All posts by Jim

It all started really with this, The Soul of the Rock. Ten years of unrelenting revisions, sleepless nights composing, and countless failures. Finally it was good enough to win an NEA grant and the performances followed - St. Louis, Chicago, and New York. For thirty years I've had the privilege of working with far more than my share of amazing artists and it has been a crazy and exhilarating ride. And there's more to come! - James Hegarty

Window

This time, there really wasn’t any kind of master plan except play the piano and stay intensely focused.  I didn’t even plan to do one long take but about 15 minutes into it I realized I had a lot of ideas yet to go!  Because of work and other stuff, I haven’t had a chance to play much the past 2 weeks and I guess I just had to let it out.  LOL.

I thought this photo that I took on Delmar with layers of reflections in the window was a reasonable representation of what I was trying to do with this album.  I’m still exploring the localized structure of repeating patterns that get varied on repetition.  They are not exact repeats, like a loop, but the gesture repeats and extends and transforms.  This time, something like a principal theme emerged and it kept coming back as a unifying element like a sonata-rondo form, maybe extended with a long coda, perhaps.

This was recorded on January 28, 2017 at home with a CAD M179 microphone and one channel of a Black Lion Auteur microphone preamp that needs repair.  It’s heading up to Chicago on Monday and hopefully when it returns it will have two functioning channels and less noise.  It’s not their fault, I bought it used, well used apparently.

Antecedence/Consequence

This is a record I have been afraid to make for many years. It is fundamentally ambient, pattern-based (although I doubt anyone will notice) and filled with space. It is a risk that I am asking you to take with me so that we can explore the evolution of ideas in smaller increments and over a longer period of time. I hope you will stay with me and I hope that in the end there will have been some moments that made the journey worth while.

Recorded on a Steinway B at Principia College on December 19, 2016.

Microscopic

https://jimhegarty.bandcamp.com/edit_album?id=180699727

In the world of free improv, the long form is some kind of holy grail. I’ve done it, we all have. Extended sets that morph without inturruption from one thought to another. They can be amazing examples of continuity of thought and scope of inspiration. But sometimes a five-course meal is just too much.

So I loaded up my Kaoss pad with about 30 original samples and told myself – keep it short, stick to one thought, don’t get carried away, and strive for sharp, pointed, concise ideas. Basically get in, do something interesting, and get out.

I was surprised how well the Kaoss worked. By recording my touchpad moves, it became an automated partner in the expression of these short moments. I interacted with it as I would with another performer, striving for a unity of direction which I shared with the machine.

I wanted the hardware to push me in some new directions. I wanted the Kaoss to be my running partner, to give me a different sense of pace and to show me some new possibilities. And at least to my ears, the music finds places I would not go on my own. Interesting, that it can work that way.

So these are short stories, or maybe they are poems, if I were sure enough of their beauty and nuance. I hope they are that but we’ll see. They were recorded in my studio in September, 2016. The piano isn’t perfect but it’s what I have, a 1964 Yamaha G3.

 

Sonata: August Night

https://jimhegarty.bandcamp.com/album/sonata-august-night

I guess a “sonata” is a bit lofty of a title, but in some ways that was what I was going for – a continuously developing set of movements that unfolded in a line from point A to point B.  In this case, it was a hot night late in the summer, the window air conditioner was off so I could record, and the windows were open.  The buzzing of the cicadas and street noises were in the background as I explored the musical passages that became this composition.

Summer is my favorite time, not only because it reminds me of all those years as a kid, playing music in a rock band and just hanging around.  Life was supposed to be like that forever, wasn’t it?  On the rare occasion when all the distractions of my regular life somehow get pushed aside for a little while, I can feel that same sense of freedom, the warm breeze wrapping around me and suspending me in a dream that, by rights, should never end.

This is a slow composition, I must warn you.  A pace that resulted from the quiet sounds of the city late at night when most people were somewhere else, probably asleep.  It was a slow evolution of ideas that can happen when the world has turned off for awhile and the rush of contemporary living isn’t putting a deadline on each sentence or thought.

This is music of melodies.   The second track is primarily for the right hand alone.  Lines following upon line, in the quiet consciousness of time in the slow motion of early morning.  Union Avenue, outside my windows, falls nearly silent after 1 AM.  There is a calm beauty in this kind of space and time that the high energy of daylight can never comprehend.  But if you are like me, you know what I’m talking about.

1:  Crosswalk  (11:42)

2:  Darkened Windows  (11:00)

3:  Nocturne  (9:40)

4:  Silent Street  (11:42)

5:  Early  (7:36)

August Edition I, free piano solo

With the closing of the Tavern of Fine Arts and hence the end of my regular monthly gig, I’m dedicating myself to post or record a musical edition each month.  August resulted in two installments – this video and the album “Sonata for an August Night.”

Numbers Only

Experimental free improv piano with realtime electronics.  Download here:

https://jimhegarty.bandcamp.com/album/numbers-only

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jameshegarty4

The music presented here is a dialog between acoustic piano and processed electroacoustic sounds.  The gestures were performed simultaneously in realtime with the trajectory progressing from initial intuitively devised melodic phrases.  There is an underlying intent of contrast, simultaneity, and parallelism in the compositions but the over-all structure is evolutionary from the moment of beginning.  This is music of the moment and the order and development result from a constant perception of the relevance of “now” to the past and the possible future.  The music expresses relationships between voices and across compositional time.

The audio recording in No. 6, as well as the numbers in the titles, reference shortwave Spanish language number station broadcasts that I recorded in 2005. Max/MSP was used to process pre-rendered audio files with realtime interaction using a Behringer pedal board.  Recorded June 6, 2016

1. 13551 (4:47)

2. 49419 (5:40)

3. 21354 (5:09)

4. 58853 (6:37).

5. 58568 (5:41)

6. 83394 (6:16)

7. 45658 (5:02)

8. 23468 (6:48)

9. 02239 (7:34)

HSS+T

HSS+T is James Hegarty, piano, Paul Steinbeck, electric bass, Gary Sykes, Drums, John Tamm-Buckle, electronics. This video is from December 15, 2014 at Tavern of Fine Arts in St. Louis.

Rhizomatic St. Louis 3

Video from the Rhizomatic St. Louis 3 Tape Release performance at Foam on Cherokee Street in St. Louis.  Nathan Cook and his close-far label produce an annual compilation of area artists.  Check out the video and visit Nathan’s label site for more info and albums.

www.close-far.com

Leaving Venice

test3
IDM featuring soprano Kathryn Stieler. Produced with a bunch of synthesizers I had at the time: Yamaha AN200, Nord Modular, MPC 2000, Yamaha EX5, Reaktor, Yamaha CS1x, and my trusty Korg Z1.

Free downloads here! (right click to “save as”)

www.NoiseReductionSociety.com/media/1_MidnightPassage.mp3
www.NoiseReductionSociety.com/media/2_RemoteControl.mp3
www.NoiseReductionSociety.com/media/3_BluesFor03GMT.mp3
www.NoiseReductionSociety.com/media/4_ShadowOfIstanbul.mp3
www.NoiseReductionSociety.com/media/5_Code.mp3
www.NoiseReductionSociety.com/media/6_WaitingToRewind.mp3
www.NoiseReductionSociety.com/media/7_EchosAndSilence.mp3
www.NoiseReductionSociety.com/media/8_SunriseOverSomewhere.mp3

Polygraphiae

Concert-length song cycle based on the famous cryptology book.  Premiered at Christ Church Cathedral in St. Louis.

Euridice Remix

A late 20th century adaptation of history’s first opera.  Received its premiere to a sold-out audience at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis.