DIEGO VILLASEÑOR DE CORTINA
2024 ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
The interests of Diego are directed towards exploring the possibilities of the creative process in its eco-systemic dimension: particularly in musics that emerge from the encounters of environments, peoples, patterns, ideas, bodies and instruments; as well as in collaborative and co-creative practices that are rooted in dialogue, improvisation and the experience of difference.
Inspired by the cycles of nature, this creative process integrates life as chaotic organization and composition, and death as composting, transmutation or decomposition. The interest is on the gradual production of new states of being, both, through what has come before and from what may have been regarded as alien or other. The purpose is, thus, the gradual dissolution of the binaries of space (inside vs outside), time (present vs past/future, and temporal vs atemporal) and thought (the categorizations of linear logic such as A vs ~A patterns).
A more complete program list in Spanisn and English can be found on this page here
Octocorallia
Using some Koraish chord progressions
Organ Bells
Microtonal improvisation in 31-edo.
Psychedelic Meditation (Lumatone + Myth)
This improvisation is a study around this player's musical materials for Pirarán's performance of the opera "La Fábrica Colapsada" (lfc.piraran.com) by Alejandro Franco Briones (see below). The opera is a reading of 2017's earthquake in Mexico City from the point of view of the aggravations brought forth by the social inequalities structured around capital, class, and race, as well as the capacity of ordinary society/societies to self-organize in and beyond times of crisis. As such, the theme of displacement across cultural and economic boundaries is most important, and through that, the recognition of difference, cross-cultural dialogue, and interchange outside modernity's paradigm of domination, exploitation, and the fear of the other.
Just as with La Fábrica Colapsada, this navigation threads through a web of relations both around the conversations going on inside Pirarán's own rehearsals and elsewhere. Within Pirarán, there has been an interest in the use of non-Western tunings and musical approaches.
At the time, we had several conversations regarding Persian music (and Middle Eastern music in general), partly due to Alejandro's relationships with Persian musicians living in Toronto and partly due to the disastrous events going on in Palestine. We discussed the melodic use of tetrachords and the intervals occurring in this music, particularly in the Shur Dastgah. We discussed the different narratives surrounding the theory and interpretation of those intervals, both by Eastern and Western theorists, and considered the reciprocal influence and co-evolution of Eastern and Western music.
Another prominent influence was Alice Coltrane’s interpretation of “My Favorite Things,” especially her harmonic and organ-playing style, which embodies a cross-cultural synthesis and is in itself a deep web of relations.
Although there is certainly no pretension for the music in this album to sound Persian or Eastern, nor to sound like Alice Coltrane's brand of jazz, nor even to sound like Pirarán, there were certainly memories and resonances of all these elements during the performance; they indeed nurtured, guided, and sustained the music, and without them (and many more unnamed ones), this music wouldn't have been possible in the first place.
La Fábrica Colapsada (The Collapsed Factory)
La Fábrica Colapsada (The Collapsed Factory) is a cyber-opera composed by Alejandro Franco Briones in deep collaboration with Pirarán, whose members include Alejandro, Iván Lopez, and the recipient of this residency. Pirarán's creative process is a network where the interests and proposals of its members converge anarchically in the political and precise sense of the term: self-organization without hierarchies, mediated by care, mutual aid, and dynamics of consensus and cooperation.
There is truly no better way to explain the opera than through Alejandro's own words (in the final chapter of his doctoral thesis):
"This work is a 30-minute-long operatic, networked piece made with visuals, multichannel audio, microtonal tuning [Kraig Grady's Centaura], polytemporal rhythmic structures, fixed media, reactive algorithmic music in the form of improvisational semi-analogue synthesisers, and live coding accompanied by a website where the storytelling happens asynchronously. The artwork is also constituted by an online repository where the multimedia materials of the opera can be accessed and various pieces of software can be repurposed for geologic seismic data processing of the 2017 earthquake, wavetable synthesis instruments creation, and spatialization...
This work [has] two major sections: the overture and the acts. The overture is highly structured and unusually prescribed. The (three) acts are a musical free improvisation that, taking advantage of the concept of polytemporality, flows continually and without specific differentiation. It is only in the interactive (the website) and visual components that the acts appear linearly and can be followed rationally.
