This coming Wednesday, December 7 from 10 am to noon, you can hear the last Waves of Gratitude Full Moon Broadcast for 2022. Each month since January, I have streamed a 2 hour radio broadcast of iBoD/dejacusse pre-recorded soundscapes and LIVE Eurorack Synth improvs during the Zenith of the Full Moon. These broadcasts have been special times for me to share with whomever might be listening all that is in my heart. The improvisations involve deep listening and attunement and responsiveness in the moment! The pre-recorded soundscapes, sound sculptures and paintings are where I get to play with co-horts and co-create in The Field, or put together a more musical composition in Ableton Live. All of this sound activity sparks joy within me! I am deeply grateful to Eleanor Mills and Jim Kellough for their avid listening, playful company and interest in growing their ears. All of the soundscape for Waves of Gratitude 2023 came from recordings of our Tuesday afternoon sessions.
The cycles of the moon have always been important to me. From a young age, I knew I did not want to have children, so when my period came along, it was basically a monthly annoyance! Then in graduate school I explored Wiccan spirituality, which lead me to use the moon cycles to track my menstrual cycles, and I embraced that which had been annoying. All of this to say- in 2023 there will be a Full Moon Broadcast AND a New Moon Broadcast each month. I feel a sense of joyful nostalgia in once again attending to these anchoring phases of the moon that were so much of part of the middle years of this life.
This Wednesday morning broadcast will feature Waves of Gratitude 2021 and 2022, the full album Audiorigami: Meditations on The Fold, Carnatic Water Music, and other soundscapes. The time is 10 am to noon est. Here is the link:
Three rivers of sound are coming together to create Waves of Gratitude 2022. First, the living Control Voltages that trigger, modulate and end waveforms in vast timbral washes that display the harmonic patterns of the very life force which they embody. These building blocks of sound are available in modular and semi-modular synthesizers. Within this sound context of synthesizers interacting, iBoD practices “conversational interactions” which involve presence, deep listening and responsibility (intentionally exercising our innate ability for dialogic response). Second stream is the voices- people sharing gratitudes, sharings sounds they are grateful for, and in particular expressing what gratitude feels like. This is the question I am asking now in 2022: What does gratitude feel like to you? Take the question wherever you want! Third stream is the sound of Waves – I loved the ocean wave container from last year and want to take that sound and swell it up a bit. The Waves need more water! So I begin here!
And, at this point, I have much material in the “conversational interactions” context. Jim Kellough and Eleanor Mills come over every Tuesday and play within and around the synths. We have an array of sounds, from reedy melodica to bright sparkly recorders and Native American flutes to growling digital horn!! The synths set the table with rhythmic tones and unusual harmonic smears which can be maddeningly stable to giddily hither and yon. The smallest turn of a knob opens up whole new vistas of sonic relationships. Then the three of us engage with the synths and each other in an exchange that changes over time. A few weeks ago we played for an hour and 20 minutes. WoW!
Every Full Moon this year, 2022, Waves of Gratitude is transmitting vibrational appreciation via streaming radio broadcast. These vibrations are shared one hour before and one hour after the Zenith of the Full Moon. The Zenith is when the moon reaches its highest point in the sky above the observer. This time is like the sun at noon, and seems energetically auspicious to me. During the broadcast, we will listen to Waves of Gratitude 2021, to Waves of Gratitude 2022 as it evolves, and to live improvisations with Nuet, Moogie and OC! In addition to this, dejacusse and iBoD (idiosyncratic beats of dejacusse) have a back catalogue of soundscapes and other tunes which will be highlighted during the broadcast. Maybe the 2022 WoG will be an album!
As I have lamented in the recent posts, the voices speaking gratitude is not happening. I have not even recorded myself, so what can I expect of others. I am going to answer the question “How does gratitude feel to me?” and start the Wave! If you are inspired it is sooo easy to do. First, if you know how to record yourself on your phone or other device, record your answer to “How does gratitude feel to me?” and then send it via email to ibodgwave@gmail.com! If we are friends on Facebook, you can send me an audio Messenger message. Go to the space where you would normally type your message, tap on the space. You should see a microphone icon, give it a tap and start talking, when you are done talking, tap the send arrow like you would if you had typed in text. I will have your audio gratitude for The Wave! Thank you for sharing yourself with me and with listeners all over the world.
