Recorded on May 29, 2009 and Dec 23, 2009.

Tracks:

• Igneus pt. 1
  3:05
• Igneus pt. 2
  3:20
• March of the Clarinets
  1:44
• Ben Moderato (remaster)
  4:15
• Bloom pt. 1
  3:58
• Bloom pt. 2
  4:21
• Bloom pt. 3
  7:31

Total Time: 28:10

I’ve already played my first gig here!  Last Tuesday, I played for a Ward Prayer with some friends.  It was a trio – Piano, Acoustic guitar, and Djembe (that was me).  We sang in three part harmony too.  Good, wholesome indie gospel pop.

I have yet to play my electronic setup out of the dorm room, but I’m talking to another synth enthusiast from the next hall over – we should be getting together soon.

It’s a great time to be making music.  There are so many people around with creative ideas that want to share them.  It’s gonna be fun!

My class schedule went like this:

• 10:00 Concert Band
• 11:00 Web Design
  The class focused on blogging, with an introduction to HTML the last few days.  On Friday, we also had a great discussion about possible improvements for the MAT Camp website, which is about to be redesigned.
• 1:00 Symphony Orchestra
• 2:00 Everything Makes Music (with Joe Jensen)
  Our class for third- through fifth-graders.  We focused on some of the fundamentals of sound and music:  Instrument design, vibration and resonance, rhythm, and pitch.  We also spent some time listening, and had a jam session on some of my electronic setup!
• 3:00 Cobra Ensemble (with Joe Jensen)
  We got to teach a whole class about Cobra!  We had two saxophones, two tubas, a clarinet, and a string bass.  We were a little short on performers, so we tweaked the Guerrilla rules a little to accommodate.  We performed the piece on Friday afternoon, in between the Intermediate Strings and the Western Wyoming Fiddlers, for an extra shocking performance…
• 4:00 Advanced Electronic Music (with Joe Jensen)
  In this class, we used Ableton Live to create some short songs.  We mostly worked with loops, but we also got into beat-mapping and remixing.  There was a great call-and-response mashup of a Linkin Park song, for example!  We also talked a little bit about recording into the software, and performing live.

A note to all of you that subscribe by email: Sorry about the other, nonsensical post that arrived earlier this week.  On Monday, I was having technical problems in my Web Design class so I did some live editing on my site as a demonstration.  Probably a bad idea, but whatever!  :P

• Downtempo
  A slow, ambient dance track.  Listen for the arpeggiating synths (the fast beepy ones) and how the echoes turn into a synth sound by the end.
  
• This Must Be The Place
  A jam around the Talking Heads song.  Listen for the really bad Theremin solo near the end.

Andrew Jensen: Synths, Drum machines, Theremin, electronics

Lane Stevens: Synths, Drum machines, electronics

01
02 Ambience
03 Music for Two Musicians
04

TubaTronix Page

“Cobra” is one of my favorite pieces of music. It is fully improvised, but there are a lot of rules that control the game as a whole. There are cards for “start playing,” “stop playing,” “play something different,” etc., but the musicians have to create the actual music as they go. There are also Sound memories, Guerilla systems, and tactics, but that’s outside of the scope of this teaser. So come and watch!

Asplund and Friends

Wednesday, 1 April 2009
8 pm
Admission: Free
Featuring:

• BYU Group for Experimental Music
  Performing John Zorn’s masterpiece, “Cobra”
• Locust Trio
• Triaxia
• Uba

The Pennyroyal Cafe
155 N University Ave
Provo, UT

Map

From the Wikipedia article:

["Cobra"] consists of a set of cues notated on cards, and rules corresponding to the cues that direct the players what to do. The number of players, instrumentation, and length of the piece is indeterminate. Because there is no traditional musical notation and the players improvise, the piece may sound radically different from performance to performance.

As was commented upon in some length in a 2004 interview, Zorn has, with his own words, “deliberately chosen not to publish (or even write down) the rules” to his game pieces, being concerned with the importance of personal instruction.

As a matter of fact, Christian Asplund has played “Cobra” with Zorn himself, so if you’d like to learn “the tradition,” it’s a really short pedigree!  See you there.

This month, TubaTronix suited up and took Provo’s Avant Garde music scene by storm. We played two gigs at the Pennyroyal Cafe in Provo, 1/14/09 and 1/28/09. January 14th was the official TubaTronix debut – the first non-young-men’s-group-and-not-at-Andrew’s-house gig. There were missed notes and equipment failures, but the shows went well, and the audience enjoyed them.

TubaTronix served as an opening act for “Asplund and Friends,” a biweekly concert series at Pennyroyal Cafe every 1st and 3rd Wednesday. Dr. Christian Asplund, music theory professor at BYU (and a relative of Joe and me) organized and performed at the shows. Ironically, TubaTronix’ downtempo symphonic electronica was the “tamest” act on the show. We were followed both nights by UBA, a group performing free improvisation on tuba, electronics, bowed guitars, viola, and voice. If you can imagine that.

In an attempt to start a beautiful tradition, we’ve tried to record everything from the performances. Of course, we forgot to get most of the first gig recorded, and the one song we did get – “Awkward Ambience” – represents a pretty embarrassing equipment failure…We managed to get everything from the 1/28 gig, though. Here are the mp3′s from the two performances. Have fun.

But, before you just read this post, know that the TubaTronix page has been updated a bunch on this special occation. You’ll find a lot of cool notes and pictures from the shows. So you might want to go straight there. Otherwise:

• 01
• Music For Two Musicians
• 03
• Awkward Ambience

For more info and pictures:

See the TubaTronix page

Presenting the new music video for the Rent a Mongoose project.  This was prompted by a friend who asked how we make music.  This is not a complete answer, but it’s more entertaining than my personal explanation.  I, Nick, was the cameraman during the production of the project.  You can see it in the studio blog on the Rent a Mongoose page or on the Nick Jensen Podckast.  The music is also quite entertaining, go to the Rent a Mongoose page to hear all the tracks.

Download the video

Visit the Nick Jensen Podckast

This is a little something I’ve been working on over Christmas break. This song is actually an unlikely combination of two other songs:

• “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – U2
• “Kids With Guns” – Gorillaz

Mashup?

For those of you who don’t know about mashups yet, we turn to Wikipedia:

A mashup, bootleg or blend…is a song or composition created from the combination of the music from one song with the a cappella from another. A mash-up is a song created out of pieces of two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another.

In full swing at the end of the 20th century, mashups have been described positively as “ultimate post-modern pop song[s]“ or “culture jamming in its purest form”. They have also been described negatively as “the logical extension of the sampling fever of the ’80s taken to its dumbest extreme”.

I think I personally prefer the “ultimate post-modern pop” label. Either way, please enjoy the mashup!

And, by the way, Happy New Year!

Please take note of the new theme’s exciting new features! On the sidebar to the right, you’ll notice a “subscribe” area. You can subscribe to new posts through RSS or (new!) Email format. The recordings should be easier to find now: they get their own heading on the sidebar.

I also made an extended footer (see the bottom of every page) like several sites have started. You can see a quick list of the newest posts and comments, as well as links to posts month-by-month. Yes, the recent comments feature isn’t quite finished yet. But I don’t care. I wanted to get this thing up and running! The recent comment list will be working soon.

I hope you enjoy the new design! Tell me what you think.