sides’. Both approaches have their appeal, I probably won’t know until I’ve done the recordings.

As I normally record using a portable Korg recorder, the actual recording of the album presents no challenges. As I mentioned at the start, my computer doesn’t work properly, so the actual production of the album will need to be done on someone else’s machine (unless I suddenly find myself with funds for a new computer!). This doesn’t really worry me, I can borrow from family or friends, but it could lead to a delay in getting the album released. All recordings will definitely be done in February though!

This will be the first album made in my new home of Leicester, and I’ll be working that in to the art work and probably the name as well. I’m really looking forward to it, and enjoying the preparations. Hopefully it will be my best album yet :)

House concerts

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 07:24:46 +0100

Good morning good morning good morning etc
I have been thinking for a while that I ought to try to play live more, but that I’m not sure my music really fits into conventional pub-gig kind of setups. In fact, I have my doubts about that whole approach to live music anyway. There’s probably a separate blogpost in that, but suffice to say I think they often fail to deliver a fully satisfying musical experience.
I have been thinking about house concerts for some time. They seem to be a pretty well developed phenomenon in the US, but less so over here although there are exceptions to this. I’m attracted to the idea of just being able to turn up with a guitar and play to a group of people ready to listen. There also seems to be a higher possibility of making a bit of money from this approach (notoriously difficult for those starting out in ‘conventional’ gigging).
Another point that appeals to me is that, except in unusually large houses (!), I’d be able to play purely acoustically. Too much of the music we hear comes to us via PA systems, it’d be nice to reconnect with truly acoustic sounds.
All that said, this can only really happen if people invite me to do it! So if you’re reading this thinking that it sounds intriguing, maybe you could host one. I don’t mind playing to small numbers, so you almost certainly do have room! I would like to make some money from this, exactly how we approach this (paying in advance or ‘passing the hat’ for example) I’d be happy to discuss and be flexible on. I’m currently based in South London but plan to move to Leicester in the next couple of months. I will consider going anywhere but I will need to cover my costs! If you’re far away/abroad do still get in touch, in the long run I’m sure we could arrange something. If you’re thinking it could all be a bit scary, check out some of the links below.
As I’ve said, part of the attraction is turning up and playing acoustically. If, however, you’re more interested in some of my electronic music, we could totally talk about that too ;)
Thanks for reading, hoping to hear from you soon
Sam
Some house concert links:
Steve Lawson: http://www.stevelawson.net/2009/03/house-concert-hosting-a-beginners-guide/
Emily Baker: http://emilybaker.co.uk/houseconcerts/
Concerts In Your Home guide: http://www.concertsinyourhome.com/CIYH_HouseConcertGuidex.pdf (I’m definitely willing to play to fewer than twenty people btw)
Marian Call: http://mariancall.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/house-concerts-101/

Greetings! I charted a course through stormy ‘net...

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:45:44 +0100

Greetings! I charted a course through stormy ‘net connections on Sunday to bring a new release to your ears. As this is the first new piece I’ve released for a while (other than additions to Improvisations) some words on its creation, and my current musical thinking, may be of interest.

At the start of the year (or maybe it was the end of last year, but the date is unimportant) I decided that I should spend twelve months gathering field-recordings, and perhaps pictures and words too, to form the basis of some kind of release to be constructed at the end of 2012. I had no idea for the form of the final work, but I wanted to try a creative method that would lead to a longer gestation period, to get away from my tendency to create in sudden short bursts of activity. Perhaps the cultural significance of the year itself played a role: London had, after all, been preparing for 2012 for what felt like most of my life. I toyed with the idea of blogging regularly on my progress, but I decided this could easily lead to the project feeling like a chore, and that the important thing was the final product, not the story of its creation. I have gathered many recordings so far, though perhaps not as many as I would have liked.

It was in Birmingham last month that a new idea for a piece marched boldly into my head, as they occasionally do. Many times I have created a soundscape and then improvised over it, but now I thought of recording a long improvisation and treating this as the soundscape, creating a piece by adding snatches of manipulated field-recordings. I sat down that day in my hotel room and recorded myself playing for around 25 minutes. I consciously left more space in my playing, aware that this was the basis for more sound, that I was, at some level, accompanying something I could not yet hear.

