T-Stick

Higher Order Gestalt Fromage

Here is a video of the piece Higher Order Gestalt Fromage for two soprano T-Sticks and 24 channel loudspeaker array, composed and performed by blablaTrains (Ana Dall’Ara-Majek and Takuto Fukuda). The piece was premiered in the live@CIRMMT concert series on 13 February 2020 at Music and Multimedia Room (MMR) at McGill University.

I love the way they played with the relationships between gesture and sound! Unfortunately those of who could attend in-person have to imagine the spatialization aspect of the performance since it can’t come across in the stereo audio here.

Workshop on the T-Stick @CIRMMT

The T-Stick DMI

Composer/instrumentalist D. Andrew Stewart performing the soprano T-Stick.

On Saturday November 16, 2019, CIRMMT hosted a workshop on the T-Stick digital musical instrument. The workshop included presentations by myself, composer D. Andrew Stewart (the other originator of the T-Stick), Eduardo Meneses, Takuto Fukuda, Mathias Bredholt, and Mathias Kirkegaard. Presentations covered the history, design, and development of the instrument; mapping and performance practice; and current advances including embedding libmapper and algorithms for high-level gestural descriptors in the instrument firmware and the addition of programmable force-feedback hardware to the physical structure of the DMI.

The workshop also served to launch the 2019 T-Stick Creation Project, a new  program supporting composition for the T-Stick which will culminate in a concert performance in February 2020.

This workshop explores the development of compositional and performance practices for the T-Sticks—a family of gestural musical controllers designed to sense performer interactions such as touching, tapping, twisting, tilting, squeezing, and shaking. Joseph Malloch—the T-Stick designer (Dalhousie University)—and D. Andrew Stewart—composer/T-Stick instrumentalist (University of Lethbridge)—will discuss the instrument design and compositional possibilities for the T-Sticks, followed by a hands-on workshop for the practical use of the T-Stick, including how to set up, perform and notate. Finally, the workshop will include a report on the CIRMMT Student Award project, Between design, composition, and performance: expanding and embedding a high-level gesture vocabulary for the T-Stick, by Eduardo Meneses and Takuto Fukuda.

Concerto for T-Stick and Two Laptop Orchestras

Here’s a video from way back in 2011 that I only recently noticed on YouTube. It features D. Andrew Stewart playing the T-Stick as instrumental soloist with laptop orchestras from Concordia and McMaster Universities.

The piece was co-composed by Eldad Tsabary (director of the Concordia Laptop Orchestra, CLOrk), D. Andrew Stewart (T-Stick) and David Ogborn (founder of McMaster University’s Cybernetic Orchestra).

Interestingly, there are also a couple of videos online in which composer Kevin Austin presents the video and discusses the piece.