Card Music 2017: 'ParkSongs'

This year's CardMusic has been inspired by walks and gathered photos, taken in and around Pinces Park and St.Thomas Pleasure Ground in Exeter, Devon in November and early December 2017.

I was struck by the beauty of the plantlife in these parks -and how well they photograph, and am planning to develop some visual works from these snapshots.

It also seemed appropriate to work with this material in the development of a new sound/music composition for the season.
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www.alembicbooks.co.uk/card_music.html 

Card Music 2016: 'Pinces Gardens'

Towards the end of this year old Uncle Yasmar has been a bit poorly and was wondering if the 2016 CardMusic would ever be made.

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But fear ye not, for he is feeling a bit better now and, energised by his new phone and the spirit of the season, has been taking lots of photos in and around his local park.

*

Some of these photos have found their way into a new piece of Parallel Music and, together with various gathered sounds and composed music, comprise Card Music 2016: 'Pinces Gardens'.

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Card Music 2015: Christmas Palette Music

Card Music has become, along with advent calendars and crap adverts which begin in October, one of the traditional Christmas events at Chameleon Lectra, the parent organisation to Alembic Books.

This year's card music is called 'Christmas Palette Music'.

CardMusic 2015 is in fact 6 small compositions that can be played alone or combined, and takes its inspiration from children's painting kits.

Sounds used include an extended 'manger' of animals such as reindeer, cows, birds etc., musical chimes and notes, domestic sounds, plant environment sounds, choirs, outdoor recordings made during the period, ice, parties and even good old Scrooge makes an appearance (occasionally).

As always, this work is different on every playing - so try it a few times, using various colours, to see which performance the card music will give for you...

www.alembicbooks.co.uk/card_music.html 


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Card Music 2014: Calender Music

Here is this year's card music in the form of a Calender MusicBook:
http://www.alembicbooks.co.uk/card_music.html

more soon...

P

.

into 2014

A New Year and a time to review/declare plans.

INVENTORY

2014 will see the publication at least 3 Alembic Books:
KHARTOUN
(tra ex) Jectories Tra
The Crimson Full Stops

Songs of Garden Guitars and A Tapestry of British Birdsong also require a finish and an airing.

chameleonlectra.co.uk and paulramsay.co.uk need to be reinvented.

More painting is due (I have a small commission).

Shelves are required to prepare for a move.

PMusic calls...


- this entry is a foothold -

Card Music 2013 - origins and futures

card music 2013: 'the snow globe' (free music)

Memory plays funny tricks. After working on my most recent PMusic composition the snow globe, I began to wonder how many pieces of 'Card Music' I had made during the past few years - how many shakes of the glass have there been?

Looking back through my files, I see I began Card Music in 2004, the year I released my CD 'Inlets', and this version featured a recorded/RMusic piece from the next planned album (with no real animation) entitled subtle energies.


At the time, I just saw this musical Christmas card as a way of reaching family and friends and didn't suspect how much the idea would grow. I didn't even issue a card in 2005 but in '06 I made my first PMusic Card Music, with an animated card sequence and washes of 'found' carols and seasonal song I named Carol Cloud. This was an exploration of the possibilities of harmonies colliding, pushing and aligning with one another and was well received, especially by an MA fine art group to whom I gave a talk about my work. This encouraged me to continue and publicise Card Music more widely, esp. via the Chameleon Lectra website.


Carol Moon of 2007 continued and extended the idea of harmonic tensions not found in the original recordings, and in 2008, under the influence of my CONSEMBLE project, I made Frosted Music built entirely from guitars.

I wasn't satisfied with Noël of 2009 which included a systems music approach in with the mix of Christmas tunes—thinking it rather stale I didn't promote it—and so for 2010 took a whole new approach to make an original PMusic piece from my own playing (with just a small amount of caroling samples) called Season's Greetings.