Waves of Gratitude for April will broadcast from 2 pm to 4 pm Eastern Time Zone on Saturday April 16th. This Wave will begin with the first 15 minutes of WoG 2021. If you are curious as to how your audio gratitude might sound in The Wave, tune in at the top of each hour for WoG 2021. WoG 2022 will actually get started during this broadcast with a recent iBoD recording from our Sun Ra Room Sessions mixed in with this year’s Wave sculpture! There will also be live improvisations on the synthesizers! I hope you will join me!
A year ago, I sent out a call to participate in Waves of Gratitude, a never-ending sound art project. The initial wave debuted as a popup installation for the SITES performance happening in February 2021. So many people responded, some whom I have not spoken to in decades, and now they are a permanent part of Waves of Gratitude 2021. In late December 2021, I recorded my friend, Marg Roesch, playing Bach Inventions on the piano in her co-housing community’s Common House. She goes there to play multiple times a week…just for the joy of it! So Marg and Bach end the first Wave. I am grateful to Marg and Gary, Kehoe, Jill, Lori, Francine, Bill, Susanne, Robert, Christopher, Matt, Shawn, Chelsea, Trudie, Ronnie, Jody, Stephanie, Jim, Eleanor, Holly, Kathy, Tembo and Sotar for jumping into the Waves with me.
In the beginning, I envisioned all my old friends and collaborators sending me their audio gratitudes. There is a special email box just for gratitudes -ibodgwave@gmail.com! Audio gratitudes can be instantly recorded on Messenger if we are friends on Facebook! Speak text to my phone! And there was an influx of lovely expressions of gratitude, but then it stopped and no more came. And many people who I hoped would contribute, did not. I felt like Puff the Magic Dragon for a while, but then my inner guru said “Hey, grrrl, this is about gratitude. Let’s go make Waves!!”
So Waves of Gratitude 2022 will kick off the year with the first monthly full moon radio broadcast! I remain hopeful that more folks will just spontaneously send a recording. If you jumped in last year’s Waves, jump in again. I know I am asking alot, and many people do not like their recorded voices. I will lovingly place your gratitude offering in the Waves with great care. Please listen to the 2021 version of Waves of Gratitude to experience the loveliness of human voices expressing gratitude. Listening may inspire participation.
The broadcasts will include revisits to the 2021 Waves, all contributions sent to the 2022 Waves, LIVE improvisations, iBoD recordings, maybe a few choice words, who knows? Broadcasts will occur one hour before and one hour after the full moon zenith!
January’s broadcast will happen this Monday, January 17th from 5:45 pm to 7:45 pm and you can stream it here-
On Saturday, the Ides of May 2021, the first broadcast of Waves of Gratitude over Radio iBoD happened! As I listen to the broadcast, there are dynamic sonic textures, human voicings, symphonic harmonics set within the ever-present Oceanic Wave! This is a 33 minute loop that begins with a cacophony of voices all expressing thanks for something, anything, everything, and then morphs into a cosmic river of sounds and verbal sound bites. The soundscape is a kind of bardo journey away from the prison of the human mind. Think of it as a gratitude cruise down the River Styx!
Waves of Gratitude is the largest and most ambitious collaboration I have ever attempted. Thus far, there are 21 collaborators from Raleigh-Durham, Costa Rica, California, NY, Hawaii; some family, some friends from decades ago, some people I do not know personally, and most have shared some form of creative collaboration with me over the years. These twenty-one responded to the inital call and for that I will be forever grateful! I love you all so dearly and uplift this vibration even if the timing might seem to suck!! It is a radical act to live with genuine appreciation and joy in a world addicted to judgment, fear and suffering!
Trudie Kiliru, Matt Casseday, Shawn and Chelsea Casseday, Lori Mathias-Thomas, Gary Balfantz, Ervin Dacoscos Malalis, Ronnie and Jody Cassell, Cathy Stanwyck, Holly Snyder, Tembo, Francine Farina, RT Skully, Christopher Skully-Thurston, Sotar Hoffman, Jim Kellough, Eleanor Mills, Stephanie Leathers, Jill Pavlak, Linda Carmichael, Bill and Susanne Romey.
The next Wave will break on June 1st, which is my Mother’s 91st birthday. I did not appreciate her wisdom until now and this project flows from what I understand from her being. One addition to the June 1st set of Waves will be a favorite e.e. cummings’ poem I set to music many years ago. I sing it everyday and will toss it into the Wave on this auspicious occasion!! Waves of Gratitude will broadcast for 12 hours on that day!!
