For Guitar Techniques Issue 240, I’ve penned a little thing about different approaches to playing over a simple blues progression. THIS WAS SUCH A CONFUSING THING FOR ME TO LEARN GROWING UP. Why? Because
1) There are several effective approaches, and humans being humans can only give advice on what they know. I received conflicting advice from different great players on what to do, leaving me befuddled.
2) Blues playing can be both very simple and intuitive, and hugely complex. Learning to use both intuitive flair and theoretical sophistical takes time (not that I’m done, far from it).
This article to which I owe much to Jason Sidwell for the underlying themes offers 4 different approaches to playing on a 12-bar, 3 chord progression. I found it very useful, I hope you might too.
Molto excited to be running a Jazz guitar course (with Bridget running the parallel Classical guitar course) in the stunning Palazzo Mannocchi in the Marche region of Italy 15-22 August 2015 with Helicon Arts. Italian food and wine, terraces, gorgeous views, 2 swimming pools, all food and trips catered and lots and lots of extended chords, guide-tome lines and tasteful phrasing.
Here’s some info for my Hidden Music exhibition 7-13 May 2015 at the Lewis Elton Gallery. A series of works created through translation of natural phenomena into sound.
On the 10th anniversary of my bone marrow transplant, you are warmly invited to a concert of the Eclectic Guitar Orchestra, in support of leukaemia charities. April 8th 2015, 7.30pm Bush Hall (Shepherd’s Bush) Tickets a mere £25
Performers include the legendary John Williams, George Uki Hrab, Declan Zapala, Craig Ogden, Bridget Mermikides, John Wheatcroft, Peter GregsonAmanda Cook, Steve GossJake Willson and an ever growing list of amazing musicians.
Please join the Facebook event for ticketing information, how you can support the event, to express interest (so I can get an idea of numbers), and a bunch of other exciting stuff to be announced… visit again for unfolding information…
I asked my friend and many-time collaborator Anna Tanczos to visualise Villa-Lobos’s New York Skyline Melody for a recent lecture-presentation. The results are fantastic (I predict 1000s of views), and you can see exactly how Villa-Lobos translated the New York Skyline into a solo piano work (note the multiple voices with the foreground and background buildings). This piece has been a big inspiration to me the field of data sonification. For more on New York Skyline Melody and similar workssee here, and for all things Data Sonification here.
Digital animator (with a PhD in Chemistry) Anna Tanczos has set my composition ‘The Escher Café’ to video for live performances. Here’s an extract with animated tessellating lizards no less.
Alexia Coley’s debut album is out on Jalapeño records. It was a pleasure to play geetar on the record and even more of a pleasure to gig the material. Alexia’s music is infectious and a joy to play, and her voice gives me the bumps of many geese.
Here’s a sneak preview:
My article on Bossa Nova guitar is now in Guitar Techniques issue 238. Such an amazing and idiosyncratic guitar style, it was a real pleasure to put this together, and I learned a lot about the players and techniques.
Here’s details of a public seminar on Wednesday 29th October 4pm, TB06, University of Surrey.
4.00pm, Wednesday 29th October, TB06 FREE admission More Info
Dr Milton Mermikides (Surrey)
Musical Continua: Perception and Technology
Digital music technology has now fulfilled Varèse’s dream of “instruments obedient to […] thought”, Russolo’s call to “conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds” and Busoni’s desire to “draw a little nearer to infinitude”. However, the staggering developments in music technology over the last 20 years has brought with it a less predictable outcome, the ability to better understand the mechanics of music itself, and to illuminate some of the mysteries of its expressive power. Through a survey of recent research projects, this seminar examines how our understanding of musical expression in pitch, rhythm and timbre can be enhanced with technological support, furthering analytical insight, artistic appreciation and creative practice.
