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Earlier this year, I posted some in-progress music for a short film I’d been asked to score. Well, the film is now finished, and it is called “Homunculus.” The film was produced by Humble and conceived and directed by Sam Stephens. I love it. Check it out:

Homunculus from HUMBLE TV on Vimeo.

…aaaand just for fun, here’s the score alone, for those of you who want to check to see if the math works out (it doesn’t):

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There’s a little bit more about the thought process behind some of what you’re hearing in my original post from March. From the more overtly 12-tone approach described in that post, I added in some chopped-up found-sound recordings of music boxes, and some hot blaxploitation-style drums for the “chase” parts of the film. All in all, I’m pretty happy with how the whole thing turned out. There’s more about the making of the film on Humble’s Vimeo page.

Koven music Electronic music, homunculus, humble, music, sam stephens

Well, what can I say? Shock. Distinctly remembering multiple birthday parties in fourth grade in which Thriller was the only album we played; once we got to the end of a given side, we’d just flip that rekkid over and listen all over again.

My favorite moment of yesterday, though, came at the end of the Femi Kuti concert at the Prospect Park bandshell. As everyone began filing out, the sound guy had the bright idea to play “I’ll Be There” over the soundsystem. Several thousand people suddenly stopped in their tracks, and started singing together:

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It was a beautiful moment, and one that sent actual chills down my spine. I wish you could hear the singing better in the recorded excerpt above, but you get the idea.

Koven appreciation, music michael jackson

Just a short post today, in between working on lots and lots of things. I’ve had the good fortune to be asked by a friend of mine to score a short (three minutes) animated film, and I thought I’d post some of what I’ve been working on to that end. I don’t think I can reveal too many details about the film itself at this point, so I’ll confine myself to talking about the music.

The director was looking for something relatively dissonant, or at least unsettling, for the main texture of the piece. To that end, I whipped out George Perle’s Twelve-Tone Tonality, which is, after 15 years of stealing (and mostly misusing) its ideas, still one of the most difficult/rewarding music theory texts I have ever read. Perle is so pithy that there’s nary a single wasted word in the entire text–every bit is crucial.

Aaaanyway, working from the “Inversionally Complimentary Cycles” section of the text, I worked out a tone row for the piece, and then transposed it into four additional voices, moving in parallel, which gave me some nice tonal blocks to play with. After orchestrating these blocks a bit with some sounds I liked, I recorded them and then cut up and arbitrarily pieced the shards back together, which produced the “glitchy” sounds you hear. I then worked out a little melody with an inversional relationship to the original row, and started flying that over the top. This is shaping up to be a fun little piece, methinks. Anyway, have a listen, and let me know what you think!

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P.S., As I was writing this post, I found out that George Perle passed away in January at his home in Manhattan at age 93. To a guy like me, who’s still at heart a music theory geek, this was heartbreaking to learn. He will be missed.

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• George Perle, a Composer and Theorist, Dies at 93 (nytimes.com)

Koven Works In Progress, music George Perle, Music theory

It’s been a while since I’ve done a music post here, so it seemed about time. For the last few months, I’ve been working on a commission for the choreographer Daniel Charon called The Listening Room, and I thought I’d post a few excerpts from the score as it develops.

This score has, for whatever reason, proved to be a difficult one to get a bead on–it’s gone through multiple iterations, each one evolving significantly from the last. The piece is in roughly four contiguous segments, with two themes evolving gradually throughout the piece’s 15 minutes. I’ve been attempting to strike a balance between harder rhythmic elements and more free-floating melodic sections, with varying degrees of success. On a purely technical level, I’ve been separating out rhythmic elements for more clarity, stratifying snares, bass drums, and cymbals in separate layers rather than mixing them together all at once, as I would normally tend to do.

Anyway, here are some excerpts. Hope you enjoy them!

Excerpt the first:

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Excerpt the second:

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Koven Works In Progress, music dance, daniel charon, listening room, music

Image via WikipediaSo this is an internet meme that’s been out there for a while, but I’m only just now finally getting my contribution in (how typical). I first discovered this on the excellent music blog Idolator; the idea is that you choose one, and only one, album for every single year you’ve been alive. I’m not at all sure why, but this proved to be an utterly riveting exercise rather than an exhausting one. It’s strange what limiting you to only one album per year does–it forced me to choose Outlandos d’Amour, my least favorite Police album, because 1978 didn’t have nearly the competition for slots that 1982, the year of my favorite Police album (Ghost In the Machine), did. Certain years were particularly painful to do (2003 and 2006 were especially heartbreaking), with four or five amazing albums gunning for the top slot, while some years were so thin with competitors that a wild card like Weird Al’s Dare to be Stupid could make it in. Anywayz, here’s my list. Derisive comments, as always, are welcome.

1975 – Miles Davis, Pangaea
1976 – Joni Mitchell, Hejira
1977 – Fela, Zombie
1978 – The Police, Outlandos d’Amour
1979 – Gang of Four, Entertainment!
1980 – XTC, Black Sea
1981 – Mission of Burma, Signals, Calls, & Marches
1982 – Michael Jackson, Thriller
1983 – Men at Work, Cargo
1984 – Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense
1985 – Weird Al Yankovic, Dare to be Stupid
1986 – Paul Simon, Graceland
1987 – John Adams, Nixon In China
1988 – Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back
1989 – Tone Loc, Loc’ed After Dark
1990 – Living Colour, Time’s Up
1991 – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik
1992 – PJ Harvey, Dry
1993 – Sting, Ten Summoner’s Tales
1994 – Jawbox, For Your Own Special Sweetheart
1995 – Pie, Strictly Seance
1996 – DJ Shadow, Endtroducing…
1997 – Stereolab, Dots and Loops
1998 – Fugazi, End Hits
1999 – The Dismemberment Plan, Emergency & I
2000 – Faraquet, The View From This Tower
2001 – Bjork, Vespertine
2002 – Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
2003 – Jay-Z, The Black Album
2004 – The Bad Plus, Give
2005 – The Books, Lost and Safe
2006 – Matmos, The Rose Has Teeth In the Mouth of the Beast
2007 – Caribou, Andorra

Koven appreciation, music Police, Weird Al Yankovic