As more of you send your gratitudes, the Wave will echo and amplifiy for years to come. What are you feeling joy about in this moment? Grab your phone, use the voice memo recorder to capture your gratitude, and send to ibodgwave@gmail.com.
Once again I find myself back with Ableton Live. A couple of posts ago, my sounding board was set and I was starting to put some things together in Elektron: Model Samples along with Ableton and the Neutron. Then a couple of the trigger keys on the Model Samples started sticking. This is comparable to a sticking piano key. At first, I was OK with having this be another random possibility within my workflow, but more triggers got in on the act, and I couldn’t tell which keys were sticking, and that random possibility became a more fixed probability. So for now the Model Samples is boxed up waiting to go to the technicians at Sweetwater whenever they get Elektron techs back at the shop. This is my last purchase from Sweetwater! I am miffed that this is taking months to resolve and I am left with several ideas in early development within the Model Samples that are now on hold. Instead of wasting energy being miffed, I am turning to some new ways to play in Ableton.
Under the Audio Effects subfolder DJ and Performance within Ableton Live, there are One Knob effects racks capable of creating dramatic changes to any sound when the One Knob is turned. The changes are achieved by placing several different audio effects in a rack and then using midi map to attach a variety of parameter changes from each effect onto the One Knob. The parameter ranges can even be adjusted as to how big a change the knob sweep brings. After working with Audio Animation Clips/Envelope Generators, this seems like a promising new direction to explore.
My favorite One Knob Rack is Fade to Gray, which houses a three band EQ and a Ping Pong Delay. Here are pictures of each of these effects:
Turning the One Knob lowers the mid frequency band of the EQ Three by 6dB while the low frequency and high frequencies sweep toward the midrange as the wet signal and feedback swoop up to 95%. Now a tiny slice of mid-range frequencies feeding back on itself goes into the Ping Pong Delay, where the signal and feedback go to 95%. All of these changes are happening over time and in relation to each other. While the end result is a thin and distant decaying echo of the completely subdued orginal signal, every stop along the One Knob sweep renders new sonic terrain. So cool!
Now I am inspired! What sorts of changes can be wrought in this environment? I want to make One Knob Racks that sculpt the sound in interesting ways! Start simple: made a few changes in the Fade to Gray letting in some lower range frequencies on the EQ3 and bringing the crossing frequencies together at a lower bandwidth. So this Fades to Throb rather than Gray. I suppose I should have picked a color- it would be Blue, Fade to Blue. Throb describes the end result more clearly, so that is the name!
For several weeks now, I have been making, testing, throwing away and saving One Knob Racks. My project contains an audio track with sound samples from Ableton and from Library dejacusse. That track is routed into another audio track which contains the One Knob Racks and is routed to the Master output track. With this setup, the original audio track signal goes directly to the One Knob track, so the original audio is heard through that track. When I close all the One Knob Racks (there are seven so far but I forsee hundreds) no sound comes out the Master track. All the frequencies have been gathered and are being held within the racks. One type of improvisation might be to slowly unveil the original audio by opening the One Knob Racks a bit at a time. When they are all completely at 0, the original signal and all its frequencies are now sounding through the One Knob track and out to the Master. So much potential here!
But wait, there is more! There are a couple of tracks hanging around over beside the Master Track. These are Return Tracks. The original audio track and the One Knob track both have two Sends knobs that send signal to the return tracks. This is another way to add some effects processing to a signal and also have it be available for all the tracks. As it turns out, the send knob on the original audio track can bring that signal forward through the return track even when all the One Knob racks are closed! This is sooooo cool, because as the One Knobs are opening, some of the original sound can be brought up into the mix to give listening ears some direction and excitation. The return tracks can also have effects on them. WoW!
This is exciting for me because it aligns with everything I am creating right now. I seek methods for including all frequencies in the sonic pallette, for rendering frequencies in as many dimensions as I can tune into, for conveying information/data/quanta via sound, and for creating diffuse, diverse sonic delights. I tune into joy and delight in many strange waveforms.