2011's Robin Songs moved away from music entirely and featured an OULIPO-like animated, chance-selected sequence of the letters r o b i n which in turn determined the order of a sequence of Nets, featuring various short (and some slowed-down) recordings of robins at song.

Festive Six (2012) recycled the music from Season's Greetings but used indeterminacy in the webpages to choose from a possible 6 outcomes.


The current Card Music of 2013 the snow globe brings a lot of these ideas together, in that it uses: an animated sequence of indeterminately-selected, found seasonal imagery, 6 themed Nets (for visuals and music) and a framing narrative. The music is an extension of Season's Greetings with additional content (including reindeer barking and old cylinder recordings from the early 1900s).


It now becomes clear to me that Card Music is a compositional opportunity in its own right (rather than an informal calling card) and this year I have housed it on the new Alembic Books site to draw an audience and promoted it via Facebook, as well as the usual channels (this blog, CL website etc.).

http://www.facebook.com/paul.ramsay.alembicbooks
http://www.facebook.com/AlembicBooks

Next year's work for 2014 will be an entirely new piece with original music and graphics. On Thursday I bought a kit to make small ice guitars (for drinks) so maybe this will provide inspiration...

'A Book is a Situation'

The rainbow attaches itself

Some speculative writing:

I coined the above titlephrase in a notebook back in 1997 when thinking about my digital work, as I often used the form of the book (metaphor of the book(?)) both to structure my material and suggest perhaps the idea of the 'magic book' - a book in which the images and words 'come to life'.

Books can of course be magical in themselves, in the realm of the mind, but when I first started reading I can remember the childhood desire for pages to be animate and responsive—or even an environment—a place that you could step inside and visit. Some early reading even suggested this in itself: 'Alice in Wonderland', 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' -and even the film 'Mary Poppins' (Stevenson 1964), where it was possible to jump into a coloured chalk drawing sketched on the ground.


The illustrations in books assist in this, especially engravings—where the intricate lines conspire to hypnotize and beckon the eye.

This seems to me a natural, intuitive aspect of what is now called metatextuality: something beyond the rigid, one dimensional code of reading that insists that writing is closed, that chalk drawings are unvisitable, that you cannot 'cut a hole in the sky' (à la Yoko Ono). The creative tension lies in the paradox that you are both aware of reading a text and transcending it at the same time.

So perhaps a book is best thought of as not being defined by print and paper but in relation to what it encloses, what it offers:
'A Book is an Environment'
'A Book is a Clearing'
'A Book is a...' offered over to a fresh phrase picked by author/reader.

In this, the idea of the book becomes an organising principle, independent of the material from which it is constructed.

It is this thought that entices me to make Lectra in the form of interactive, digital books
(and bookworks in the form of interactive, printed books ;-)

It Was A Friday

and I was waiting for my bookshelves to arrive.

My allocated time slot: 12.30pm to 4.30pm broke the day in half.

pre:
Breakfast of egg, sausages, mushrooms and toast. Shower. Add text to previews on alembic books webpages. Correspond. Listen to 'The Sins of Literature' BBC Radio 4 - remain sceptical but somehow drawn in, seduced by the idea of 'being a writer'. Coffee. This blog.

shelf
delivery arrived on the dot of 4

post:

Easily assembled, new home for LPs, books an ting. Caused a reorganising mood to sweep over me, so some books thrown, many repositioned. Alembic still needs a proper space but it'll do for now.

TV. Cold sausages with warm mash and vegetables. Possibly small tin of Jack Daniels and ginger wine.

Posting July: 31/7/2013 and Alembic Books is live

Alembic Books is now officially live: www.alembicbooks.co.uk

There are 4 books in the Summer 2013 release, all available separately and in paperback and hardback versions:

Alembic 1: POSITIONS: A Question of Sexual Mores
Alembic 2: 82 scores (for music)
Alembic 3: POEMS and other insects and other poems
Alembic 4: Jectory Tra

• The paperbacks are the affordable, reading version with B&W printing

• The hardbacks have colour illustrations with black text*

—all have colour covers.