The piece was created over the following weeks, using recordings from the same Birmingham trip, and also treated samples from the improvisation. As I often do, I allowed the sounds to guide me: I had no specific aims in terms of expressing ideas or moods. The piece is an experiment in approaching my usual ingredients in a slightly different way: the sound of me playing was treated in the way I generally treat field-recordings. I hope that creating it has helped me develop my sound-manipulation skills further.

I wrote myself a minimal set of instructions for my field-recording project, and titled it One Year. As the end of 2012 approaches, I am beginning to gain a sense of what I shall create from what I have gathered. There will be a series of standalone pieces, all made in somewhat different ways, but all using sounds from 2012 (of course!). Together, they will perhaps express something of what I am musically at this time. Birmingham Impressions is the first, listen out for more over the next few months.

thanks for listening/reading

Sam

*a copy of these instructions is a bonus item with the Birmingham Impressions download

Audio

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 08:51:32 +0100

Sounds and Silence and All That's To Come

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 08:47:27 +0100

I’ve been a little quiet here of late, as you may or may not have noticed. Compared to the rapid production of pieces during the winter and spring of 2010-11, the last six months has only seen odd individual track and some collaborations. So what have I been up to?

Well, I should perhaps point out that I have a day job now, with I didn’t then. But that’s not really why I’ve released less. I am currently gathering sounds and images for a larger work. Near the end of last year I decided that I should spend this one gathering raw materials, from which to create a work reflecting my experience of 2012. I am not yet sure what form this will take, but I do know it will involve me using a wider range of my abilities, such as they are. Previous releases, especially The Re-Education Of Ned Ludd, were created within particular constraints. Ned Ludd is the one I’m most happy with, but I want to start bringing together the things I have learned from each set of pieces, mixing guitars with the electronic and field-recording sounds that made up that album. This is what I was doing before, of course, but I want to aim for a more thorough integration of the two, and get away from the idea of one being background to the other.

Meanwhile, I have been looking into sound in a broader social context. Some of you may know that I studied history at university, and in the past month or so it has become clear to me that there are ways to combine these two passions. Sound or aural history is still a new field, which is rather appealing to me. I am currently reading as much as I can about the subject, and looking into potential masters courses that might accommodate the study of sound in history.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Of course, I’ll still be releasing improvisations from time to time. I’ll also have a new guitar later in the year, which might inspire some music. And every now and then I return to trying to make music inspired by Oscar Wilde’s Poems In Prose. But the main projects are the two outlined above, the piece exploring a year and the study of sound in history. I’ll blog more about them from time to time.

Thanks for reading

Sam

Creative Commons?

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 21:21:31 +0100

I’ve thought for a while that it would probably be useful to have a page clarifying why I use Creative Commons licenses, and how I intend them to be viewed. As users of CC come from a variety of standpoints - from those who feel that ‘piracy’ will save to music to those who simply don’t like branding their listeners criminals for sharing tracks with friends - it seems necessary to clarify where I’m coming from. This post (minus the preamble you’re currently reading) will also be a seperate page on my website.

FIRST: I AM NOT A COPYRIGHT EXPERT, AND THE FOLLOWING IS ONLY INTENDED AS AN IMPRESSIONISTIC GLOSS. I HOPE THAT IT CONTAINS NO GLARING ERRORS, THOUGH THERE ARE ALMOST CERTAINLY MISTAKES IN THE DETAIL. PLEASE FORGIVE MY IGNORANCE.

Why Creative Commons?

Go read Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig.

Still here?

OK, I guess telling you to read a book just to know why I do something is a bit silly. Especially as I didn’t write it. And it’s not specifically about Creative Commons. At least it’s free.

And good.

OK fine, quick run through: culture is about the exchange of ideas. Ensuring that ideas (in the broad sense, encompassing artworks, compositions, novels and so on) reach as many people as possible is good for the general health of our culture. It is also good if people are free to develop and respond to these ideas or creations. Over the last couple of hundred years, the copyright and intelectual property systems were developed to help ensure that creative people could distribute their ideas widely. This was achieved simply by creating a legal framework for people to make money from ideas and creations. Thus industries grew up based on the distribution of these works, allowing the development of culture on an unprecidented global scale. Along the way, distribution seemed to become a more important aim than creatively sharing ideas, as it was through distribution that money could be made. As a result of this, the freedom to creatively build on other people’s work (which had initially not been affected by copyright) was gradually closed off until we reached the current situation where permission is needed to do almost anything. If you open a book published in the UK you will find a copyright warning informing you that if you wish to sell or loan or even give the book to someone it must remain in its current binding/cover.

