Jim Horton Cassette Collection.

FROG PEAK MUSIC a composers' collective Box 1052 Lebanon NH 03766 USA tel/fax (603)448-8837

Tape 1 Jim Horton: Solo Music. Tape 2 The Cactus Needle Project. Tape 3 Music for Keyboard and Interactive Computer System 1-6. Bill and Jim Play Along With the Electro-Acoustic Classics 1-5. [aka For Our Friends the Ancient Krell]

Notes by Jim Horton. With collaborative composers: Sam Ashley, Ben Azarm, Bob Gonsalves, Jay Cloidt, John Bischoff, Steve Key, Bill Thibault. Notes compiled and edited by Larry Polansky for Frog Peak Music.

Tape I. Jim Horton: Solo Music.

Side A "Noisy Artificial Animal-Like Sounds and Noise 1-6" 30:00. "Some Pointillism" 14:06 Side B "Rebirth" 15:10; "Accelerando" 18:00; "I heard a thousand blended notes" 9:55

"Noisy Artificial Animal-Like Sounds and Noise 1-6" (1992) is strung together from late night parameter tweaking experiments carried out in late August and early September 1992. The attentive listener can hear the tape run out at the very end because the last section was recorded after I fell asleep. The computer however, untiringly and autonomously composes and plays music in real-time. Although the term "animal-like" is used in the title, please feel free to supply your own imaginative program.

"Some Pointillism" (1990) selects notes from Max Meyer's 29 justly intoned pitches to the octave scale and puts them into a randomly fluctuating buffer. Note-playing processes running at different tempi pick pitches form the buffer and play them. Some notes persist in the buffer longer than others resulting in randomly appearing tonal centers.

"Rebirth" (1990) The computer, empty of suffering, simulates high-speed attainment of nirvana by playing the medieval Tibetan Buddhist game "Determination of Ascension of Stages," invented by Sakya pandita Kunga Gyaltsen ("Whose Banner is Total Joy"). The board shows 104 places of a fantastic cosmic geography. The scale is borrowed from David Doty: 1/1 15/14 9/8 7/6 5/4 4/3 7/5 3/2 14/9 5/3 7/4 15/8 2/1

"Accelerando" (1991) is four accelerating lines running at different tempi. The lines ascend or descend a fixed diatonic melodic pattern. Every 90 seconds the pattern is retuned to one of 12 ancient Greek, justly intoned scales. Thanks to Tim Perkis for his TUNE-UP program.

"I heard a thousand blended notes (1992)"

I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sate reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts, Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man.

--"Lines Written in Early Spring", William Wordsworth 1798

Thanks to Ben Azarm, Sam Ashley, John Bischoff, Barbara Golden, Helen Corbett, Don Day, Bob Gonsalves, Henricus Holtman, Tim Perkis, and Larry Polansky. Thanks to Dave Anderson and Ron Kuivila for the FORMULA programming language.

Tape 2. "The Cactus Needle Project".

TCNP is Sam Ashley, Ben Azarm, Bob Gonsalves, and Jim Horton. We protest all schemes and plots of the anti-democratic conspiracies from the beginning of the Nazi era to the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 and beyond. We have modularized and processed a great quantity of narrative source material gathered from declassified documents, court transcripts, news stories, history books, investigative journalism, congressional records, printed interviews, rare pamphlets and unpublished manuscripts. The modules are permutated, combined and selected differently for each performance.

61691T2 and 63091T2WJB are from the Besler series played in June 1991. 63091T2WJB includes John Bischoff as a guest performer.

In this series we used a 30 minute videotape as a moving graphic score. Our music setup includes a unique feedback-distortion system and several computers running semi-autonomous MIDI generating algorithms that we monitor and direct by occasional intervention.

Down with all CIA-Fascist conspiracies! We unconditionally demand all government out in the open, pure, cleansing sunlight of compassion and good intentions now!

Tape 3.

Side A: Music for Keyboard and Interactive Computer System 1-6 1. Pastoral 7:12, 2. Somber 6:45, 3. Short Take 2:09, 4. Dramatic 6:49, 5. Hearts of Space 11:06, 6. Number Crunch 6:10

Music for Keyboard and Interactive Computer System 1-6, a collaborative composition by Jay Cloidt, Jim Horton, and Steve Key was assembled from recordings of rehearsal/experiments made in August 1988. Steve prepared a keyboard score that he played on a MIDI instrument into an interactive computer program built by Jim Horton. Jay wrote and played from a score that serialized the program's parameters and Jim performed an improvised real-time mix.

Side B: Bill and Jim Play Along With the Electro-Acoustic Classics 1-5

1. has a calm sky survived 7:00, 2. he can jog 4:33, 3. my teen jeans 3:22, 4. dr edge as rave 6:18, 5. sob o endurable brain 4:33

Bill and Jim Play Along With the Electro-Acoustic Classics 1-5 was composed by Bill Thibault and Jim Horton in 1993. Jim interacts with his FORMULA-based microtonal computer programs while Bill samples from Jim's sounds mixed with the music of the Classic. The sound files are parked in a virtual place where they are triggered when virtually touched by a VR glove. The sounds are played using Bill's specially designed "mudra" finger position input language. One of the classics is played backward and the others are looped.