I am drawn to the idea of unFolding, uncovering, and revealing which this method opens up to. Also, the idea of integration and disintegration, which I started exploring over 10 years ago with Unhinged Melody (which later became Circuslocution with iBoD). The idea was an 8 bar upbeat riff that started as individual random sounding notes and slowly came together. Every note has its place and it eventually gets there with some extra notes for good measure! Each One Knob Rack will shape the sound into particular forms, then as one Rack feeds into another, the various level settings create new sonic relationships within the original audio.
Creating these One Knob Racks is teaching me so much about each audio effect in Ableton and what it does. The other part of this will be the sounds that pass through the Racks, what will they be? And then there is the order that the Racks are placed in to maximize the interplay of the Racks as they pass the sound around and through themselves.
Here is a quick journey through some of the sonic territory these knobs can uncover! The original audio is Eleanor Mills playing harmonica and me talking and playing uke. Listen for those times when the original sound is hard to distinguish.
Today I worked with a 8 second clip of Jim Kellough’s digital horn and here is the result:
TODAY, April 18th, iBoD is taking Durham to the National Water Dance! At 4 pm today, Jody Cassell will dance with the trees, the breeze, the sunlight and the water to iBoD’s Carnatic Water Music. The original plan was to create a watery container of sound, projections and flora through which Jody Cassell would lead the movement. Several other dancers including some of Jody’s young dance students were excited to perform this event at PS 137 in downtown Durham. Well, you know what happened! With so many cancellations, NWD leaders decided to go ahead with the dance as a streaming event. We will have Jody dancing to iBoD’s Carnatic Water Music at 4 pm this Saturday on Instagram Live from the safety of her home.
Here is some background on National Water Dance drom their website:
National Water Dance is a catalyst that encourages ongoing engagement between dance and the environment. Beginning in 2011 as a statewide project in Florida, it now boasts 65 locations across the United States—in 2018 including Puerto Rico for the first time. With each event National Water Dance recommits itself to the effort of increasing purposeful awareness to drive action on environmental issues, specifically climate change. Supporting the work of participants beyond our bi-annual event, National Water Dance spreads the word on the environmental issues they are tackling through monthly newsletters and social media. Our goal is to realize the power of dance as an engine of social change.
In the spirit of this mission, Jody suggests, through her movement choices, elements of this “engine” that are not as visible as issues. Stillness, slowness, wonder, and (dare we say it!) JOY in being right here and right now and moving! The soundscape Carnatic Water Music articulates and ensounds a few of the ways that water can move! To hear the entire piece go to Bandcamp/dejacusse.
As this large group of dancers in 65 locations across the country create a wave of healing energy directed toward Earth and Water, your attention will amplify the energy beyond all possibilities.
Join us for a five minute healing prayer on Instagram (@movinggrace) or through the National Water Dance Website. If you cannot join us at 4, please bear witness to the dance on Instagram TV. Now, more than ever, it is important to mind what we ourselves are giving our precious time and attention to!
With all of the rescheduling of public events local, national and global, there is one event that will go on next month. National Water Dance 2020 will happen as scheduled on April 18th 2020 at 4 pm EST. This biannual movement choir in honor and healing of water will take place across the country all at the same time and streaming across the web. This announcement came from NWD last week:
WE ARE STILL DANCING! Wherever you are on April 18 at 4:00PM EST, alone or self-quarantining or with a small group in an open space, we will begin with the shared gesture and end with the shared gesture and your personal movement will fill in the middle.
We are fortunate to be living in the digital age – as we are asked to observe *“physical distancing,” we are able to close that distance by linking together through social media.
This challenge is forcing us to re-evaluate what we are doing and how we are doing it. Let’s find that deeper meaning in our dance, whether in a group or alone. We can dance wherever we are and livestream it on Instagram and Facebook.
More than ever the world needs our hope and energy. Let’s move forward together and flood the social media networks with our dances on April 18th.
My crew at the idiosyncratic Beats of Dejacusse (iBoD) had big plans to create a watery like container at PS 137 with live plants and flowers by Lee Moore Crawford, and space for movers and viewers. Now we have constrained as we must, so will feature Jody Cassell as Durham’s National Water Dancer streaming live from her home. Jody will move to a recording of Carnatic Water Music, which will be released by iBoD on Bandcamp in April a week before the event. We will keep you posted as to how to link to the performance and pre-order the digital EP.
Mark your calendars for Durham’s National Water Dance April 18th at 4 pm.