An example: under eighteenth and early-nineteenth century copyright laws, you could go and make a Star Wars film yourself. You wouldn’t need anyone’s permission. You’d need permission to sell the original, but to make your own version, or a sequel, or (yawn) a prequel, you were entirely free.

My point is not that copyright is somehow evil. It is merely one idea about how we deal with distributing and sharing creative ideas. It has been very useful, and in the industrial age I think it would have been difficult to improve upon as a legal framework for cultural exchange.

HOWEVER, we live in the information age. Publishing new creations to the world via the web is cheap or free, depending on the nature of the creation*. The creation of new work itself involves a cost, but the old copyright laws were really concerned with distributing works. The question of how creators ought best to be renumerated, now that no huge profit can be made through distribution, is a large societal issue which I cannot gapple with here. I think that models will be found in the end. The important thing in the meantime, as far as I am concerned, is to try to contribute to a healthy cultural exchange, which is where Creative Commons comes in.

Briefly, Creative Commons licenses are a subtler alternative to the All Rights Reserved model. The creator preserves SOME rights, and can allow others various grades of freedom in their use of his or her works. Details can be found on the Creative Commons website, what follows is a brief guide to the main licenses I use:

THIS IS MY GLOSS ON HOW THESE LICENSES WORK. FOLLOW THE LINKS FOR FULL DETAILS. IF YOU NEED CLARIFICATION ON ANYTHING, PLEASE ASK ME BEFORE USING MY WORK. IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING WHICH ISN’T COVERED BY THESE LICENSES, AGAIN, GET IN TOUCH AND WE’LL TALK. I’M UNLIKELY TO STOP YOU DOING SOMETHING UNLESS I THINK YOU’RE BEING COMPLETELY OUTRAGEOUS.

Attribution-ShareAlike

You can freely copy, distribute and share the work, so long as you always link back to where it came from.

You can use it in your own work, so long as any new creations remain under the same license, and you link back to the source (i.e. me).

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

This is exactly the same license, except for the fact that you can not use the work in any commercial way or setting.

*I mean from the point of view of the creator. Of course there IS a cost involved in online publishing, but compared to industrial manufacture and distribution it is laughably small.

I have been working on this piece for a forthcoming audio book...

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 21:25:16 +0000

I have been working on this piece for a forthcoming audio book version of Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet for some time. I knew that I wanted to work with field-recordings and manipulated guitar samples, but a couple of early attempts to turn these ideas into tracks came to nothing. It was only from spending more time turning the ideas in the text over and over in my mind that the ideas of repetition and a cyclical experience of time began to stand out as important. Somewhere along the line the idea to use the hiss and click of the run-in track on an old record came to mind, and this seemed to fit not just with the broad themes of the book but the specific nature of the text I had been given to work with, with its talk of things forgotten or remembered only as dreams. The hiss of a record is like digital music hesitatingly recalling its analogue roots.

Here is the text I was given to work with:

“For some time now - it may be days or months - I haven’t really noticed anything; I don’t think, therefore I don’t exist. I’ve forgotten who I am; I can’t write because I can’t be. Under the influence of some oblique drowsiness I have been someone else. The knowledge that I do not remember myself awakens me.
I fainted away a little from my life. I return to myself with no memory of what I have been and the memory of the person I was before suffers from that interruption. I am aware only of a confused notion of some forgotten interlude, of my memory’s futile efforts to find another me. But I cannot retie the knots. If I did live, I’ve forgotten how to know that I did.
It isn’t this first real autumn day - the first cold rather than cool day to clothe the dead summer in a lesser light - whose alien transparency leaves me with a sense of dead ambitions or sham intentions. It isn’t the uncertain trace of vain memory contained in this interlude of things lost. It’s something more painful than that, it’s the tedium of trying to remember what cannot be remembered, despair at what my consciousness mislaid amongst the algae and reeds of some unknown shore.
Beneath an unequivocal blue sky, a shade lighter than the deepest blue, I recognise that the day is limpid and still. I recognise that the sun, slightly less golden than it was, gilds walls and windows alike with liquid reflections. I recognise that, although there’s no wind, nor any breeze to recall or deny the existence of a wind, a brisk coolness nonetheless hovers about the hazy city. I recognise all of this, unthinkingly, unwillingly, and feel no more desire to sleep, only the memory of that desire, feel no nostalgia, only disquiet.
Sterile and remote, I recover from an illness I never had. Alert after walking, I prepare myself for what I dare not do. What kind of sleep was it that brought me no rest? What kind of caress was it that would not speak to me? How good it would be to take one cold draught of heady spring and be someone else! How good, how much better than life, to be able to imagine being that other person, whilst far off, in the remembered image, in the absence of even a breath of wind, the reeds bend blue-green to the shore.
Recalling the person I was not, I often imagine myself young again and forget! And were they different those landscapes that I never saw; were they new but non-existent the landscapes I did see? What does it matter? I have spent myself in chance events, in interstices, and now that the cool of the day and the cooling sun are one, the dark reeds by the shore sleep their cold sleep in the sunset I see but do not possess.”

