On July 9, the Sphaera Ensemble performed three of my pieces, The Attic, Reclusion and In Their Light, in a concert at the Sesi Theatre, Santos, São Paulo, Brazil. I conducted these three and other pieces with the ensemble while I was there in December/January. They first performed The Attic in 2008. Reclusion and In Their Light have been added to their repertoire this year.
Here are some photos of the concert and a video of The Attic performance (taken by Laira Dalileia):
Recently I signed up to SoundCloud, interested to see exactly what it was all about. I really, really like it.
It describes itself as the following:
SoundCloud lets you move music fast & easy. The platform takes the daily hassle out of receiving, sending & distributing music for artists, record labels & other music professionals.
I am still only new, but have been uploading some tracks and am using it to power my music player, and soon will use its’ smallest widget to place short samples in my catalogue. It’s also easy to embed single samples in emails, pages and blog posts, like here:
The receiving and sending of music is a service I have yet to require but with a beautiful drop box which you can embed on your own site, I can see this will be an easy process, just like using every other service.
There are various plans including of course a free account, and they are limited by duration, not by file size. Hallelujah! So you don’t have to think twice about uploading your beautiful high quality recording.
What I really like is that it is set up for music professionals and there really is no attraction for others. It has great social features so there is the ability to upload a track, mark it as a work in progress, share it only between your friends and get feedback. When commenting on a track, you can select at any duration and comment there. For example, at 1:39 you may wish to say “Ryan, what’s the chord here? It’s crazy!”.
There is a nice mix of genres, everything from DJ’s to real music – classical, film and contemporary. Also an increasing amount of New Zealander’s on there which is good to see.
So many beautiful features so take a tour here or sign in and follow my music here.
The Auckland Wind Orchestra and conductor Ryan Youens are proud to present Breathe In, Breathe Out – a concert of overtures and finales – an exciting mix of all your favourites.
Bernstein – Candide Overture
Giavannini – Overture in Bb
Strauss – Gypsy Baron Overture
Rossini – William Tell Overture
Tchaikovsky – Finale from Symphony No.2
Mendelssohn – Finale from 3rd “Scottish” Symphony
Kalinnikov – Finale from Symphony No.1
Stravinsky – Berceuse and Finale from Firebird Suite
Sunday August 1st, 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Holy Trinity Church
20 Church Street, Devonport
North Shore, New Zealand
Tickets: adults $15, concessions $10, door sales only
The Auckland Wind Orchestra aims to be New Zealand’s finest community wind ensemble. We regularly stage concerts in the Auckland region, performing a broad range of musical styles to a wide audience. Our players come from all walks of life, united by the desire to have fun while making great music.
www.ryanyouens.com
www.awo.co.nz
Last year Kristin School commissioned a piece from me for their amazing award-winning choir, Euphony, to include in their 2010 repertoire. They premiered it at the Auckland Town Hall on Wednesday 16th June 2010. See the video below:
It uses the text from Bub Bridger’s poem, Wild Daisies.
The choir was once again successful in getting through to The Big Sing Finale, along with many other choirs from around New Zealand. You can see the full list of these choirs at The Big Sing website.
Wild Daisies is notated for SSA choir and if anyone is interested in buying a copy please let me know.
Musician? Got your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad? Well, what are you going to put on it? As a musician, sharing my time between rehearsals, conducting, composing and teaching, I have fine tuned a collection of amazing apps for my iPhone that I find are absolutely essential and I hope will help you save you a lot of money and give you some great tools. Just a note, I’ve used all of these on an iPhone but they are all available (if not now, will be very soon) on the iPad.
Field Recorder – This is an outstanding digital recorder for the iPhone. One review of it says “Audiofile Engineering’s FiRe application is by far the most advanced stereo audio recording application we’ve seen for the iPhone and iPod Touch, going far beyond the limitations of previous go-to apps…”. It is a professional quality recorder and the list of features is huge so check out the link. It has a beautiful interface, the quality of recording is amazing, you can edit in the app and can export as WAVE, AIFF, CAF, AAC, Apple Lossless, AAC, Podcast, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC. So handy for capturing a rehearsal or auditions, taking field recordings and pretty much endless possibilities.