[The opera] centres people that have endured extraordinary forms of dispossession sharply contrasting with their unique ability to challenge the forces that attempt to destroy life. The people that inspire this work are immigrants, women, indigenous people, queer folks, and workers. With this work, I attempt to observe the ways in which others have faced dispossession and learn how to face it instead of solely enduring or enabling it. A political economy analysis of current music creation shows that many ideas on disaster around the earthquake here presented can be extrapolated to consider the global music scene a disaster. Namely, toxic resilience, reactive and generative resistance. Nevertheless, our proposal of a networked music ensemble demonstrates that it is possible to rearrange technological means to move away from disaster towards communism, as observed during the earthquake. We have done so by rejecting ‘toxic resilience’ and embracing generative and reactive forms of resistance found and explored as the creative process and research behind this opera. Similarly, I have developed a concept of music that escapes vanguardism and popular modernism by signalling towards a culture of ‘algorithmic acid communism’, a term inspired by Mark Fisher and characterised here by its orientation towards profound, substantial transformation potential of people and collectives."
Invocation (for Suzanne and Terry)
Mycelial Synaptic Dance
Something Hopeful (... I guess)
The Beast Does not Breathe
Hommage to a Raga
Three pieces with 11/7
A Moment of Symmetry II
A Moment of Symmetry I
Seveny Noodles III
Seveny Noodles II
Seveny Noodles I
To Erv Wilson
Slow meditation (Evangelina, 22 tone JI scale)
Ta ta ta taa ta ta ta taa (18-EDO, mode of limited transposition)
Another piece in 18-ED2 but using a mode of limited transposition with the pattern 1 1 2 2 1 1 2 2 1 1 2 2. 18-ED2 has the same major seconds and major thirds as the 12-tone equal temperament (12-ED2), along with three different hexatonic scales. These harmonies are evident in the study, although I did my best to avoid the sound of the hexatonic scale.
It also explores polymeter by sustaining a 6/8 ostinato in the left hand while the right hand improvises more freely.
It also explores a continuous acceleration :).
In 7 of 3/2 (non-octave scale)
Exploratory improvisation
This music is inspired by a non-octave scale "invented". It has a period of a perfect fifth (3/2) and consists of 7 notes. The idea of having 7 notes is that it works relatively well on a 12-tone keyboard (since the fifth in this keyboard is exactly 7 semitones).
The scale has the following intervals:
9/8
8/7
7/6
6/5
5/4
4/3
3/2
La Mañana de Jaiki Luna (18-EDO Oneirotonic)
Exploratory improvisation from June 2024
Sobre el Puente-Over-the-bridge
Sobre el Puente
[English below]
De la serie del tiempo expandido, de la serie de las bifurcaciones
"Sobre el Puente" es una deriva del trabajo que recientemente se realiza junto con Rossana Lara. Toda la música que aquí se desarrolla proviene de una grabación de un minuto de Rossana tocando la cuarta cuerda del violín de manera sostenida, haciendo que los diferentes armónicos de la cuerda emerjan sutilmente a distintos tiempos. Los procesos de la pieza expanden las cualidades sensibles de este fenómeno y lo orquestan espectralmente en un viaje que comienza proyectando el sonido hacia la región subarmónica para transmutarlo gradualmente hacia su aspecto complementario en la región armónica.
Esta obra forma parte la residencia en la Radio Nabu Congul 98.8 FM de Anaphoria.
=============Over the Bridge
From the extended time series, from the forking paths series
"Over the Bridge" is a derivative of the work recently done in collaboration with Rossana Lara. All the music developed here comes from a one-minute recording of Rossana playing the fourth string of the violin in a sustained manner, subtly bringing out different harmonics of the string at different times. The processes of the piece expand the sensitive qualities of this phenomenon and orchestrate it spectrally, a journey that begins by projecting the sound into the subharmonic region and gradually transmutes it into its complementary aspect in the harmonic region.
This work is part of the residency at Radio Nabu Congul 98.8 FM of Anaphoria.
credits
released July 31, 2024
Photography: Dinh (@nectoma)
Violin sample: Rossana Lara (@rossana.lara)
Music, mix, mastering, artwork: Diego Villaseñor de Cortina
Preludios Suavecitos (pa' Dinh)
[English below]
Estos preludios improvisados nacieron de una observación de Dinh sobre el hecho de que muy poca de la música que le había mostrado era suave y silenciosa, con excepción de una pieza reciente que le había sorprendido y agradado. Con ello, me impulsó a hacer una serie de pequeñas piezas minimalistas que me hicieron interactuar con un lenguaje que rara vez articulo. En el imaginario sonoro de estas piezas habitan Gnossenias y otras Músicas Calladas en una Catedral Sumergida —varias veces ascendida bajo las manos de mi querida amiga—; hay también un cielo de Intermisiones Tintineantes y la mística terrenalidad de aquella Doïna que alguna vez se coló para formar el centro fugaz y brillante de una sonata.
La afinación justa de 22 tonos que armoniza este ciclo, una hermosa estructura conformada por tres espirales armónicas, fue una de las favoritas de Erv Wilson. Éste la nombró en honor de una importante científica mexicana, Evangelina Villegas, cultivadora de una variedad de maíz de alta calidad nutricional dirigida al consumo humano y especialmente dedicada a contribuir al bienestar de cualquier población que se encuentre en necesidad de acceder a una alimentación digna.
