Assignment for Week 2 of NIME at ITP:
“Inspirational Sounds”: Think about the music you would aspire to make – and bring a short audio clip of it to share with the class. This can be something you have already done, but we encourage you to look to the work of other artists/musicians/performers for inspiration.
For my inspirational sounds, I decided to share some Steve Reich music. This clip includes parts of “4 Organs” and “My Name Is” from a 1970 performance at the Berkeley Museum. I am attracted to the strong rhythmic pulse of Reich’s music and the mesmerizing use of repetition and slowly evolving patterns. For my own NIME instrument, I want to do something involving maracas (like in “4 Organs”) as well as incorporate some form of sampled human voices (like in “My Name Is”).
I am starting to get a clearer idea of the instrument that I want to build. I am calling my project Mumbo Jumbo Maracas. I would like to mount accelerometers on a pair of maracas. In performance, I would play the maracas as purely acoustic instruments, while the sensors would be used to trigger various looped vocal samples (the “mumbo jumbo” part.
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