Barrett, Richard (b. 1959)

[Serial_Apologist]

The "superball mallet" is a staple item in the collection of any percussionist involved in contemporary music. I didn't know that Edwin was the pioneer in this regard, although I'm not surprised given his interest in making percussion instruments not sound percussive. When applied to harp (or piano) strings they do tend to wear down rather quickly so a supply of spares needs always to be on hand.

No harps were harmed in the making of this motion picture.

Superb, thanks Richard.

Serbia (the country) has maybe a bit of a reputation internationally, I guess , but not for new music! Is there an audience there for it?

[Richard Barrett]

Serbia (the country) has maybe a bit of a reputation internationally, I guess

Hopefully for only having an average of 80 or so new Covid-19 cases per day at the moment... well, it's a fairly poor country, with a populist-right government, led by a preening thug, which has hijacked the democratic process in order to stay in power (sound familiar?), and is currently privatising everything in sight in order to qualify for EU accession, but on the other hand it's a place where if you do something interesting in the cultural sphere it actually matters to people.

[Serial_Apologist]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxOETT51zLA

Another online concert of music for harp and electronics by Milana and me, this time with visuals by Incredible Bob!

Listening again to twitchy blippiness of the opening of last piece, Restless Horizons, I was much struck by echoes I seemed to be hearing of the track "Sly" from the first Herbie Hancock's Headhunters album!

[Dave2002]

When applied to harp (or piano) strings they do tend to wear down rather quickly so a supply of spares needs always to be on hand.

Harps or mallets? I guess the latter, given the comment about whether harps were harmed in the making of the movie.

Could just refer to harp strings though, but I've no idea how often strings should be replaced on a harp, or how to do it.

[Richard Barrett]

Listening again to twitchy blippiness of the opening of last piece, Restless Horizons, I was much struck by echoes I seemed to be hearing of the track "Sly" from the first Herbie Hancock's Headhunters album!

Well, that album and I go back a long way... but there's no synthesizer on "Sly" as I remember, there's a long electric piano solo but nothing more blippy than that.

[Joseph K]

Well, that album and I go back a long way... but there's no synthesizer on "Sly" as I remember, there's a long electric piano solo but nothing more blippy than that.

... there are some squelchy sounds which could be from a synth... (or clavinet)

[Richard Barrett]

To whom this may concern:

as Bryn has already indicated on the Classical Music Listening thread (although it isn't classical music really), I'm involved in a new Bandcamp label called STRANGE STRINGS (after the 1966 Sun Ra album on which his entire group doubled on assorted string instruments collected from secondhand shops) which went online yesterday evening, the first two releases being mirage, music for harp and electronics with Milana Zarić, and strange lines and distances, binaural electronic music. (Future releases will involve other artists!) Downloads are 24 bit 48kHz WAV files - this is the resolution I was working with when producing and mastering the material - and come with liner notes, and texts where applicable.

https://strangestrings.bandcamp.com/

... another stage in a long farewell to physical releases...

[Bryn]

To whom this may concern:

as Bryn has already indicated on the Classical Music Listening thread (although it isn't classical music really), I'm involved in a new Bandcamp label called STRANGE STRINGS (after the 1966 Sun Ra album on which his entire group doubled on assorted string instruments collected from secondhand shops) which went online yesterday evening, the first two releases being mirage, music for harp and electronics with Milana Zarić, and strange lines and distances, binaural electronic music. (Future releases will involve other artists!) Downloads are 24 bit 48kHz WAV files - this is the resolution I was working with when producing and mastering the material - and come with liner notes, and texts where applicable.

https://strangestrings.bandcamp.com/

... another stage in a long farewell to physical releases...

Maybe not from the Classical period, but definitely 'class'.

[Serial_Apologist]

To whom this may concern:

as Bryn has already indicated on the Classical Music Listening thread (although it isn't classical music really), I'm involved in a new Bandcamp label called STRANGE STRINGS (after the 1966 Sun Ra album on which his entire group doubled on assorted string instruments collected from secondhand shops) which went online yesterday evening, the first two releases being mirage, music for harp and electronics with Milana Zarić, and strange lines and distances, binaural electronic music. (Future releases will involve other artists!) Downloads are 24 bit 48kHz WAV files - this is the resolution I was working with when producing and mastering the material - and come with liner notes, and texts where applicable.

https://strangestrings.bandcamp.com/

... another stage in a long farewell to physical releases...

Great - thanks, Richard!