I will be posting here soon on each book, with previews and background information provided. The intention is to be as creative and versatile as possible - just reach for that brush...

A      l      e      m      b      i      c      B      o      o      k      s

* with the exception of Jectory Tra, which is a definite, black and white bookwork

Scanning June

Slowly, but surely, work on Alembic continues with more minor revisions - the odd tweaking of text here, the repositioning of a graphic there - and decisions on final generic content, such as descriptions, Alembic numbers, barcodes and... promotion.

I'm wary of the idea of advertising as on one hand I do want to sell books and make a profit, if possible, but on the other I'm sensitive to the fact that we are bombarded (and herded) by the ideology of selling in the throes of late capitalism.

My only negotiating strategy is to be a spanner in the works.


withdrawals available from Alembic Books
www.chameleonlectra.co.uk/AlembicBooks

82 Proof

The first of the last swathe of proof reading material arrived on Monday, in preparation for the 2013 launch. I'm pleased that ordering from blurb.com is an efficient and fairly speedy service - it usually takes just under a week for an ordered book to arrive.

I was originally going to publish 82 scores solely as a paperback in colour but, on reflection, felt it would be best for it to be part of the initial b&w quartet I am going to publish in July. This also keeps it in line with the cost of the other paperbacks.

However, in addition, I've decided to release a colour, hardback version of the scores - signed - to accommodate those who don't mind spending a bit more and would welcome something robust for throwing at a tone-deaf partner/barking dog/Justin Bieber etc.*




* this is a joke. 82 scores does not condone violent actions (unless they are in the creation of music ;-)

Alembic 2013

After a timely pause I am back here to describe my artlife over the past year; April 2012 has become April 2013 all too quickly.

My main focus has been on writing (poetry and experimental texts) and the relaunching of my imprint, Alembic Books, for these digital times.

In some ways, this has been a natural progression from my involvement in Songs of Garden Guitars, A Tapestry of British Birdsong and Books in Sound and Light as each of these has featured an interactive notebook or similar, and all have been underpinned by creative writing in their development (see previous blog entries).

I began Alembic in 1990, just after I graduated, as a means of keeping my artwork going. Initially, I began this independent imprint to publish my book of music directives '52 Scores' (which began as scores written for my degree). This was quickly followed by a succession of titles: '11 more scores', 'Positions', 'Poems and other insects' and more performative works: 'A Book Thrown Into the Sea' and its sequel (at the suggestion of Katie Buckley) 'A Book Dunked Into some Tea'. Other books and collaborations were also worked on but not published including 'Collages' with Oona Campbell and 'Khartoun' with Geoff Stocker.

In 2012, I decided I would take advantage of the new publishing opportunities opened up by the internet and the proliferation of the digital devices and reinvent Alembic Books to allow my voice to be heard, once again, but this time by a larger audience.

After a series of trial runs, I decided to use Blurb.com to publish my work via POD. The first four books will be released on the 31st July 2013 with several more planned. New works will include a second book of poetry, a book of cartoons by Geoff Stocker and more experimental writings.

Today, I created a facebook page for Alembic: www.facebook.com/AlembicBooks
and will be exploring other promotional outlets over the next few months.

More on my bookworks and writings will be posted soon.

Libraries

As mentioned in my Book of Next Things post I have found working on the webpages for 'Books in Sound and Light' very useful in thinking-through ideas and strategies.

Initially, my plan was to use the BiSaL site as a showcase for new digital bookworks but as I considered the menu items (the content) for this site it became clear that it might be useful as a means of showing my online note books (Chameleon Lectra Sketchbook area and the one for SoGG) plus earlier works, including 'A Book of Evaporation' (1994) and 'Kiss Cuts' (1995), as well as 'Collages' (1995), '82 Scores' (1996) and 'A Book of Hoverpoems' (2000).

