[Csnd] Performance video: Dream Inside a Dream
| Date | 2026-02-12 15:42 |
| From | Dave Seidel |
| Subject | [Csnd] Performance video: Dream Inside a Dream |
Here's the video of my performance this past Saturday at SynthFest at Stage 33 Live in Bellows Falls, VT. The piece is Dream Within a Dream, my tribute to La Monte Young. All sounds are from Csound (running on a Raspberry Pi 4) under interactive MIDI control. Four channels mixed down to stereo -- two for the underlying drone (no external effects), and two for the individual notes, running through a Soma Cosmos looper and a CXM 1978 reverb. The piece is in the tuning for the Well Tuned Piano, and uses the Opening, Magic, and Gamelan chords from that piece (and in the last segment the combined Magic Opening chord). I was very happy with the sound, and it comes through the video very well. There's a periodic hissing sound from h fog machine (yes, a fog machine) that was located near me, but I've decided that this lends a nice Lynchian/industrial effect. I hope you enjoy it. - Dave --- Involution on XI Records Records: https://mysterybear.bandcamp.com/album/involution |
| Date | 2026-02-12 16:00 |
| From | Rory Walsh |
| Subject | Re: [Csnd] Performance video: Dream Inside a Dream |
Just listening now. Very nice, seems like a great venue. On Thu, 12 Feb 2026 at 15:42, Dave Seidel <dave.seidel@gmail.com> wrote:
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| Date | 2026-02-12 19:50 |
| From | Partev Sarkissian <0000060b2ef1338e-dmarc-request@LISTSERV.HEANET.IE> |
| Subject | Re: [Csnd] Performance video: Dream Inside a Dream |
Cool video. Nice. A tribute to La Monte Young, can't go wrong. -PBS
On Thursday, February 12, 2026 at 07:55:53 AM PST, Rory Walsh <rorywalsh@ear.ie> wrote:
Just listening now. Very nice, seems like a great venue. On Thu, 12 Feb 2026 at 15:42, Dave Seidel <dave.seidel@gmail.com> wrote:
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| Date | 2026-02-15 17:02 |
| From | Aaron Krister Johnson |
| Subject | Re: [Csnd] Performance video: Dream Inside a Dream |
As usual, nice evocative work, Dave! Your work always reminds me of the Gurdjieff concept of "Objective Music" as reported by Ouspensky in "Search for the Miraculous", and paradoxically, it sounds like the drone music of "awakeness", and peeling the outer layer of reality away, in spite of the fact that drone music can sometimes lull a person into a trance-like, or sleep-like state, and is often put into "relaxation" or "sleep aid" playlists. I want to tell you, I heard the whole thing, and it did _not_ feel as long as it actually was, which is a great thing in ambient drone music! I aspire to this metric (long form pieces altering our sense of time, and "objective music") in my own work as Filtercreed, and it's great to see you having a consistent body of work that clearly does this -- an inspiring model, even if the surface focus and means of my own ambient work are in a slightly different corner of the same general space. If you'll indulge me a philosophical side-ramble on this tuning system, and related 7-limit tunings as a compositional choice: It's always interesting how septimal-based tunings in general (e.g. the interval of 7/6 in a chain, approximating a closed cycle very nearly mapping to 9-EDO) do seem to give an ineffable sense of "doorway to higher states of consciousness" sonorities. For me, there's also often a "meta-melancholic" quality as well, like, when you want the usual "sad" of a 6/5 or 13/11 minor-3rd to be almost "cosmic" in its grieving, go for a 7/6 minor-3rd. But it's more than that -- the dissolution of "self and other" gets implied by 7-limit and 11-limit harmonies. Whereas, 5-limit harmonies live very much in a subjective human emotional context. Both can be what we'd call "meditative" if we're talking about a drone texture that invites "zone into this", but 5-limit tunings, for lack of a better phrase, "stay close to the human heart"; 7-limit and beyond, by contrast, seem to go into the fabric of the "thing in itself" (to use a Kantian concept, the "noumenal"). You might say that they seem to "invite us to confront the universe's actual cold neutrality towards our existence". While we live, work, love, shop at Whole Foods, worry about prices, and fret about massive political corruption, there are red giant stars swirling around galaxies, galaxies colliding, black holes swallowing whole worlds, stars exploding in a cataclysm, crocodiles eating birds alive whole, all in the mind of the Buddha-Atman, you get the picture........and sorry for all the Doctor Evil "air quotes". This is likely why the uninitiated listener might often not be prepared for xenharmonic tunings. All of these subjective attributes may be simply because they are higher harmonics, and thus, literally subtle and beyond what the ear normally pays attention to as the louder part of the typical overtone spectrum. Maybe that's just my own mapping of how tuning affects me, but I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on this, Dave -- and what others think. It's fun to open up such discussion on the Csound list, since Csound is one of those tools with a lot of built-in tuning capabilities, and many of us have used them, or tend to, anyway. On Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 8:42 AM Dave Seidel <dave.seidel@gmail.com> wrote:
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| Date | 2026-02-15 19:17 |
| From | Dave Seidel |
| Subject | Re: [Csnd] Performance video: Dream Inside a Dream |
Wow, Aaron! I can't possibly write an adequate reply right now because I'm traveling and typing on my phone, but thank you! More in a few days, when I get home. - Dave On Sun, Feb 15, 2026, 12:02 PM Aaron Krister Johnson <akjmicro@gmail.com> wrote:
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| Date | 2026-02-18 16:05 |
| From | Dave Seidel |
| Subject | Re: [Csnd] Performance video: Dream Inside a Dream |
Also, it occurred to me that I had switched not so long ago from Chrome to Firefox. I have never noticed any issue using the N32B editor with Firefox. I just tried using Chrome again, reloading my preset from my PC to the N32B, but still get the same behavior when I move it back to the Pi4. The only other variable I can think of is that the issue might have something to do with some recent Pi update. But I don't know how I would test that. On Sun, Feb 15, 2026 at 2:17 PM Dave Seidel <dave.seidel@gmail.com> wrote:
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| Date | 2026-02-19 13:23 |
| From | Dave Seidel |
| Subject | Re: [Csnd] Performance video: Dream Inside a Dream |
Whoops, that response was intended for a different communication/addressee (a tech support thing), sorry about that, please ignore. - Dave On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 11:05 AM Dave Seidel <dave.seidel@gmail.com> wrote:
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