March 2014 saw the launch of the International Guitar Research Centre, a major asset to guitar research world wide. It’s great to be involved among such eminent guitar practitioners and theorists. From the IGRC:
“The research centre will work in close affiliation with various partner institutions including the IGF (International Guitar Foundation, King’s Place, London), the IGRA (International Guitar Research Archive, CSUN, Los Angeles, California) and the University of São Paulo (Brazil). The launch was a two-day event on 29th and 30th March 2014 that included academic papers, seminars, public discussions, lecture-recitals and concerts. Guest artists included John Williams, Xuefei Yang, Newton Faulkner, The Amadeus Guitar Duo, Bridget Mermikides, Declan Zapala and Michael Partington.”
A nice promo vid is viewable here, which includes a fragment of my classical guitar and electronics concert with Bridget.
The fabulous Qed conference happened again this year, to much acclaim. Very happy to work on the intro video again. (Here’s 2013‘s offering). This time Paul Zenon revealed his superstitions. Many of these are particularly inside jokes in the skeptic community, but I hope others are entertained. Fingers crossed.
Bridget and I will be performing at 1.30pm Sunday March 30th (University of Surrey) at the launch of the International Guitar Research Centre (IGRC) run by Steve Goss and me. We’ll be performing 7 new works for classical guitar and electronics. Not the usual guitar rep. Tickets are £2 for students and £10 for the rest of us. Would be lovely to have some friends (of ours and new music) there.
Delighted to learn that the film version of Bloodlines will be featured in the Fabrica Vitae touring exhibition.
Fabrica Vitae is inspired by Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) and explores art and anatomy through the work of contemporary artists, scientists and thinkers. It will feature work from artists and scientists who are working together to re-imagine and extend the understanding of the human body.
More details will be available after Feb. 27th on www.fabrica-vitae.com.
The first Fabrica Vitae exhibition will take place in Zakynthos, Greece in May 2014.
Dr. Simon Park (my serial bio-art collaborator (like this) and creator of the amazing exploring the invisible site along with sound guru Professor Tony Myatt and I, have been exploring the interaction of sound/music and the Pyrocystis fusiformis bioluminescent algae. As you do. Here’s a sneaky pilot.
UPDATE- Since the publication of Brad Osborn’s Kid Algebra (2014), I’m going to switch to his category of Euclidean rhythms (in their 4 types) to describe the patterns below. In summary, Euclidean rhythms (ER) are rhythms in which k onsets in n divisions are as similar as possible, which essentially means that they will only differ by at most one subdivision each. So in ER the groups are as similar as possible, but the term maximally even we will reserve for ER rhythms where the smaller note groups are as separated as much as possible. For example, (2,2,3,3) and (2,3,2,3) are both ER, but only the latter is maximally even.
This is a library of all the maximally even (including strictly even) rhythms for 2-7 rhythmic onsets within 6,8,12 and 16 beat cycles.
Maximal evenness (M.E.) describes a rhythm which is as evenly spread out as possible given both a number or events (rhythmic onsets), and a number of available slots (beats). Strict evenness (marked with a º) is a subset of M.E. and occurs when the hits are equally spaced. M.E. rhythms are intrinsic to much music making in a wide range of cultures from Sub-saharan Africa, South America to EDM and much in between.
The parenthesised number shows the number of displacements (or ‘rotations’) available for the rhythm in the beat-cycle, and allows for starting on rests. When the number of rotations equals the number of beats in the cycle this is marked with an * and represents maximally independence (MI – a common trait of African timelines and clave patterns). Note that 5,6 and 7 in 12 also represents maximally even pentatonic, hexatonic and heptatonic scale sets e.g. 3,3,2,2,2 represents all the modes of the major pentatonic as well as a 5 in 12 set of ME rhythms. As another example 2,2,1,2,2,1,2 (a rotation of 2,2,2,1,2,2,1) represents both the African standard time-line and the Mixolydian mode. Enjoy.
Bridget’s book The Classical Guitar Compendium (Hal Leonard 2013) is now available on Amazon and Amazon UK
It’s a huge 160-page book of original (and beautiful) arrangements, with 2 CDs of Bridget playing the pieces.
The book launch at London Guitar Studio, with Craig Ogden, Gary Ryan and Amanda Cook playing a selection of the arrangements was too much fun to express in WordPress.
