Curated compositions from students at
Peabody Computer Music (PCM)
Computer Music Department, Peabody Conservatory of Music, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Co-Curators
Prof. Geoffrey Wright
Sandra Wuan-chin Li
Assistant Curator
Yi-An Hwang
June 08 - 10 | 2017
Hamburg | Germany
Fakultät Design, Medien und Information (DMI)
Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften
The History of The Computer Music Department of The Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University
Peabody’s Electronic Music Studios were founded in 1967 by Dr. Jean Eichelberger Ivey. Summer Workshops for school music teachers were offered first, and public electronic music programs took place from the beginning. In the fall of 1969, Peabody opened its year-round studio with regular courses for conservatory students. It was the first such studio in Maryland, and was one of the first anywhere to be located in a conservatory.
In that first full season, electronic works composed in the new studio by Dr. Ivey and her students were heard in public concerts here at Peabody, at New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall, and on radio and television. Annual concerts have continued since that time, often featuring collaborations with performing musicians, dance, film, and special visuals. Works from other studios and by many distinguished guest composers have also been presented.
Frequent public lectures and demonstrations have extended the studio’s educational role beyond its immediate students to a wider audience. A burgeoning expansion of musical resources came with the addition of computers. The affiliation of Peabody with the Johns Hopkins University in 1977 made extension into this field possible, initially utilizing computers, advanced technology, and expertise available through the university.
Geoffrey Wright established the Computer Music Studio, of which he is director, in 1982. In the same year he founded the Computer Music Consort as a professional performance group in residence at Peabody, to expand the already established tradition of presenting high-level musical performances including electronics and multimedia collaborations with diverse artists. McGregor Boyle is the technical director of the Computer Music Consort. The combined Electronic and Computer Music Studios serve as a working laboratory for music composition and research, and as a center for courses, demonstrations, and public programs.
In 1989 the Electronic and Computer Music Studios joined into a single department and inaugurated a new Master of Music degree in Computer Music with specialized tracks in composition, performance/concert production, and research/technology.
In 1993 the Sidney M. Friedberg Lecture Series in Music and Psychology was founded to bring distinguished musicians and psychologists to the Peabody Conservatory and Johns Hopkins University. The lecture, an annual event, is part of a program undertaken jointly by the Peabody Computer Music Department and the Psychology Department of the School of Arts and Sciences. The program focuses on education and research relating to musical composition and performance, psychoacoustics, and music perception and cognition.
The Prix d’Été competition, established by Walter Summer in 1994 and hosted annually by the Computer Music Department, encourages Peabody graduate and undergraduate composition students to create chamber music that explores new instrumental, vocal, computer and multi-media horizons.
Doctoral level (DMA) study in computer music was established in 1998. Students may emphasize Computer Music studies in conjunction with another department, such as Composition, Conducting, or Performance.
pcm.peabody.jhu.edu
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1 Strata | Edwin Kenzo Huet
Strata is a pointillistic textural narrative created by deconstructing, manipulating, and recycling years of my compositions, sound design projects, installations, field recordings, and experiments. The piece ends up being meditative overall despite the chaotic interplay of its smaller parts, which border on war-like at times. The Buddhist concepts of oneness, of detachment from ego, and of a Universal Truth that underlies all things played a big role in this piece - repeatedly layering, building on, and abstracting in search of some resonant nothingness fueled by small changes in large numbers. The work is largely about embracing, or at least observing and learning from our situations, good and bad. It is also about small changes in a single body affecting the larger picture, and about learning to live and breath under larger volatile forces.
Edwin Kenzo Huet
Edwin Kenzo Huet is a composer, sound artist, performer, audio engineer based in Baltimore, MD, whose work has been featured at concerts, conferences, and exhibitions throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including SEAMUS 2014 (Middletown, CT, USA)/2015 (Blacksburg, VA, USA), ICMC/SMC 2014 (Athens, Greece), LEM Fest (Barcelona, Spain), and Le Bruit de la Neige (Doussard, France). He is the recipient of the third international Luigi Russolo - Rossana Maggia sound art award, a CD release on Monochrome Vision, and two Prix D’Été competition awards. His music was featured on contemporary dancer Shou-Yuo Liu’s SHAPDE 5.5 project in Taipei. He is one half of Xiodjiha, an electro-acoustic free improv duo with Canadian bassist/composer Alex Fournier, as well as a co-founder/artistic director of the genre-melding Baltimore music & art showcase, About\face. Edwin has performed with the likes of Michael Formanek, Billy Hart, and Craig Taborn, to name a few.