Susanne, Eleanor, Jim and I have been soundscaping together for 5 years now. During that time, we have all grown as deep listeners and sound painters. I am grateful to play with people who can tune into the sonic environment, their own voices and play the waveforms. We are soundpainters not musicians. Sometimes even we get confused.
The first time we played together publicly was at the Won Buddhist Temple Bazaar in October of 2014. And the first piece we played was Carnatic Water Music. (This soundscape is based on a Carnatic Indian scale that is included in Michael Hewitt’s book, Musical Scales of the World.) We played over and around what is now the first section of Carnatic Water Music while the rains poured down! We were actually in a tent, but the Zoom recorder was out in the rain with a raincoat over it. The recording has rain patter on it, which sounds like scratches on a vinyl record. I really like this recording! (We appreciated the company of Linda Carmichael singing/playing ukelele at this event.) Here is an excerpt:
After this performance, we played CWM frequently at public events. This is a long-form soundscape that we play for 20 to 40 minutes. As time went on, I added some new sections to the piece so the players and listeners would have greater variety of the sonic spectrum, and to vary the pace a bit. Now when I listen to Carnatic Water Music I hear different energetic aspects of bodies of water, from lolling rivers to waving oceans.
The next stop for CWM will be as the main theme for The Space ReSounds of Water, a pop-up dance installation to be performed on April 18th. The performance is Durham’s offering for National Water Dance 2020. Here is a write-up about the event:
Since 2016, National Waterdance has brought attention to water issues through synchronized dance performances in multiple locations. iBoD and dejacusse want 2020 to be the year the Triangle joins the dance.
The Place ReSounds of Water is a sound, dance and visual art performance piece conceived and performed by iBoD in 2019. We would like to expand on the piece by creating The Space ReSounds of Water, a space/container with video projections, and with healing flowerscapes by Hana Lee, a soundscape by dejacusse and iBoD, and dance movement by Jody Cassell. The performance will take place as a part of the National Waterdance event on April 18 2020 at 4 pm.
The performance will run from from 4-6 in a space where the audience can come and go. This is a meditative performance that can be engaged with on many levels. While some of the movement may be choreographed, most will be free flowing improvisation the audience can participate with. Outside the venue, we will invite local water and environmental organizations to offer education and actions we can take to protect our waters.
To prepare for this event, we are making a really good recording of Carnatic Water Music. We have played this piece so many times, as soon as it begins we fall into a lovely sync with the soundscape. We are recording in the SunRa Room, which is a lively, if not acoustically perfect, space. As of now we are playing through the soundscape and recording on a separate track each time. Afterward, I mix the recording and put it out dor feedback from the group.
Last week, I recorded one runthrough into a track in Ableton and the second runthrough into a track on the H6n. The Ableton track had the most presence and was easy to work with in the mixing process. The trick is to get the right balance between our live playing and the looping soundscape. Today I discovered several recordings we made through the H6n- might be able to tuck some of those in the mix somewhere. We did our final two takes last week, so now I go to work in earnest!
One of the several works-in-progress happening as Winter sets in. Come Spring, iBoD will release Carnatic Water Music as our first extended play download!
My cohorts and I are flipping the script from our usual way of play for Durham Makes Music Day this coming Friday. We have played together as iBoD for about 5 years now. I make soundscapes in Ableton Live, while Susanne, Eleanor and Jim add their own riffs and melodies over top. These soundscapes follow a more formal, songish structure. While we mostly improvise, the more we play a piece, the more we lock into parts, which layers in a more rigid form and stifles the improv. Too much structure calcifies creative growth, so time for a shift!
Under the influence of Moogfest and the work of Pauline Oliveroes, iBoD is exploring “all of the waveforms” and the means to transmit them. Susanne, Eleanor, Jim and dejacusse will provide the soundscape LIVE using voice, harmonicas, melodica, digital horn, recorder, flute and electronic modulations. In this way we will transmit a diverse range of audible waveforms as patterns of frequencies. These “freequencies” will permeate the larger soundscape that will surround us, altering the sonic environment in unusual ways.
Our location at M Alley/Holland Street (behind the Durham Hotel) means we will be in the thick of all the sounds of downtown Durham and all the outdoor music being made on Durham Makes Music Day. We will not be the loudest, but if you come down to where we are located, close your eyes, quiet your mind and open your ears, I guarantee you will hear something beautiful and amazing!
Jude's Soundlings 