This, in turn, led me to think about re-releasing my Alembic catalogue in printed book form (although some such as '82 Scores' also have an interactive version). Alembic Books was a small imprint I began shortly after graduating in 1990. There were several in the series, each with its own ISBN number and represented my first contact with Apple computers and desktop publishing (and stapling copious sheets of folded A4 paper!).

I will blog more about Alembic in a separate entry but the point here is that have begun to explore ways of making them available again (perhaps via Lulu.com) and adding more books to the series: the unpublished 'Khartoun' (begun in 1991) featuring drawings by Geoff Stocker and a new title called 'mourHu'.

The advent of self publishing on the net and the rise of eBooks, iPads etc. means that I can finally marshal my forces; it feels as if the technology has caught up with my ambitions.

So, books, books, books.

The Rising of the Titanic

There has been lots of coverage recently, especially on TV, of the story of the sinking of the Titanic - today being taken as the 100th 'anniversary' of the disaster (the iceberg was struck at 11.40pm on the 14th and the ship had sunk by around 2.20am of the 15th).

This has reminded me of one of the seminal influences on my artistic life. After reading a review that fascinated me in Melody Maker I was delighted to find a copy of Gavin Bryars' 'The Sinking of the Titanic' when visiting my friend Robin Watts in Southampton (not realising how appropriate this was at the time). This would have been around late 1980, when Robin and I, along with Geoff Stocker and Shane Jarvis were active in the band PGRS.

I recommend this record - the first on Brian Eno's Obscure Records label (a large inspiration for me in itself) - both for the title track and the piece 'on the other side': 'Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet'. I remember listening to this with Robin while we both tried to manfully hold back the tears - try it, it's a very moving experience. At its heart is the looped fragment of a recording of an 'old tramp' (as described in the liner notes of the LP) singing the eponymous hymn; gradually Bryars' orchestral accompaniment fades in over each circuit of the loop, so that the old man's singing becomes an elegaic triumph of faith over the ravages of time.

It is the first side however, 'The Sinking of the Titanic', that really captured my imagination though the description of the conceptual underpinnings of the piece - a 'score' of sheer beauty.



What really struck me was the rich combination of using Marconi's postulation 'sounds once generated never die' with the overlapping, sometimes contradictory accounts of the music played by the heroic band and an actual recording by one of the survivors: 'Miss Eva Hart'. Bryars has combined these to form an ambiguous, 'open' work which reconstructs, via the imagination, music washing around in the Atlantic as a continuous, watery requiem.



“THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC”
Strings: The Cockpit Ensemble
(directors Howard Rees and Howard Davidson)
With John Nash, violin and Sandra Hill, double bass.
Conducted by Gavin Bryars.
Additional tapes using music played by the strings
of the New Music Ensemble of San Francisco Conservatory
of Music directed by John Adams, prepared at the studio
of the Department of Physics, University College, Cardiff,
with technical assistance of Keith Winter and Graham Naylor.
Gavin Bryars, piano; Angela Bryars, music box;
Miss Eva Hart, Spoken voice.

Side Two
“JESUS' BLOOD NEVER FAILED ME YET”
Orchestra consisting of The Cockpit Ensemble
(directors Howard Rees and Howard Davidson);
Derek Bailey, guitar; Michael Nyman, organ;
John Nash, violin; John White, tuba; Sandra
Hill, double bass. Conducted by Gavin Bryars.

Liner illustrations by Angela Bryars
Produced by Brian Eno
OBSCURE OBS 01 - 1975



Bryars has re-recorded these pieces but following the rule of First Things (q.v.) it's the originals that I prefer.


The packaging for the Touch release (2007) is very well appointed though...

The Book of Next Things

My my. A year to the day.

Over the past few weeks I've been feeling unwell and consequently reflecting on the amount I have achieved and what it is I want to give my energies to next. Thankfully, one of the things I have been able to do - in between bouts of tiredness and muscle-ache - is to revisit some of my earlier works and pick up on some of the threads found therein.