Past performance collaborations span free jazz, chamber music, early music, plainchant, sludge metal, trip-hop, big band, wind ensemble, and more. His current focuses are interactive works for Disklavier player piano, sound design for games, and developing systems for electro-acoustic improvisation, as well as producing, recording, mixing, and mastering for upcoming classical, free jazz, indie rock, EDM, and new music releases.
As an audio engineer, Edwin has worked with Abigail Washburn, Ah Young Hong, Ana Thorvaldsdottir, Anna Clyne, Anthony de Mare, Béla Fleck, Brevard Concert Symphony Orchestra, Chris Cerrone, Conrad Tao, Gardening Club, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Jean-Yves Thibaudet, June Pastel, Kevin Puts, Marin Alsop, Michael Formanek, Michael Hersch, Peabody Computer Music Consort, Peabody Concert Orchestra, Peabody Opera Department, Peabody Jazz Ensemble, Peabody Renaissance Ensemble, Peabody Symphony Orchestra, Shanghai Quartet, Caroline Shaw, Third Practice, & The Witches. Edwin’s teachers at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD include Dr. Geoffrey Wright and Dr. McGregor Boyle. In May, he will graduate with dual master’s degrees in Computer Music Composition and Recording Arts & Sciences.
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2 Chasing Shadows | Christopher Lock
Chasing Shadows is a piece for fixed audio and video by painter Christine Lock and composer Christopher Lock. The piece attempts to capture the serenity and sublimity of introspection and quiet self thought. It often grapples with the futility of attempting to relive the past and illustrates the tensions and dissonances inherent to such a pursuit. The audio was created using an amalgamation of software including Max/MSP, ChucK, and Ableton Live. Much of the original source material includes samples of metal being struck and faint violin melodies. Granular synthesis was used primarily to create the opening texture of the piece and is later ousted by other forms of synthesis.
Christopher Lock
Christopher Lock is a composer of contemporary electroacoustic concert music interested in blurring the stylistic boundaries between musical Academia and Bohemia. He has found that the musics of both traditions have assumed a similar aesthetic trajectory and neither influence need be excluded from serious composition. Christopher is fascinated by the idea of bridging the gaps between the performance practices associated with music from the classical canon, and the inherent idioms of electronic, computational, and improvisational forms of music making. As a classically trained violist and composer he has been raised with the ideals and rigor of classical instrument performance practice and actively attempts to incorporate those same focused techniques and disciplines into the practice of using computational machines as instruments alongside acoustic ones. Christopher's works have been presented by the High Zero Foundation, The Walters Art Museum, Oxford University, Johns Hopkins University, the Peabody Conservatory, Redzone Concert Series, and The Student Electro Acoustic Recital Series. He has performed his music in and around Maryland, Washington DC, Ohio, Los Angeles, England, and Greece. Christopher is the founder and coordinator of the Redzone collective in Baltimore dedicated to the assembly and exposition of sound and film artists from all backgrounds, both academic and experimental. Former performers include faculty and students from the Peabody Conservatory of Music (myself included), the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Manhattan School of Music, Mannes (The New School), and Johns Hopkins University, as well as prominent and respected members of the Baltimore experimental music scene. Christopher is currently working on two Bachelors of Music degrees in Computer Music Composition and Viola Performance at the Peabody Conservatory. He is currently a resident DJ on WJHU (The Johns Hopkins Radio) where he presents a weekly show focusing on the intersection of academic and “outsider” experimental music (including genres such as Noise, Lowercase/ambient, electroacoustic concert music, Chance Music, Musique Concrete, No Input Feedback mixing, manipulation of tape loops, free Jazz, etc...), and the surprising similarities between the diverse musical backgrounds.