Entre algunos elementos favoritos de esta afinación tenemos que nos ofrece una escala diatónica como la que caracteriza la sonoridad del segundo preludio, muy parecida a la tradicional (de límite 5), pero cuyos 3er y 7mo grados están basados en el armónico 23, los cuales evocan en mí los adjetivos de brillante, cítrico y afilado. También nos ofrece variaciones de la escala pentatónica con sonoridades pertenecientes a los armónicos 7 y 11 en un caso, y 5 y 19 en otro; quienes articulan las alternancias armónicas del tercer preludio. Esta afinación también hace posibles transiciones de color sutiles, fluidas y coherentes, pero que contienen en sí amplios cambios de carácter, como en el primer preludio que transita entre un estilo modal de corte debussiano (al principio y al final) y una atonalidad feldmaniana cuando el preludio llega a su medianoche; o que posibilitan travesías laberínticas que juegan a perdernos en antiguos caminos familiares y subvierten las lógicas de la tonalidad, como en el insistente errar errabundo de la última pieza.
Esta obra forma parte la residencia en la Radio Nabu Congul 98.8 FM de Anaphoria.
----------------These improvised preludes were born from an observation by Dinh about the fact that very little of the music I had shown her was soft and quiet, with the exception of a recent piece that had surprised and pleased her. This prompted me to create a series of small minimalist pieces that made me interact with a language I rarely articulate. In the sonic imaginary of these pieces dwell Gnossenias and other Quiet Music in a Submerged Cathedral — often brought to life under the hands of my dear friend; there is also a sky of Tintinnabulating Intermissions and the mystical earthiness of that Doïna which once slipped in to form the fleeting, brilliant center of a sonata.
The just intonation of 22 tones that harmonizes this cycle, a beautiful structure composed of three harmonic spirals, was one of Erv Wilson's favorites. He named it in honor of an important Mexican scientist, Evangelina Villegas, who cultivated a variety of maize with high nutritional quality aimed at human consumption, especially dedicated to contributing to the well-being of any population in need of access to a dignified diet.
Among some favorite elements of this tuning, we have a diatonic scale similar to the traditional (limit 5) but whose 3rd and 7th degrees are based on the 23rd harmonic, which evoke in me the adjectives of bright, citric, and sharp. It also offers variations of the pentatonic scale with sonorities belonging to the 7th and 11th harmonics in one case, and 5th and 19th in another; these articulate the harmonic alternations of the third prelude. This tuning also makes possible subtle, fluid, and coherent color transitions, but which contain in themselves broad changes of character, as in the first prelude that transitions between a modal style of Debussian cut (at the beginning and end) and Feldmanian atonality when the prelude reaches its midnight; or that enable labyrinthine journeys that play at losing us in ancient familiar paths and subvert the logics of tonality, as in the insistent wandering errancy of the last piece.
This work is part of the residency at Radio Nabu Congul 98.8 FM of Anaphoria.
ATTRACTORS ((ATRACTORES)
"No strings were touched more than once during the recording of this performance."
Attractors is both a study of the electric guitar as a resonant feedback system and a meditative piece dedicated to a focused listening experience of the higher partials of the sound spectrum and the subsonic rhythmic interactions of string oscillators coupled with resonators. It may not be traditional music, but perhaps it occupies a space at the boundary of music and physics experimentation.
In "Turbulent Mirror" by J.Briggs and F.D. Peat, attractors are described as specific states towards which a dynamic system will tend towards given a specific set of conditions. Attractors play a crucial role in many natural phenomena, such as water flow downstream or population growth patterns. This recording was borne out of a fascination with the subtle harmonic and rhythmic atrractor patterns that can be produced when an electric guitar is played by percussively striking the body and letting the strings to resonate freely. These range from a sound simply fading into silence ("attracted" towards silence) all the way to complex morphing harmonic and rhythmic patterns.
During the first minutes of the piece, the listener can clearly distinguish the crests and valleys of sounds at different pitches in the form of "wahwah" rhythmic patterns occurring at different speeds. The internal movement of these patterns is influenced by several factors including the tuning of the strings, the tension they exert over the body of the instrument, the resonant frequencies of the body, the hardware of the guitar and, of course, the amplification of the frequencies which cause slight feedback that excites and attenuates certain frequencies. The continued percussion on the guitar body aims to sustain the sound and to produce interference (moire) patterns, sometimes accentuating internal rhythms and other times contradicting them to navigate through harmonic-rhythmic plateaus.