Sounds for other people

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 11:15:45 +0000

This blog has been rather neglected of late. A winter working long hours in a cold warehouse has allowed time for musicking, but little to spare for writing about it. I hope to be posting here more in the coming months. This is an update of what I have been working on lately.

In the past my music has been driven by me from start to finish, it is a very personal pursuit which has only gradually become something I share with others. Thanks largely to twitter I now have connections with many wonderful musicians and composers who I would not have met otherwise. This led to the two gigs I played at the end of last year (in Colchester and London). I am pleased to report that this year’s musical work has involved more collaboration and thinking about other people’s approaches to music and sound.

Many of my musical friends took part in the RPM2012 Challenge, to write and record an album in one month, February to be precise. I have toyed with the idea of doing this before, and may well in the future, but I don’t feel that output has really been a problem for me, and most of my releases have been done in a month or so. I don’t really feel it’s useful for me at this stage. I have, however, been involved in someone else’s.

UK-based Australian composer Caitlin Rowley issued a call for volunteers to commission and record new pieces for her RPM album. I was one of the people who stepped forward, and so was lucky enough to work with Caitlin on what became ‘I Want It To Kill People’, the seventh track of her album. It was a real pleasure to enter into another person’s approach to making a piece. She took my work with field-recordings as a starting point and created a tape part for me to play over, with a graphic score to guide my playing. This really helped focus my performance, especially as the piece is quite short and I’ve been working with longer forms lately. I’m really pleased with the result, and we hope to work together more in the future.

Meanwhile, I am working on a piece for a project for an audio-book version of Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet. Again, this is an opportunity that came to me through the wonders of the World Wide Web. SoundFjord, a gallery specialising in sound art, issued a call for musicians and sound artists to express an interest in contributing. Those who did so have all been given some text to work with, selections will be made after they have the submissions. I hadn’t come across the book before, and have enjoyed exploring it’s dark reflections on the emptiness of everyday life in Lisbon in the ‘twenties and ‘thirties. I also view this work as a collaboration, though of a very different nature. Trying to distill the atmosphere of even one section of a complex literary work into ten minutes of sound (and sound that can be spoken over) has proved quite a challenge. I’m not quite there yet, but pretty close. I’ll hopefully have something to post in the next few days.

Thanks for reading, I will blog again soon

Sam

Live Again

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:04:58 +0000

Last weekend I invited a few friends round to my place and performed a piece for them. As well as (hopefully!) being enjoyable for them, I knew this would be useful for me to keep in practice and experiment with a longer live form. Whereas in my recent live performances I used field-recordings from specific places, for this I simply went through what I had recently done and made a soundscape that seemed interesting. In particular, I was keen to make sure that distinct structures were apparent, in order to create some sense of narrative in the piece and also to help me remember what point I had reached in the performance.

I recorded my performance using a Zoom H1 portable recorder, and was happy enough with the recording to put it on bandcamp yesterday. There have been some lovely responses, it’s always great to learn that people enjoy what you do!

It’s available on a pay-what-you-like basis in a choice of audio formats, or I’ll make a CD-R just for you for £6. Anyway, here it is, if you like it please share it with others. Thanks for listening :)

a new addition to my Improvisation project, downloadable for...

