ICMC/25/d1/1930 Concert n04/03 Echoes of the Machine Mind I

• Echoes of the Machine Mind I

  • My Notes

    • He sampled his Double Bass in the first part, then put it down, working mostly with modular

  • composer and performer - Person/Ferdinando Romano

    • 
    • Ferdinando Romano is a double bass player, composer and improviser active mainly in the contemporary and avant-garde jazz scene. In addition to double bass he has a great passion for modular synthesizers and electronic music, and he is carrying out PhD studies at the Department of Electronic Music of the Como Conservatory investigating the possibilities of integrating Artificial Intelligence in improvisational practice in collaboration with some important European realities.
    • In Top Jazz 2023, the critics’ referendum held by the historic magazine Musica Jazz, he won important awards, placing second in the Italian Musician of the Year category. His album Invisible Painters ranked among the Italian Albums of the Year and among the Italian Ensembles of the Year.

      With his debut album Totem feat. Ralph Alessi, Romano had won numerous awards such as first place as “Best New Italian Talent 2020” in Musica Jazz magazine’s annual Top Jazz, the SIAE 2021 Award and was one of the winners of the Nuova Generazione Jazz program.
      

    • He has received wide international acclaim from leading magazines and journals. He has been described as “a poetic bassist, an inspired composer and an intriguing arranger” (T. Conrad, Stereophile), “A brilliant record, an expression of clear talent” (Musica Jazz).
    • Ferdinando performs extensively live and in the studio, both as leader and sideman, collaborating with such musicians as Ralph Alessi, Enrico Rava, Robin Eubanks, Benny Golson, Alexander Hawkins, Glenn Ferris, Logan Richardson, Elias Stemeseder, Jerome Sabbagh, Yuhan Su, Ben Van Gelder, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Tom Ollendorff, Marc Michel, Kirke Karja, Veli Kujala, Camila Nebbia..

      He is a member of bands such as Alexander Hawkins Dialect Quintet (with Alexander Hawkins, Camila Nebbia, Giacomo Zanus, and Francesca Remigi) and Nazareno Caputo’s trio Phylum, honored in 2021 by the New York City Jazz Record as one of the best debuts of the year
      

  • Description

    • Echoes of the Machine Mind I

    • “Echoes of the Machine Mind I” is an improvised set of music. It is numbered as it is an evolving project. Being improvised is different every time even though I have written out structures (that I change and modulate) that work as a framework. Each structured is divided in what I call Scenarios; I can get from one to another even changing the order extemporaneously and each scenario has a set of mapped elements or changes in the parameters in the Max patch.
    • “Echoes of the Machine Mind I” makes use of a Max patch that integrates Somax2. The Somax2 system is structured with a Server and Players corresponding to voice modules in the modular synth, a samples player and a doublebass player into which I also record corpuses in real time.

      The rest of the patch includes processes and effects on the doublebass, a 2 head looper with speed control and processes on each of the synth voices.
      

    • In this way I have control over the sounds generated (in the Max patch and through the eurorack synth patching) but still I have a lot of extemporaneous interaction through the use of Agents, which are interconnected, for generation and modulation.
    • In the improvisation of “Echoes of the Machine Mind I” I use various combinations. The doublebass is played with the bow and processed while interacting with the player controlling the E330 module (a two voice digital cloud module) with modulations coming from Lfos and by converting the loudness and pitch of the bass in CV. I also have the Agent PlayerBass playing a corpus made from a recorded improvisation of myself playing Pizzicato Harmonics. I also record in real time the sound of the bass that becomes a corpus for the player, used somehow like an intelligent looper. During the performance I modify the activity of Players at times between reactive and continuous playing, change probability, continuity and internal and external influences according to the scenarios and change their reference influencers (and what to listen from them).
    • For the modular voices I use a sub-patch for midi to cv conversion sending cvs through an Expert Sleepers module.
    • The concept wants to achieve a certain level of freedom and of unexpectedness in the performance of my improvisation with agents. I can of course control the parameters through the midi controllers (a hands-on and a foot controller) and create the framework for the improvised solo set but I (and the listener hopefully) can also enjoy playing without knowing what the agent will be playing, having a dialogue with it and taking the music in a direction or another.