Dr. Betotte TC – There are many metronomes but few powered up for the music professional. Dr. Betotte TC has all the normal features of a normal metronome such as playing any time signature, beat divisions, the ability to save your tempos and settings to a playlist, tap in a tempo – but it has got so much more. For a start all of the rhythmic divisions have their own volume sliders, one click halftime feel, options for swing tempo, you can import your own audio samples and the playlist can auto advance. Some nice other features (which are so easy to access) include an alarm timer that syncs with the metronome and customisable gradual up/down, step up/down and quiet count buttons. These step up/down buttons are so handy for students learning a passage, as it gradually gets faster over time (or however you set it up). What I do like about this metronome is its visual capabilities – it’s often really unhelpful just having a “beep, beep” metronome. For learning scores or for reference in rehearsals it is so handy to just have a ticking needle, or a huge “1, 2, 3, 4, …” being counted on screen. This is by far my metronome of choice.
Stay In Tune – There are a lot of tuners available, a lot of good ones and generally they all have the same features. It’s how they deliver the features which makes the difference. Stay In Tune is my favourite – it has a wonderful, clear interface, you can also easily produce tones, calibrate and select specific tunings for different instruments. It is also one of the most accurate and gorgeous I’ve found.
Backline Calc – It’s a musical calculator and perhaps the last app you would think about looking for, but once you have it you’ll realise how handy it is. There are six categories and some examples include: Length (sum times, compare tempos, song length, beats to tempo, time to samples), Pitch (MIDI note, frequency and wavelength conversion), Timecode (frames to timecode, convert timecode), Electric (power, voltages), Acoustics (distance to time, sound pressure level, panning) and Files (file size). These are only a few examples – a very handy little app.
Chordmaster by Planet Waves – The most advanced and intelligent guitar chord reference. You can make chords easily with sliders, you can strum them and the overall interface is beautiful. It’s also nice to see a popular and well known music accessory company delving into apps.
SoundHound – We all hear a song on TV and want to know what it is and there are several apps who help you out with this, the most popular being Shazam – but these don’t go much past the novelty factor of holding the device to a speaker and finding out the song. I like SoundHound as it provides a few more features such as effectively picking up you singing personally, or you can just type the title, album, artist or lyric. Also, in the results, it provides iTunes links, all the lyrics, YouTube videos and the ability to easily share.
Karajan® – Music & Ear Trainer – Karajan is by far the finest ear trainer. It is powerful and very customisable in each of the categories – intervals, chords, scales, pitch and tempo (bpm). It has detailed statistics so is great for students using in lessons or for your own interest. Personally, I use the tempo recognition all the time (great for conducting) and the pitch recognition is handy too. The pro version is entirely worth the money. (iPad screenshot below)
Oxford Dictionary of Music – Yes, your dream has come true. The entire Oxford Dictionary of Music is available on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. It has a wonderful interface, easy search and is regarded as the most up-to-date music dictionary out there. Also good to note that no internet connection is required to use the app. These guys only do dictionary apps so they know what they’re doing. This is a must.
Circle Theory – Based around the Circle Of Fifths, this is a handy reference tool. I use it mainly with students using the more straight forward functions like seeing the relationships between notes, key relationships, key signatures, intervals and triads. But I’ve also used it myself for transposing between keys, checking notes of transposed instruments and as a reference for modes. A great little app.
Virtuoso Piano – Well we have to touch on some instrument apps. I’m sure the first app any musician gets is a piano but many are very basic. My favourite is Virtuoso Piano Pro as you can have multiple keyboards, easily flick between octaves, calibration and record/play features. Another really great app.
Guitar: Play and Share – Without question this is the finest acoustic guitar app. I’ve been playing around with it a lot lately and it is wonderful. Very clever, very easy to use and the sound quality is fantastic. Loads of features and ways to customise, different guitars – who needs a real one?