As the piece progresses, small metal resonators are placed over pairs of strings, initially on the highest strings and later on the lowest. While the resulting sounds resemble those produced by traditional picking techniques, they are actually generated by the resonators bouncing off the strings. The bounce rhythms result from interactions between string tension, frequency, resonator placement, and interference patterns from the body percussion. Because the guitar is played flat over one leg, it naturally oscillates at a very low rate, influencing the movement of the resonators across the strings.
It's important to note that the guitar alone does not constitute the entire dynamic system of these attractors; the player is also a part of the system. Additionally, the player brings a context of ideas and aesthetics. This recording is part of the "Habitat" project, a creative endeavor developed alongside Milo Tamez. It is focused on modeling a habitat inspired by natural ecosystems, where musical ideas and materials co-exist and co-evolve together. In "Habitat" attractors are a common material and appear in various of forms intertwined with other materials. However, this recording is solely focused on the attractors material-technique for the electric guitar, as initially conceived.
Recorded in 2019 and mixed in early 2024.
Performance, mixing and mastering by Diego Villaseñor.
Artwork by Ramis Lao (@ramis_lao).
"Ninguna cuerda fue tocada más de una vez durante la grabación de esta pieza."
"Atractores" es a la vez un estudio de la guitarra eléctrica como sistema de retroalimentación, y una pieza meditativa dedicada a producir una experiencia auditiva enfocada en los armónicos superiores del espectro sonoro y las interacciones rítmicas subsónicas producidar por resonadores metálicos acoplados a las cuerdes. Si bien no es 100% música en un sentido tradicional, ocupa un espacio en el límite entre la música y la experimentación física.
En "Espejo y Reflejo" de J.Briggs y F.D. Peat, describen a los atractores como estados específicos hacia los cuales un sistema dinámico tenderá dadas ciertas condiciones específicas. Los atractores desempeñan un papel crucial en muchos fenómenos naturales, tales como el flujo de un río corriente abajo o los patrones de crecimiento poblaciónal. Esta grabación nació de una fascinación con los patrones armónicos y rítmicos sutiles que pueden producirse cuando una guitarra eléctrica se toca percutiendo rítmicamente el cuerpo de la misma y dejando que las cuerdas resuenen libremente. Estos van desde un sonido que simplemente se desvanece en el silencio ("atraído" hacia el silencio) hasta complejos patrones armónicos y rítmicos en evolución.
Durante los primeros minutos de la pieza, el oyente podrá distinguir claramente las crestas y los valles de sonidos a diferentes tonos en forma de patrones rítmicos "wahwah" que ocurren a diferentes velocidades. El movimiento interno de estos patrones está influenciado por varios factores, incluida la afinación de las cuerdas, la tensión que ejercen sobre el cuerpo del instrumento, las frecuencias resonantes del cuerpo de la guitarra y, por supuesto, la amplificación de las frecuencias que causa un ligero retroalimentación que excita y atenúa ciertas frecuencias. La percusión continua en el cuerpo de la guitarra tiene como objetivo sostener el sonido y producir patrones de interferencia (muaré), a veces acentuando los ritmos internos y otras veces contradiciéndolos para navegar a través de mesetas armónico-rítmicas.
A medida que avanza la pieza, se colocan pequeños resonadores metálicos sobre pares de cuerdas, inicialmente en las cuerdas más agudas y más tarde en las más graves. Si bien los sonidos resultantes se asemejan a los producidos por técnicas de púa tradicionales, en realidad son generados por los resonadores al rebotar sobre las cuerdas. Los ritmos de rebote resultan de las interacciones entre la tensión de la cuerda, la frecuencia, la ubicación del resonador y los patrones de interferencia de la percusión en el cuerpo. Debido a que la guitarra se toca sobre una pierna, oscila naturalmente a una velocidad muy baja, la cual también influencía el movimiento de los resonadores a través de las cuerdas.
Es importante tener en cuenta que la guitarra por sí sola no constituye todo el sistema dinámico de estos atractores; el intérprete también es parte del sistema. Éste aporta un contexto de ideas, estéticas y patrones corporales. Esta grabación es parte del proyecto "Habitat", un esfuerzo creativo desarrollado junto a Milo Tamez. Se centra en modelar un hábitat inspirado en los ecosistemas naturales, donde las ideas y materiales musicales coexisten y coevolucionan juntos. En "Habitat", los atractores son un material común y aparecen en varias formas entrelazadas con otros materiales. Sin embargo, esta grabación se centra únicamente en el material-técnica de los atractores para la guitarra eléctrica, tal como se concibió inicialmente.
Grabada en 2019 y mezclada a principios de 2024. Interpretación, mezcla y masterización por Diego Villaseñor. Arte por Ramis Lao (@ramis_lao).
ALIGN
ALIGN (Lattice visualization)
