Music for Silent Films
On Sunday 21 August the musical composer Chris Becker and bassist Thomas Helton presented an evening of improvised music to silent films in Houston, Texas. The combination of laptop computer, kaoss pad and upright bass was said to be sublime. Musical performances were made to my film ‘25Years‘ alongside films by Noe Kidder, Jonathan Jindra, Robert Thoth, and Pablo Gimenez Zapiola.
Using the popular software program Ableton Live and a large collection of samples musical or otherwise, Becker improvises a soundtrack to each silent film, selecting and layering samples like the pieces of an aural jigsaw puzzle. Although the music for each film begins with a prepared, partially composed “template” of sounds and samples, once the film hits the screen the improvised dialogue between the music and the image begins. No two performances to a film are ever the same.
Last Friday Becker and Helton were on KUHF’s The Front Row talking about the project and playing my film and another whilst improvising live on the radio. You can listen to the interview and improvisation of the day here.
A recent interview with Becker in Free Houston Post about Music for Silent Films can be found here.
Above image: “Goad” film by Noe Kidder and Ariane Anthony.
A Pata Pela’
Last Sunday we held A Pata Pela’, an event at a local Park: Parque Suri Salcedo, where we invited the public to help us create a piece of art. Colombians love to dance, so we created a large dance floor out of colourful materials, invited people to take their shoes off, dip their feet in paint and dance!
The result is a multi-coloured experiment that leaves traces of Salsa dance moves.
We had a great responses with over 100 people and we’ll display the large pieces on our last event on Thursday 28 July.
Chopin Waltz no7
Impromptu recording - Played by my brother, Arturo in Miami on a Sunday afternoon in the living room. In a few months we will have a longer recording session, recording complete pieces. But for now, above is a little taster.
One morning just before Arturo was dashing to work, I had a quick interview with him about his music.
Carolina: Hi Arturo, so how long have you been playing the piano?
Arturo: I’ve been playing for 10 years on and off.
C: Cool. So what’s your favourite music to play?
A: My favourite artist is definitely Chopin and my favourite period is the Romantic period. Mozart and Beethoven are are also two great composers, but Chopin beats them.
C: What’s your favourite instrument?
A: My favourite instrument is the piano.
C: I thought you told me yesterday your favourite instrument was the violin?
A: Hahaha. Well I like the piano and the violin.
C: Do you ever play music with other people?
A: Every once in a while a have some friends that come over and we squeeze in some duets on the piano and before we had little jam sessions with someone on the drums, someone on guitar, me on piano, and someone singing.
C: Would you say you come from a musical family?
A: [Laughs] No.
C: You don’t think I’m a good singer?
A: [Laughs a lot] No.
My first upload on soundcloud
Fiona’s Night – I’ve just made this audio tidbit for a (tiny) video I’m working on. It’s my first attempt at creating any audio material. I recorded lots of individual sounds and put this together in Soundtrack Pro.
Today I opened a soundcloud account and am pretty excited. I’ll definitely be doing some field recordings and uploading them here.