I won’t mention any more instruments as there are so many good ones (and far more that are rubbish). But if you’re interested in these, the video below is a great watch. It is from the Rend Collective Experiment featuring David Crowder and they produce the whole song from iPhone instruments. Awesome.
ProRemote – This is the only app I don’t own due to the whopping price tag (NZ$124.99, US$99.99), but it gets my attention and admiration. It is a remote control for ProTools, Ableton Live, Apple Logic or Soundtrack Pro. They say it “is like having four Mackie Control Universal Pro’s but better because it is wireless and much less expensive. You get almost $5000 of hardware for the price of ProRemote.” Very impressive. (iPad screenshot below)
Well it is an amazing series of products that I hope you will all enjoy checking out and using. I have found them all to be essential with my day to day work, saving so much time and hassle. Please let me know any other feedback, any great apps I have missed or your comments.
On Saturday 8th May, Moana Ataahua, the 2009 SOUNZ Community Commission, was premiered at the 2010 ERUPT Lake Taupo Festival by the Taupo Choral Society, Tauhara College Choir, Great Lake Big Band, Taupo Youth Wind Band, Taupo Concert Band, and Tauhara College Stage Band and was conducted by Justin Gibbs. Before we get to the concert, the day before we had a final rehearsal and the recording.
The recording
It was such a special project and one that so many people were involved with, so making a recording to keep as a memory was an absolute must. I have not personally heard it yet, but I have been told that it sounds great. See all the photos from the evening here, a selection is below:
The choir, most are hiding behind the curtain.
Keeping an eye on things.
Percussion.
The rest of the percussion.
Clarinets, saxes.
Flutes, trumpets
The orchestra.
Everyone.
Justin Gibbs getting in to it.
The concert
The morning setup and sound check went well and the weather (thank goodness) was pleasant. The concert was the groups all performing their own set, leading up to Moana Ataahua at the end. They absolutely nailed it! Far better than the recording the night before and by far the best they ever performed it. Stephen Gibbs at SOUNZ said:
The well-rehearsed group gave a committed and enthusiastic performance of the work that was equally well-received by the audience. The compositional skills that Ryan brought to the work were apparent in the way that he was able to layer, mix and blend relatively straight-forward musical lines for such a wide range of voices and instruments. The result was a work full dynamic changes: verve, interest, subtlety, and volcanic energy leaving performers and audience with a suitable sense of grandeur.
“If Lake Taupo were a piece of music, what would it sound like?” was the Festival’s introduction. Ryan provided an apt answer.
See the entire SOUNZ article here. Here are some photos from the setup:
Bird's-eye view.
Percussion.
Mics galore.
Sound gear.
Sound desks.
Stage.
The concert selection (see most photos here and the rest here):
Drew James (festival director), Justin Gibbs (conductor), Ryan Youens (composer). Photo by Stephen Gibbs (www.sounz.org.nz).
Taupo-nui-a-tia College kapa haka group. Photo by Stephen Gibbs (www.sounz.org.nz).
Taupo-nui-a-tia College kapa haka group. Photo by Stephen Gibbs (www.sounz.org.nz).
The main event. Photo by Stephen Gibbs (www.sounz.org.nz).
Going well... Photo by Stephen Gibbs (www.sounz.org.nz).
Everyone on stage.
Justin Gibbs getting in to it. Photo by Stephen Gibbs (www.sounz.org.nz).
Done.
With some of the choir members. Photo by Stephen Gibbs (www.sounz.org.nz).
It was such a big project for the community, they were proud of it, they put so much rehearsal time into it, and all stops were pulled so to see the polished and fine performance at the end of the journey was just fantastic. In the weeks leading up to premiere I was looked after so well by the ERUPT festival and the community so a huge thank you to everyone. A big thank you must also go to festival director Drew James who thought of the project and SOUNZ for making it happen with their community commission.
