Hope is the thing with feathers is based loosely on a poem by Emily Dickinson. The poem floated by at a timely moment, and the flute contains many of the sonic qualities expressed.
Surfaces uses the walls of the room as the score. Each surface is a movement, and every performance may be 1-6 movements in length. The objective is to play, and sonically reconstruct, the environment the performers are currently within.
The video is Null Set performing in the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University on 10.04.2015 during their AfterSound exhibition, which featured works by John Cage, Paul DeMarinis, Caroline Record, Marina Rosenfeld, and others.
The image and recording below is the New Music Ensemble performing at The Bridge PAI in Charlottesville, VA, and thus the performance is a sonic construction of the surfaces of the venue. Here’s an image of the concert space (Mvt I is on left, Mvt II in back, Mvt III on right, Mvt IV up top, and Mvt V down below)
This is a performance video of AUU (for eMersion wireless sensing) at the 2014 Margaret Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, held at Georgia Tech. I performed as a finalist representing Chet Udell’s eMersion wireless sensing system (unleashemotion.com/). The eMersion system is now commercially available. In this performance, the eMersion wireless sensors control both the sound synthesis (Kyma) and DMX stage lights in real time. No foot switches or third party help.
Thank you to Chet Udell for allowing me the opportunity to represent eMotion Technologies, playing some of my own music using the eMersion wireless sensing technology.
Youngman / Overholt is a piece for piano and electronics, written in honor of my grandmother, Betty Jane Youngman Overholt, who passed away in early 2013. BJ performed the accordion and piano from a young age and had perfect pitch. Although she become completely deaf the last 20 years of her life, she taught herself to read lips, and she could still play classic tunes on the piano perfectly from muscle memory. Sadly, because of her hearing, my grandmother never could listen to the music I wrote for her, even while alive. The electronics for Youngman / Overholt are based on a 2011 voice recording of BJ talking about her husband (my grandfather), David Overholt, while he was in the ICU several weeks before his death at age 90. They had been married for 68 years.
Dictation of BJ’s voice
“You know, the older you get I notice, you don’t have as many either. Uh, highs or lows. You don’t feel all that bad, but you don’t feel all that good…it…it… e..ev..everything it just, you know it used to be, “Oh my god—aahh”, and then, but now it’s just all kind of comes… I find that with me too.”
San Giovanni Elemosinario is a music for film work that attempts to recreate a Venetian church through sound. Collaborating with architecture students studying in Venice, Italy, I received sketches of axonometric views, floor plans, column details, entrances, and other structural perspectives. Placing these sketches inside Iannix allowed cursors to trace the architectural renderings in real time. These cursors output data to Kyma, where mappings of data control oscillators, harmonic resonators, noise filters, as well as other acoustic treatments (panning, reverb, EQ, frequency shifts, etc.). While no impulse response was recorded, listening tests inside the church determined a ~3 second decay time, and helped influence the creation of spatial reverberation.
A huge thank you to Matthew Burtner and Anselmo Canfora, both of whom made the collaboration possible. Video/Music: Jon Bellona Drawing: Olivia Morgan, Alex Picciano
Great Speeches is a computer music composition for any laptop ensemble (10+ performers). The work may be used with any bank of audio samples, but these samples should be generated from a famous/great speech. The work was intended to be used with speech material from famous speeches and to be performed on the anniversary of the greet speech or commemorative occasion of that individual or event.
Great Speeches is based upon pseudo-random number recall. The many witnesses of a famous speech have various perspectives and vantage points of that event. The work attempts to magnetize these seemingly random perspectives into a new viewpoint through which we can hear. New words, ideas, and rhythms are generated through the synthesis of multiplicity.
The recording documents a Oct. 30, 2013 performance of the UVa MICE ensemble with 100 players using only their laptops and laptop speakers.
Confidant is a collaborative project between Jon Bellona and Samira Potts. Based on their diverse love of music (ranging from Townes Van Zandt to Adele), the duo began writing and performing kitschy, alternative folk, embellished with country twang and vocal harmonies. All sessions are engineered, mixed, and produced by Jon Bellona. Confidant’s music is available at: confidant.bandcamp.com
Casting is a real-time composition for a single performer using the Microsoft Kinect and Kyma. The piece embodies both the programmatic and the magical use of the term. By giving form to gesture that conjures sound and visual elements, a body’s movement becomes intertwined with the visceral. The performer’s body ‘throws’ and controls sound, enabling the viewer to perceive sound as transfigured by motion. In this way, music becomes defined by the human mold of the performer and listener.
Get started on your own project! View and download simpleKinect, my open-source software for working with the Kinect and any OSC-enabled application.
Zero Crossing is a collaborative work by Harmonic Laboratory. The piece explores the relationships between moving bodies, real and perceived, and the line that exists at the junction of action.
Music was composed by Jon Bellona. Choreography by Brad Garner. Digital Projections by John Park. The piece was created, in part, for (sub)Urban Projections, a digital arts festival sponsored by the University of Oregon and the City of Eugene. The video performance is the premiere. Please wear headphones to take advantage of the full audio spectrum.