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:57:26 +0000

a new addition to my Improvisation project, downloadable for free in a wide choice of formats http://store.samgrinsell.com/album/improvisations-free-download

3rd December 2011 at Slackspace, Colchester. I’m afraid...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:37:53 +0000

3rd December 2011 at Slackspace, Colchester. I’m afraid this recording has some rather unpleasant microphone distortion in places, this is my fault for setting the input volume too high. However, it’s the only document of my two recent performances and as such I thought it worth sharing. I’ve left it pretty much as is, apart from reducing the volume of the performance itself. I really enjoyed the conversational atmosphere of this event, so have left in the chat before and after. You can hear the voices of Stuart Russell, Adam Parsons and Chrissie Caulfield (and me). Huge thanks to Stuart for organising the event

(if any of my geeky listeners fancy trying to get the annoying noises out of this recording, give me a shout!)

The Sound Of Bygone Futures

Sat, 03 Dec 2011 00:22:00 +0000

A name to conjure with. A man embodying his concept of freedom, living his ideals night by night by blowing freedom through his plastic horn. Some listen, some only hear.

At first I heard only a name. Beyond A Love Supreme Coltrane had sailed to further shores, reading Free Jazz in the stars. This Ornette Coleman it was said had made the chart. The man guiding the ‘Trane.

Some said they had gone too far, for pursuing a dream is likely to seem mad. Mad men follow the moon. This was before I knew the moon.

A CD on the racks. £4. Free Jazz. The name is there and conjures.

Home again. I try to listen, but my green ears can only hear. Unjoyful noise, cacophony is all they find. A few sparse oases of calm. But the rest is noise.

An album put to one side. Some men went too far. An experiment gone wrong, a curiousity. Leave it to the moon.

Miles and ‘Trane and Cannonball. Then there was Mingus, Yussef, Milt. These were my ear-guides on the road beyond hearing. The gods of listening I followed.

With larger ears, and time passed, and strength renewed, I played the disc again. And now the freedom is there, the groove is king, but wild and dancing playful, rollicking king of a merry polyphonious people. My body was my ears and my body now could listen.

The Shape Of Jazz To Come slithered down my iTunes path, sinewy and quick, but strong and deep. It had all the bold and angular power that a former future should. A prophecy fulfilled, disproved and buried five-foot deep. For a thought cannot be put to rest.

And here I am, years later. London, The Royal Festival Hall. The Shape now manifest within the cardboard sleeve under my arm. The vinyl solution.

A slender ghost walks out on to the stage. Slowly. He probably cannot move faster. But this is a man who wouldn’t, even if he could. Deep love is slow. And the freedom that is to come is love.

And so the swinging sound of freedom, the shaping of what is to come, begins. I am listening from outside. I recognise the beauty, but I cannot trust it. Is this my future, or the shape of jazz long gone? Listen, listen. They sing from the stage, Ornette and his band of brothers. And I listen.

And I find they sing to me. They sing joy into me, and strength. And Peace. My cynic flies away and it is me and the band and the Shape of all that’s to come and everything under that roof is in tune and all the guardians of my musical soul are listening with me. And my self is eclipsed by the sound. And Jack Rose is listening with us.

And this is it.

At Source

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:36:48 +0000

As I sit writing this, I am listening to the current version of the recorded part of the piece I shall be performing on Friday 25th. A few weeks ago I took the train up to London and spent a pleasant afternoon recording sounds in the area around the venue. The original score I wrote for this piece is below. Bear in mind that I was writing these essentially for myself, to start ideas flowing and get me working. They are rather like a set of rules, perhaps reflecting my teenage war-gaming days ;)

A text score for a site specific performance piece

The performance shall consist of live sound from one or more performer(s) and recordings made in advance. Length shall be decided first.

Recordings

These should be made within one mile of the site where the performance is to be held. Whoever makes the recordings has only one hour to do so. Any found sound may be used so long as it is made in that hour and within one mile of the site.

Once these sounds have been gathered, they can be manipulated and combined in any way that seems appropriate in order to produce a soundscape of the required length. Once this has been made, the performer(s) should not hear the soundscape again until the performance.

Live Performance

The soundscape will be played and the performer must respond in whatever way seems natural. The audience should clearly be able to hear the recorded part of the piece, the aim is not to drown it out but to respond to and comment on it.