My next plans for SoGG (more of which later) involve another round of gtr recordings but I'll have to wait for my physical health to return before I can do this. Also as I have been concentrating on this for a few months now, I have felt a break from it would be useful.


So, to cut a long story short, I began a new web area, modelled on the SoGG one, called 'Books In Sound And Light' (a title I have had in mind for some time). The purpose of this new site* is to allow me to think through ideas for bookworks and how to present them.

In turn, this has led to the development of the following over the past couple of weeks:

• 'A Book of Hot Coals' from a planned set of online books, based on some improvisations I did in Adobe Director after after 'Kiss Cuts'.

• 'mourHu' - a book for print, in the spirit of Alembic Books, my imprint in the 1990s

• 'PR's Album' - A printed version of this blog, 2004-11 (via Blog2print)

It has been the preparation of the latter and subsequent the re-reading of parts of this blog that has persuaded me to continue here. I had been wondering whether to begin afresh, to give the opportunity for a new kind of authorial voice, now that this blog has been running for several years; I delayed the decision which has amounted to indecision (and no entries). Another reason for the blank pages has been my focus on SoGG and its attendant interactive notebook.



However I do feel I've kind of set up camp here so that a change doesn't feel right at this time, especially as this blog has generated a new bookwork ;-)

So (once again, on this Friday 13th - a lucky day for me):
More Soon!


* Currently BiSaL is an area within paulramsay.co.uk but I am considering making it a separate site.

Diary of Work on SoGG

SoGG schedule (notes to self)

I wish to document the progress and development of this new suite and am even considering starting a new blog for this purpose. In the meantime, the following is an attempt to trace some of the footprints of work on Songs of Garden Guitars:

Begun Fri April 1st with inspiration of reworked title and reinvention of CD cover (from British Library's 'Songs of Garden Birds').

1st movie templates made: Guitar Birds Songs 1 to 4. Blackbirdstarter folder made of actual blackbird song for ref (mainly length of phrases and gaps between).

Sat 2/4/11 First recording session

Sun 3/4/11 First Sons made ('B' Sons for Guitar Birds Songs 1)

Mon 4/4/11 Work on interactive templates; work on Guitar Birds Songs 1 & 2

Tue 5/4/11 New bird silhouette graphic for player 2

Wed 6/4/11 (University School day) Notes on train for ideas regarding presentation, concept and performance rules

(Q -- when did I work on Guitar Birds Songs 3?)

Thur 7/4/11 Scanned written notes

Fri 8/4/11 More visual ideas for gtr/bird graphic, general layout of design. Recording session.

Sat 9/4/11 Spoken notes made (as mp3s), online research on birdsong (including this article on vocal development in birds: http://stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Vocal_Development.html); recording session; making of Sons

Sun 10/4/11 'Second wing Guitar Birds Song 4' - recording; making of Sons

Mon 11/4/11 More spoken notes made; Recording session (went very well)

Tue 12/4/11 Making of Sons (selection, adjusting, naming)

Wed 13/4/11 Integrating of Sons and new Nets for Guitar Birds Songs 4

Thur-Fri 14-15/4/11 More work on GBS4 - selection and recategorising of Sons; development of more Net ideas including 'solos' as x4 repeats

SoGG

Today has been the first day this year when a coat has not been needed when venturing outside... so what better time to begin blogging again after a Winter of cold and blank spaces.

And, I have also begun working on a new piece of PMusic: Songs of Garden Guitars and will document its development here.

PMusic EP007

2010 (9th September):
Have now launched a new, free PMusic SINGLE entitled 'A Walk Away From You (Keeping Quiet)' in collaboration with artist/composer/vocalist Carla J. Patterson (AKA Carla Cryptic) - have a listen at: www.chameleonlectra.co.uk/AWalkAwayFromYou/AWalkAwayFromYou.html

feedback welcome ;-)

NetNoMusic

http://www.paulbailey.us/2010/01/19/rip-netnewmusic-2008-2010/