organ of qwerty

birthday bells

2011-03-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

i like bells. cary got me some for my birthday.

wind in the trees

2011-01-02T13:44:00.000-08:00

wind in the trees is a half-hour long ambient piece driven by a soft cowbell rhythm pattern combined with legato vocal sounds and other percussion instruments. it has an generative element: the vocals and some of the percussion tracks are loops of various lengths, creating different relationships throughout the piece.
there is also a performative aspect: the anklung (balinese bamboo instrument) parts were played and recorded live.
friends have found this piece relaxing and restorative. i hope you will, too.

celeste, home alone (for glockenspiel and soft white noise)

2010-09-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

celeste, home alone (for glockenspiel and soft white noise) by organofqwerty

new lloopp track

2010-06-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

Transubstantiation 1 by organofqwerty

steve adams' dark forest trio live @ hemlock tavern s.f. 02/21/10

2010-03-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

steve adams' dark forest trio @ hemlock tavern s.f. by organofqwerty
steve adams: alto sax
scott amendola: drums, electronics
john hanes: laptop, electronics
jazz is referenced. so are the flintstones.
i used some some great stuff i grabbed from ubuweb, including "via (48 dante variations)" by caroline bergvall, "night birds" by sainkho namtchylak, a little bit of signifying monkey, and a walk-on by kurt schwitters.

dreambira

2010-03-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

organ of qwerty : dreambira from organofqwerty on Vimeo.

music and video by john hanes (except for the shangri-las bits). video shot on iphone 3g with qik video. music recorded and mixed on live 8.1.1 with liberal use of max for live devices, including ml.grainfreeze, ml.circular.doppler, fp.granulate, and a bunch of pluggos. video edited on imovie '09.

jo(h)n+aurora live @ ivy room

2010-02-10T15:36:00.000-08:00

free improvisation recorded live at the ivy room, albany ca. on 01/25/10.
jon raskin: saxes
john shiurba: guitar
aurora josephson: voice
john hanes: drums
there's eight tracks here - hit the fast forward button to advance.
<a href="http://organofqwerty.bandcamp.com/album/jo-h-n-aurora-live-ivy-room">jo(h)n+aurora1 by organofqwerty</a>

solstice overtone drone

2009-12-08T13:34:00.000-08:00

my laptop set at polly moller's "long night's moon" concert at the luggage store gallery. the only sound sources were overtone-singing vocal samples of cary sheldon and an iphone recording of a small bell.
thanks to cary, polly, rent, c.j., matt, suki, michael, and amar.

skronkathon 09

2009-07-26T14:33:00.000-07:00

steve adams and I debuted our lloopp duo at this year's skronkathon at 21 grand. many thanks to tom duff for organizing and recording.

prepared

2009-05-20T17:04:00.001-07:00

john finkbeiner: prepared guitar
john hanes: prepared drums
recorded live in the green box (my tiny home studio) 05/04/09

macs'n'saxes

2009-05-16T00:05:00.000-07:00

klaus filip and noid, the creators of lloopp, my sound mangling app of choice (free, open source, based on max-msp) were in town for the cycling'74 conference, and I helped get them a gig (4/20/09) at the luggage store gallery (thanks to rent romus for making it happen). they invited me to join them for a set and suggested i invite some non-laptop players to join us. i grabbed steve adams and philip greenlief. here's the result:

freedom music

2009-04-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

john finkbeiner called me up last sunday and said, "would you like to come over to the studio tonight and play some freedom music?"
aaron bennett: sax and flute
aram shelton: bass clarinet ans sax
lisa mezzacappa: bass
john finkbeiner: guitar
john hanes: drums
recorded on my olympus ls-10 (warning: record level was a little high, there's some distortion)
freedom music part 2

part 3

part 4

part 5

assemblage

2009-03-22T13:29:00.000-07:00

parts of various lloopp improvisations assembled in ableton live. I'm playing percussion, jen baker on trombone.

free improv mashup

2009-02-02T00:34:00.000-08:00

the source material for this track is excerpts from a citta di vitti (see 10/19/08 post) live show (thanks to michael zelner for great live recording) and an improvised duet with john schott on guitar and me on lloopp. I dumped them into ableton and did a "slice to new midi track" and triggered that with midi game of life.
behind the big top

myles boisen's past, present, future

2008-12-24T13:22:00.000-08:00

past, present, future is myles on guitar, seth ford-young on bass and me. darren johnston joins us on trumpet on "new oakland two-step." recorded live at studio 6 @ the music union hall, san francisco, 11/30/08. all songs © myles boisen. photo by me.

devil blues

new oakland two-step

monkish

goodbye day/minor memory

the commuter

synthpond idm

2008-12-16T08:23:00.000-08:00

synthpond idm from organofqwerty on Vimeo.
this one starts with solo synthpond for 8 bars, and then ableton drums and effects (filters, delays, beat repeat) kick in. cosmovox enters somewhere in the middle.

synthpond-cosmovox duet

2008-12-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

synthpond-cosmovox duet from organofqwerty on Vimeo.
synthpond and cosmovox performed on an ipod touch. mixed in ableton live.
thanks to developers leisuresonic and zach gage for the awesome apps.

marimba song

2008-11-25T23:49:00.000-08:00

marimba song from organofqwerty on Vimeo.

synthpond trio 1

2008-11-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

synthpond trio 1 from organofqwerty on Vimeo.
my new favorite ipod touch app.

citta di vitti @ javalounge, sacramento 10/13/08

2008-10-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

saxophonist, composer phillip greenlief formed citta di vitti to play the pieces he wrote while watching antonioni films with the sound down. lisa mezzacappa plays bass, and I'm playing drums.
1.number two (greenlief)

2.number five (greenlief)

3.number eleven (greenlief)

4.number thirty (greenlief)

5.fusco medley (giovanni fusco arr. greenlief)

shakalimba2

2008-10-12T20:08:00.000-07:00

here's a track composed with glitchDS on my nintendo ds. the pattern in the photo, four "gliders," is not the one used in this track, but will be featured in a future post.

unreliable narrator 8.0

2008-10-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

here's my latest lloopp (free open source max-msp based sound mangler) piece, nice and long for maximum almost ambient not fully listening enjoyment. it includes a couple of tracks I did on my nintendo ds with glitchDS, the homebrew game of life based sequencer. I'll post those tracks next, because it's my blog and I can do what I want.