Destroy recordings?

If yes, when precisely?

The questions at the end probably reflect the influence of Bill Drummond’s work with The17. Certainly I think the soundscape itself should only be used once, I’ll delete that after use. I should say again that although that entry in my notebook is written as if to someone else, it was really intended only for my use. As soon as I started seriously working on the piece, I found my own rules too restrictive. Although I only recorded about half-an-hour of sound, I spent more than an hour doing it. The idea remains in the online descriptions of the gig, because I feel like the idea of a time limit was a meaningful part of the evolution of the piece. However, there is already enough control in the limitation to one mile. I didn’t actually measure out a mile at any point, but simply wandered around the area making sure not to stray too far. I do think limiting the amount of actual sound recorded could be more useful by making one focus more effectively.

When I met Leah Kardos last month, she asked if the recorded part of the piece should make the listener think of the area itself. I think I said yes, but then started saying something about how it might also try to subvert that idea. I think it would be more accurate to say no. The point of using sounds from the area is not to make people think about that place, but to reflect on how there is beauty tied up in the everyday things all around us. We tend to remain blind and deaf to this. I have stretched, distorted and manipulated the sounds so that only some of them will be recognisable, while others will sound like things they are not. If we could listen differently, perhaps the world would always sound like this, just as it would look different if we could see in infra-red or ultra-violet. The piece I have made remains as chaotic as everyday sound, but it has been reshaped so as to be less familiar and thus (hopefully!) draw the ear more.

Over this I shall improvise slide guitar. Against the everyday, we set humanity’s attempts to create our own beauty. Again, I rejected my original rules: I see no real need for the soundscape to be unfamiliar to me when I perform the piece, I think this would only be interesting if the performer had never heard it before. Perhaps someone out there would like to use the piece in that way, but for a solo set it’s clearly impossible.

Yesterday I named the piece At Source. At some point I shall make a more user friendly text score for it, changing the rules as I have outlined and making the whole thing a bit pithier as well. I’m hugely looking forward to the performance!

Sam

Physical goods

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 17:12:18 +0000

Greetings all!

I’ve been toying with the idea for a while, but have finally decided that my music should be available in a physical form. Rather than go the usual route of paying to produce some CDs and then selling them, I’m offering to make one-off CD-Rs of some of my releases. I’ll create a unique package just for you. This saves on costs for me, of course, but also means you’ll be getting something very special for no great cost as well. I’ve chosen the three releases that I feel best represent my work:

The Re-Education of Ned Ludd £6

ME £5

newfanglements £5

Postage is free in the UK, £1 to Europe and £2 to the rest of the world

Thanks for reading and listening

Sam

Improvisation 27/10/11 Acoustic slide guitar. You may just be...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:14:00 +0100

Improvisation 27/10/11

Acoustic slide guitar. You may just be able to hear the faint crack of distant fireworks at the end.

Now available to download in a wide choice of formats here

video for one of the tracks for a charity release to help those...

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 09:11:03 +0100

video for one of the tracks for a charity release to help those affected by the UK riots. I’m one of those who contributed sounds. It will be available from Monday at http://www.audiogourmet.co.uk/

From the video description:

“SoundFjord, Audio Gourmet’s Harry Towell (Spheruleus) and Bartosz Dziadosz (Pleq) have come together to curate an album created ‘by the people, for the people’, to raise funds for those affected by the recent riots in the UK.
It was carefully put together after an appeal for short samples of sound, which resulted in the use of work from over 70 artists from around the world.
All profits raised will go towards assisting those that have lost their homes and livelihoods and to provide opportunities for philanthropy, creative expression and collaboration via local community projects.”