One thing that just occurred to me is that many commentators, in the past, have made claims about composers working at the forefront of musical advance being effectively forced to narrow down their thinking, and the kinds of music resulting, to small, ultra-concentrated areas of investigation. The image created is of a sort of monastical purity, so remote as to be far beyond the interests, let along the comprehension, of most people. Two otherwise very different figures who have been cited in this regard have been Webern and Evan Parker. It was frequently said that Webern reduced compositional means to the barest possible bones of structural purity, in the interests of, as it were, almost proving that serial techniques, applied without compromise of the kinds that permitted Schoenberg to apply them in forms said to depend on diatonic tonality, led the composer ineluctably along such a path of self-imposed austerity; and, in Evan's case, his investigation into minutiae of saxophone timbre inevitably led him to eschew all vestiges of melody and rhythm. In the case of Webern, some of his final works such as the second cantata suggested that he was then ready to embrace expansion of means in time, and it is possible to envisage that, had he not been murdered at what many would consider the natural mid-point in his compositional journey, he wold have continued further along this path. Evan of course has shown that is is possible and in his case was undoubtedly necessary to go through a stage of ultra-concentration on an aspect of interest that would prove vital important, not just in terms of discovering something useful to himself and the whole field of music but to enable him to make a return to genres to which the general public has greater access, for all sorts of reasons! - genres which have thereby been enriched, not narrowed down at all!

And of course one could go on and cite numerous artists in many fields who have returned from their retreats, or woodsheddings in the jazz vernacular, to bring riches which would otherwise have been unavailable to "the mainstream". I suppose the reason for voicing my thoughts digressing in this way here is that one thing which is becoming more and more evident in your own activity is the sheer diversifying range of possibilities for composition, performance and involvement almost self-generating from your own creative standpoint and activity.

[Richard Barrett]

I suppose the reason for voicing my thoughts digressing in this way here is that one thing which is becoming more and more evident in your own activity is the sheer diversifying range of possibilities for composition, performance and involvement almost self-generating from your own creative standpoint and activity.

It's very nice of you to say so. I think a central aspect of this is a phenomenon that I'm sure very many people "of a certain age" experience - on the one hand feeling that one has just as much imaginative energy as twenty or thirty years previously, or maybe more than back then, together with a fluency that comes from experience; while at the same time having the feeling that time is running out!

[Serial_Apologist]

It's very nice of you to say so. I think a central aspect of this is a phenomenon that I'm sure very many people "of a certain age" experience - on the one hand feeling that one has just as much imaginative energy as twenty or thirty years previously, or maybe more than back then, together with a fluency that comes from experience; while at the same time having the feeling that time is running out!

It occurs to me that the actual areas of investigation that are the result of the particular path you pursued for whatever reason might in themselves have made some contribution to the range of options. Just think, you might have become a jazz musician instead!

[Richard Barrett]

Pardon me for feeling it necessary to uncurb my enthusiasm here, but I have two pieces of good news today (among all the not-so-good news we see every day).

The application to the Serbian Ministry of Culture by Ensemble Studio 6 for funds to make a CD recording of my electroacoustic sextet close-up (which some of you will have heard in London or Oxford or Leeds) has been successful, so we'll be recording it towards the end of the year and releasing it on Metier in early 2022 all being well.

I dug up in my stacks of CDRs a couple of data CDs containing duo recordings with Evan Parker, which were recorded in Gateway Studios in Kingston in 2001 but never edited or mastered, and on listening to them I thought they'd be worth putting out into the world so this morning I did the mastering and some editing and sent the results off to the maestro, hopefully to meet with his approval.

[Joseph K]

Pardon me for feeling it necessary to uncurb my enthusiasm here, but I have two pieces of good news today (among all the not-so-good news we see every day).

The application to the Serbian Ministry of Culture by Ensemble Studio 6 for funds to make a CD recording of my electroacoustic sextet close-up (which some of you will have heard in London or Oxford or Leeds) has been successful, so we'll be recording it towards the end of the year and releasing it on Metier in early 2022 all being well.

I dug up in my stacks of CDRs a couple of data CDs containing duo recordings with Evan Parker, which were recorded in Gateway Studios in Kingston in 2001 but never edited or mastered, and on listening to them I thought they'd be worth putting out into the world so this morning I did the mastering and some editing and sent the results off to the maestro, hopefully to meet with his approval.

Great news! In what form do you suppose the duo recordings would be released?

[Richard Barrett]

In what form do you suppose the duo recordings would be released?

I would put them out in Bandcamp on STRANGE STRINGS. I already have another album almost ready for release, of electronic music by Kees Tazelaar, which will probably come out first.

[Serial_Apologist]

Looking forward to checking those out. Well done, Richard - the acoustic at Gateway is excellent by all accounts.