Announcing a 2-day symposium (November 15-16 2013 at University of Notre Dame in Central London) examining the process, philosophy and products of collaborations between scientists, musicians and performing artists. It’s hosted and organised by me and my sister Dr. Alex Mermikides, and is an output of the Chimera Network – and AHRC-supported project promoting Art/Sci research.
I have been thinking about ‘nutshell’ images for a range of musical concepts. Here’s a work in progress on common progressions in a major key in 17-19th century tonal harmony. Yes caveat, WIP etc, but it seems quite useful. Comments and suggestions welcome! Minor key next, please don’t let me turn them into 3D models for mode mixtures and modulations.
Well I must be doing something right – or probably not enough wrong – as the good people of Future have asked me to yet another DVD this Winter.
It’s due for release in early 2014. Topic is under wraps but this little image should give you a mighty big clue. Rather excited about this one.
Bloodlines is a performance that traces the microscopic drama that plays out between a serious disease and medical treatment in the human body. It draws on its makers’ personal experience of Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia (which I developed in 2004) and its treatment through intensive chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a bone marrow transplant (donated by his sister Alex Mermikides, who is directing the performance). Also collaborating in the performance is Ann Van de Velde, a clinical haematologist involved in the care and treatment of blood disorders such as Leukaemia, and Anna Tanczos, a digital artist specialising in science communication.
‘…is the human body a soul-less, self-less object at the mercy of automatic internal processes…or is it a precious vessel containing a unique individual…?’
Sian Ede Art & Science. London and New York: Taurus Books, 2010. p.145
Bloodlines premiered at the Dana Centre on 18 July 2013. Future performances will be announced on the Events page.
On the 14th October 2013, I’ll be joining the eminent musician and fellow Wodehouse character Peter Gregson at the Luton Music Club to max out on Minimalism. Details to follow, but on the programme is Terry Riley’s seminal work In C in all its heterophonic and generative gorgeousness.
Rather than play it (on my guitar) traditionally with the ensemble, I thought it fun (and more interesting) to use Ableton Live (and Push) to rebuild it so it ran generatively. I’ve done a very simple version which adopt most of the instructions, any errors kindly forgive me and my future generations.
Here’s a screenshot of the resultant tapestry:
And here’s the WIP for your to download in the spirit of musical democracy.
Hit scene 1 and they’ll tumble through, I’ve weighted the follow actions to have on average more repeats on shorter phrases which makes sense musically. You can intervene, urging on any stragglers and holding back any clips forging too far ahead. Actually I may need to consult a statistician as the deviation in fall rates seems (in my fallible intuition) to suggest something’s a bit skewy with the randomising process. But oh well, the variation in performances is intriguing (I’m on listen number 6 and still very happy). You can of course ride volumes, edit instruments and send out effects to your ears’ content. You can always set clip 53 to – rather than stop – return to clip 1 so the piece lasts forever, with clips lapping each other – adding another dimension to the work. If Follow Actions in Live were more sophisticated or I had time to render in Max the clips could behave more intelligently by grouping together, dropping out and changing velocity more responsively as per score instructions, but it actually works quite beautifully as is, which is a testament to the power of Riley’s concept.
Incidentally if you’d like to tweak the ‘fall rate’ – and hence the resulting approximate duration – change this number on the clips (you can select multiple), but remember that you may want longer clips with lower numbers. Again I wish there was more sophistication with follow actions, which would also allow the pulse to stop after all other clips are finished, but I await Ableton Live 1011 17
Thanks to user Jeepee on the Ableton forum, whose patch I discovered when googling this idea, I’ve kept many of Jeepee’s clips as I like how he/she played them, but am also thinking of doing it PROPERLY in Max and crowdsourcing midi and audio clips from the interwebs when the Earth slows and there’s enough hours in the day for such mischief.
For those sensible people not in to Ableton or this sort of thing, you can hear a rendered version from this patch here:
(If that doesn’t buffer or you are a suffering iPad browser) -> In C Live
