9/23/11

Hello! Welcome to Clang Jingle Clang, a project in form of a blog.

I am a composer and performer who, between September 2010 and September 2011 created, recorded, and posted a new piece of music online, every day. It was a great experience, and I hope you take a minute to browse through the archive of pieces I wrote using concert instruments, toystoolscomputersfriends and anything else I could get my hands on. Also, check out the "Best of the Blog" page to hear some of my favorite blog pieces.

Also, you can listen to some recordings of my more traditionally-created concert music on the Recent Works page.


Thanks for listening!

Please feel free to contact me at kerrith.livengood@gmail.com with any questions, or if you're interested in commissioning or collaborating with me.

9/2/11

364 and 365. Final blog post: spinning farewells

You know those whirligigs? that you can spin over your head and get overtones? Well, you'll see what I mean. For the final blog, I bought some pool vacuum cleaner tubes; cut them into slightly different lengths; and then exploited Jonathan (again) into starring in a video of him cavorting around the park across the street while spinning the homemade whirligigs. Jonathan spun them so enthusiastically that he has four or five blisters on his hands now.

 Looking back at this year-long project, I'm sort of happy and also sort of sorry it's over. I think I achieved some of my goals: learning to plan and execute a project on a short deadline, finding musical potential in about everything I could get my hands on. I think I could have learned more about talking about my music, and I certainly could have learned more new computer and recording technologies than I did. Sometimes, when I was exhausted and had no good ideas, making a new piece was a ginormous pain. However, more often than not, the blog was fun and gave me opportunities to try out unusual ideas without worrying about polishing them up for a serious performance. Plus, just putting something new out every day was immensely satisfying.

So on to new things. New state, new people, and a couple short months to complete my dissertation before giving birth to a baby boy. I miss Pittsburgh, and finishing the blog feels like closing an era in more ways than one. 

I hope to get a "best of the blog" feature up soon, so that subsequent visitors to this site can hear what I consider to be the coolest things that came of this enormous project. Thanks deeply to everyone who kept checking back to listen to new posts, and to everyone who gave me feedback.  Also, a lot of love and thanks to Jonathan, who helped with numerous projects and gave me all kinds of support, when I felt it wasn't worth continuing this blog.
Clang Jingle Clang isn't dead; in a way, now that it's complete, it's just begun. More updates about things I'm doing will no doubt be posted here, and I hope everyone who is interested in what I've done will check back here from time to time.

But, for now, Mission Accomplished. Yeah, yeah, a day late, I know. :)

(Bonus video! after John was done frolicking in the park, we took the whirligigs out for a drive down the highway.)
  

9/1/11

363. cenotaph

Okay. Remember blog 100? when I got all excited and was going to make a piece out of 100 virtual cellos? and it turned out to be pretty horrible. And blog 200? and 300? Totally didn't try to do anything special with those, because when the pressure was on, I drew a blank.

But this here is the penultimate blog, #364. And yes, I'm a day behind. But I really, really want to end this weird era of compositional activity with something special. And this little piece isn't it. So I'm going to put the official LAST POST up tomorrow. I have something in mind-ish. It just might take a while.

Plus, I have some vicious heartburn and a doctor's appointment in the morning, so I'm going to bed. But tomorrow will be the real finale.