JANUS Live #2

This Spring I was invited to do an internet radio interview for JANUS Radio, in a kind of "Desert Island Discs" format, alongside an accompanying electronic music performance. I thought the performance would be a good excuse for me to dust off (and practice) my viola and use it in the context of an improvisation with electronics. The concept behind the piece was that the viola would be used as a noise source (insert viola joke here!), and the pitch material – using a just-intoned Bohlen-Pierce tuning – would be handled by my trustworthy friend, Max 8. With the exception of Miller Puckete's bonk~ object, the patch uses only standard objects that come with Max 8, including gen~. The improv does not rely on pre-recorded sounds – all the electronic sounds in the piece come from the processed sound of the live viola (heard by itself at the beginning and the end, but faded-out to silence in the middle of the piece).