3 Palindrome | Sam Torres
“Palindrome” is a long form meditation/installation piece created by filtering white noise into pitches very
slowly. The pitches create chords that change each time they emerge. Since the pitches are created by filtering the noise, the chords smoothly emerge from a sonic fog and then fade back into it. The resulting sound is reminiscent of a tumultuous ocean or windy storm briefly calming, allowing a moment of clarity before returning to chaos and obscurity. The climactic ending was created using digital glitches in the synthesizer's delay effect combined with changing the built-in EQ, chorus, and filtering settings. The recording was created using the Roland JP-8000 analog modeling synthesizer and was recorded in one take.
Sam Torres
Sam Torres is a New York City/Baltimore based electroacoustic composer, saxophonist, and freelance audio engineer. He is interested in creating electroacoustic music that elegantly combines live interactive electronics with acoustic instruments, as opposed to pitting the instrument against the machine.
Tilted Arc, an electroacoustic duo with pianist Sophia Vastek; Stretto, Sam’s modern jazz quartet; and Little Wing, an 11-piece indie chamber ensemble are among Sam’s ongoing ensemble projects. In addition to these, Sam has written music for live electronics and saxophone, solo piano, and has performed on saxophone and electronics with various ensembles. He has been commissioned to write works for violin and electronics; a 42-piece high-school string ensemble, choral ensembles, and various other soloists and chamber ensembles. A graduate of the Horace Mann School, Sam earned his Bachelor’s degree in jazz performance in May of 2016 from Manhattan School of Music, where he has studied composition with Reiko Fueting and Todd Reynolds, electronic sound arts with Sam Pluta and David Adamcyk, and jazz saxophone with Donny McCaslin, Rich Perry, and Steve Wilson. Sam is currently Master’s student and Graduate Assistant fellow at the Peabody Institute, John Hopkins University, where he studies computer music composition with Geoffrey Wright.
Sam’s music has been performed at the Thalia Theater at Symphony Space, Spectrum, Peabody Institute, Manhattan School of Music, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. As a saxophonist and woodwind doubler, Sam has performed at Carnegie Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Symphony Space, Spectrum, the RISD Museum, SMOKE, The Shrine, and others with Stretto, ensembles from Manhattan School of Music, New York Youth Symphony, New York Jazz Academy, and others. As an audio engineer, Sam has worked with new music ensembles Talea Ensmeble, Chartruese, Columbia University Composers, composer Michael Harrison, the Uptown Phil, and sTem trio; as a technical assistant with violinist Todd Reynolds at the Jewish Museum, Talea Ensemble at the Dimenna Center, Wet Ink ensemble, and composers David Adamcyk and Zosha Di Castri at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University.
4 Yeti | Alex Tuo Wang
Yeti is a stereo track from my unreleased EP “Border”. I use a combination of Trap music’s 808 bass and world music samples to create a scene of the Yeti dancing in the wild. The melody synth is created using Xfer Records serum. I am trying to find more interesting sounds using this hybrid way to make dance related music.
Alex Tuo Wang
Alex Tuo Wang is a Chinese composer living in the United States. After he finished his bachelor degree in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, he went to the United States in 2015 to pursue his computer music master degree at The Peabody Institute of Music, where he studies with Dr. McGregor Boyle. In 2016, he was invited to present his piece “Disorderly” at the 2016 New York City Electronic Music Festival in New York City and the 2016 International Computer Music Conference in the Netherlands. At the same time, he was starting make experimental dance music. His tracks “Poem of the Week”, “Moonshine”, “Silver Ear” were released on the Chinese record label Dohits. Those tracks were also featured on a Boiler Room Upfront Mix and NTS live radio. He will release his debut EP 'Border' in 2017. Tuo Wang’s music is influenced by Flying Lotus, J Dilla, and Aphex Twin. His music style is a hybrid of Trap, Hip-hop, and experimental music.