List of contributors:

A Company of Enthusiasts
Alexander Wendt
Alexandra McGlynn
Andrew Riley
Anton Mobin
Chad Clark
Critical Best
D.Raymond
Damian Valles
Daniel Thomas Freeman
Danny Clay
Darren McClure
Des Coulam
Eig Eigenheimer
Ekca Liena
Elintseeker
Eric Boivin
Fari B
Foci’s Left
Fraqsea
Gerry McDermott
Hakobune
The Inventors Of Aircraft
Isnaj Dui
James Andean
Jara Tarnovski (Gurun Gurun)
Jessica Rowland
Jez riley French
Joe Stevens
John DeMetrick
Jon Tipler
Juanjo Palacios
Julien Demoulin
Lauki
Laurence Moxon Byrne
Lights Dim
Marco Lucchi
Marihiko Hara
Mem1
Monolyth & Cobalt
Mystified
Neil Russell
Offthesky
Papercutz
Paul Devens
Pawn
Petri Kuljuntausta
Pillowdiver
Pleq
Porzellan
Raul Fuentes
Riz Maslen
Robert Curgenven
Roderick Price
Sam Grinsell
Sarah Boothroyd
Savaran
Sebastiane Hegarty
Seth Chrisman
Seth Guy
Sheinagh Anderson
Shintaro Aoki
Simon Whetham
Small Things On Sundays
Specta Ciera
Spheruleus
Stephen Ferguson
Steve Roden
Stuart Towell
Szymon Kaliski
Thomas Leyland-Collins
Wil Bolton
Yukinori Kida

November 25th Gig

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 08:05:00 +0100

As some of you will know already, I’m performing as part of Leah Kardos’s launch show for her new album Feather Hammer. Leah is a wonderful pianist/composer who I met on twitter, and it’s great to see online connections having real world results! Also performing are the Ligeti Quartet, who will be playing a varied selection of contemporary classical music.

I will be opening the night, with a piece using field-recordings taken from the area around the venue. I’ll create a soundscape using these recordings, and improvise over them using slide guitar. My aim is to create a one-off piece of music, never to be performed again. The process involved in creating it, however, could certainly be used again, and I’ll probably be making a text score of the piece too.

I’m really excited about this event, even if I wasn’t performing I’d probably be going as an audience member, so it’s great to be put alongside such talented musicians. It would be wonderful to see as many people there as possible, so please come along if you can, and share this post around.

This will all be taking place at The Wilmington Arms, in Clerkenwell, London, on 25th November 2011. Tickets are available for just £5 in advance.

The event is being put on by Chaos Theory Music, here is their description of what will be occurring:

Friday 25th November 7.30pm

The Wilmington Arms, 69 Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 4RL

Tickets

£5 advance

£8 on the door

Chaos Theory are proud to present three fiercely inventive talents premièring their contemporary works during this one-off event. All of the musicians tonight combine various disciplines, technology and defy tradition. In the true spirit of what Chaos Theory wishes to promote, we invite all of you who wish to experience challenging new music and art.

LEAH KARDOS: FEATHER HAMMER

Leah is a multi-talented composer, producer and pianist whose latest work will be showcased tonight. Her breathtaking new album Feather Hammer (released on 19th September) combines tonal and ambient soundscapes which fuse contemporary classical and electronica styles.

The recorded version of Feather Hammer uses the sounds of acoustic pianos, making use of the hammer, strings and wood percussion of the piano as well as playing them conventionally.

Tonight, we will witness a special presentation of the album featuring digital piano, electronics and video art by Matthew Greasley.

LIGETI QUARTET

A brilliantly innovative quartet who we’ve had the pleasure of hosting at our monthly night Candied Nonsense. Continually looking to promote the music of established and emerging 20th and 21st Century composers, these graduates from the Royal Academy Of Music, Royal College Of Music and Oxford University never shy away from the new and the experimental. Over the past few months they have premièred ten new works.

Featuring Mandhira De Saram and Patrick Dawkins on violin, Valerie Welbanks on cello and Richard Jones on viola, tonight they will present short pieces by contrasting composers including John Cage, Anton Webern and Harry Partch.

SAM GRINSELL

Opening the evening will be this gifted soloist, who will be creating extraordinary music using his original music concept.

Gathering field-recordings within one mile of the Wilmington Arms over the course of one hour, Sam will be manipulating the sounds to forge a one-off soundscape purely for this evening, adding no new sounds whatsoever. He will accompany these recordings with his improvised slide guitar.

A unique start to a unique evening.

This is a rare opportunity to see such vast talent together in one evening and we invite you to come and see how limitless music can be.

Improvisation 28/8/11 - electric slide guitar. This will be...

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:31:20 +0100

Improvisation 28/8/11 - electric slide guitar. This will be added to the downloadable improvisations on my bandcamp soon, in the meantime it’s exclusively streamable here! Comments welcome :)