Re: Hassell

["Matt Davignon" <mattdavignon@gmail.com>]

The Bay Area has a few people working in this realm -

Liz Allbee is a trumpet player who acoustically gets a lot of the Jon
Hassell sounds. She wasn't familiar with Hassell until too many people
were telling her she must be a fan. (Actually she isn't - Jon's a
little too new agey for her.) Liz is most comfortable doing improv
and/or noise music. Sometimes she uses a bunch of pedals, but the
technique is already there.

Polly Moller is a bass flautist who does some of the multiphonic stuff.

Kyle Bruckmann is someone who really rocks at this, and he's an oboe
player. He's got an amazing range for that instrument, and a ton of
techniques. One is to take it apart and make very computer-like white
noise sounds by blowing in different parts. He can also make sounds
that could very easily be mistaken for a synthesizer or laptop
computer, yet he's completely acoustic. One of his groups is called
Shudder - with sax player Phillip Greenlief and laptop computer person
Lance Grabmiller. http://www.myspace.com/shudder3

There's quite a bit more - more than half of the sax and clarinet
players in our little community have learned to use circular breathing
with their instruments.

Matt

On 8/20/07, RICK WALKER <looppool@cruzio.com> wrote:
> Our beloved and dearly departed Dr. Richard Zvonar
> toured with Hassell and told me that all of the
> cool timbres he got that sound so electronic that he could produce
> with the acoustic instrument by itself.
>
> I've been playing a lot of pocket trumpet and flugelhorn this past year
> (just beginning) but this comment got me to thinking about
> the use of breathe and wind noise as a kind of faux 'synthesizer' element
> in both brass playing and woodwind playing.
>
> Instruments,  of course,  like the middleeastern Ney have such difficult
> embouchures
> to use that they force a hell of a lot of air past the slit in the reed,
> forcing a very
> breathy sound.
>
> The amazing avant garde bass flautist (oh,  he hates that moniker and
> prefers flute player instead)
> Robert Dick gets amazing wind controlled noises from his instrument and 
>has
> an uncanny ability
> to direct noise sounds to the one of 4 microphones that he puts on his
> custom bass flute.
>
> Anyone intersested in instrumentalists who use their instruments in 
>really
> creative extended
> ways owe it to themselves to check out his work.
>
> Anyway,  I've really been into getting the very breathiest (does this 
>word
> sound suspiciously like
> Steve Corell's 'truthiness'?  lol)  sound out of the trumpet.
>
> Hassel is an amazing artist and amazingly ,  he is a minimalist.
> It is much harder to be a minimalist and have a completely unique sound 
>on
> an instrument.
>
> ..........he's and amazingly high bar to shoot for.
>
> ********
> So this found sound looper's trumpet featured debut is at this years'
> Woodstockhausen Festival of Esoteric Music on September 23rd in the Santa
> Cruz Redwood mountain forest.
>
> I figured that since I have been playing drums for exactly 40 years this
> year and trumpet for under one year that I would
> create a piece called the  Rick Walker Drum and Bugle Choir   and treat 
>each
> instruments as a found sound object.
> Wish me luck..............I'll literally be quaking in my boots while I
> attempt this piece.
>
>