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5 Renvoi｜Samuel Hoch
"Renvoi" (Cross Reference) is a stereo, fixed-media electronic piece consisting of synthetic pulses interacting through “sheets” of digital noise. I wanted to explore the dynamism of a simulated source of sound, propagated through a digital mesh of acoustic parameters. The block of audio material I started working on with this piece were stems from music therapy I was involved with; research on patients testing the effects of psilocybin on musical perception. For this piece, I wanted to sharpen out the more startling artifacts in these sounds and enhance their limits of materiality. Outside of a medical field, I was more comfortable to augment the piece in an aggressive way. I expanded dynamic contrast throughout the recordings and started to build a web of signal processing. For the overall structure, acousmatic source propagates through a network of delay line and resonator objects. I was very interested in how generative signal processing could yield emergence in these patterns of recursive DSP chains. The piece was inspired by the Arachne legend in greek mythology and how the networks we’ve formed today muse on a similar sense of hubris.
​Samuel Hoch
Samuel Hoch is a composer and multimedia artist from Minneapolis. His current focus is on undergraduate studies for Computer Music Composition and Recording Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. Now living and studying in Baltimore, he continues to both record on his own and collaborate on projects for a variety of media, dance, and visual artists. As a computer programmer, he uses languages such as SuperCollider to interface his own signal processing tools, control a palette of external software, and automate overall workflow. He has apprenticed under digital-hardcore musician Jeff Carey to incorporate computer science into both physical control interfaces and compositional practice. Research in cyberculture and post- net art act as a platform for his sonic work. Fusing analog and digital artifacts of sound into a malleable material helps inform his domain of medium. His electronic compositions distend from psychoacoustic boundaries in minimalist, noise, and glitch music aesthetics. Extramusical practices in his composition come from interests in mysticism with technology along with the chemistry of blurring obfuscations between perceived “fake” simulations and “real” sound worlds. He tries to render materialized sound objects that interact on these levels.
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6 The Stars In Our Eyes | Scott Congyu Li
"The Stars In Our Eyes" contains a series of arpeggiations that crescendo and modulate with various effects such as vocoding, stereo shifting, phasing, and flanging.
Scott Congyu Li
Scott Congyu Li is a freshman at the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. Although he has studied classical violin performance for 9 years, he is now beginning his first formal compositional study. He is pursuing degrees in Computer Music Composition and Recording Arts. Li has been using his main compositional tool, FL Studio, for 5 years. Prior to this year, Li has primarily composed "EDM" music, mixing pop influences with jazz and classical techniques. Since beginning his studies with Peabody Computer Music professor Dr. Geoffrey Wright, he has begun to explore outside the world of dance music and has composed a number of experimental electronic fixed-media pieces.
7 Sound of String | Yian Hwang
Inspired by Wuan-chin Li’s “Ban Shan”, “The Sound of String” is telling the deepest thought in our mind, where we might not recognize but feel familiar with it. In other words, we are experiencing our unconscious mind. The materials are all collected from piano, especially on note “E”. When I play the piano key, I feel the sound from it. I’m not only playing the single note but a complex overtone. The beautiful overtone gives people unlimited imagination through the vibrating of string. I took note E and its notes of overtone serials. Through the modulation and resampling, the music becomes thick, slowly moving and lingering. It represents the thoughts in our unconscious which are blurred when the affection is overloading in my mind.
Yian Hwang
Yian Hwang, a composer from Taiwan. Yian has shown her passion on music since high school where she played guitar and drum set in rock n’ roll band. Later, Yian went to music department at National Sun Yat-sen University in 2010 and major in Music Production, including academic composition, recording, and post-production. After she received Bachelor degree, she went to graduate school at National Chiao Tung University and started learning computer music. Her interests include combining instrumental composition with computer music and electronic-acoustics composition. She quitted the graduate school when she got accepted by Computer Music at Peabody Conservatory and went to the US. Now she is studying with Dr. Geoffrey Wright.
8 Morning Loop｜Alex Ringo
Using the freeware Sunvox*, I have designed a pop tune with simple synthesis techniques employed by video game composers of the past. Some of the elements I am most attracted to from that genre, such as compound melody between voices and extreme control of fine-tuning portamentos and vibratos, have been included.
*www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/
Alex Ringo
Alexander Ringo is a Computer Music student at The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Originally trained as a trombone player, he moved to computer-based music and music systems. He is influenced by his passion for video games and composing music for them. His current research is directed towards using Virtual Reality in musical systems and music composition.