/no hipster hats

Thanks to Composer’s Circle sharing me on the day’s feature, I thought I’d write a bit about no hipster hats.

This is my first project/prototype in the way of variable-length electronic landscapes. The piece functions by giving the player the freedom to progress through the music via advancing through a long series of “stopping points” constructed inside the music’s infrastructure. At any given point in the music, the performer can stop, decide, “I like the groove here, I think I’ll hang out here for 2 minutes,” and make it so. Or, “I’m not feeling this spot here as much as yesterday; I’ll only spend half the time I spent here last performance,” and make that so as well. Some places are a little more strict in how they must be played through, but assembling the score with multiple sorts of notation systems interwoven with each other. It’s still very much a prototype, which makes it exciting, because I already like where it’s heading and there’s so much more to do.

In Kanye West’s studio, there is a sign on the wall filled with rules to stay focused. Some of the signs read, “no tweeting”, “no negative blog viewing”, and “no hipster hats”. I used a photo of this motivation wall as my desktop background while working on this, and the working title sort of stuck. But what’s in a title anyway, besides an opportunity to hook someone into listening?

Built in Ableton Live’s session view from sounds crafted in Live’s arrangement view, performed with a Yamaha 8310z trumpet amped with a modified Silent Brass System.