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The first moment I recall of writing and here’s some more music was the moment, one year ago, when I found a discarded and “antique” toy music box record player at a second hand shop in the small community of Weyburn, Saskatchewan. I understood the potential for modifying this toy and its potential as a near-aleatoric melody generator.
-nuthre

and here’s some more music (June 2007)
Performed and recorded by Jeff Morton (aka nuthre) with:
Fisher Price toy record player music box, Fisher Price portable record player, Casio Jim Henson Model sampling keyboard, laptop and microphone (filtering, software by Jeff Morton) contact mics, prepared records, and tuning fork.

This toy, a Fisher Price classic from the 1970/80s, has five interchangeable plastic records, each holding two looping nursery rhyme or similar melodies, encoded as plastic bumps in grooves, each bump plucking one of a series of metal tines in the record player needle mechanism, much like a mechanical music box. The records are a made of a very malleable plastic, especially with the application of heat, so new melodies may be created that simultaneously obliterate and decorate the original melody.

My work in and here’s some more music features this toy record player music box as a central figure, a recurring melodic and modal soundscape, represented in a very close or enclosed soundscape through the use of contact microphone amplification. Additionally, there is a room microphone amplifying another Fisher Price record player and a toy sampling keyboard. This second record player plays “real” vinyl records - two records are used: a 30-second blank-side of an educational film strip soundtrack record, with modifications, and an anonymous pop music 45rpm (for the drum solo).

The toy sampler is amplified by the same room microphone as the second record player. The sound of this recording is very “close” for several reasons: (1) as a result of amplifying the toy record player music box with a contact microphone, a new scale of sound environment is revealed in which extremely precise points, pops, and clicks decorate and obliterate the beautiful proximity and resonance of the amplified bell tones (this is a kind of irony considering that record scratch noise is more often associated with “real” vinyl record players); (2) the second record player is amplified from a floating microphone above the onboard speaker, and thus every action on the record player that makes a sound is amplified alongside whichever sounds the speaker is producing – in this way, and through some practiced turntablism, the content of vinyl records is treated the same as the content of the plastic records, made malleable and distorted; (3) the emerging theme of confounded yet controlled music (that is music that is somehow obliterated, though which yet remains “in spirit” through the inevitable decorative nature of the destructive or deconstructive process), is an encompassing paradigm in this work, and is responsible for both the sincerity of the improvisation as well as the transparency of performance and recording technique.

This piece was recorded live “in performance” as an open improvisation in three or four parts.
Instrumentation, modifications, and recording techniques represent a “composed” part of the piece, and extended techniques for record players, music boxes, and samplers represent a catalogue of sound textures and timbres well practiced by the performer. Taken in total, the instrumentation is a re-contextualization of a classic “electronic music” set-up: two turntables, sampler, and microphone.

and here’s some more music is titled in reference to an earlier improvised music collaboration, Here’s Some Music (2005), by Nuthre and Jon Vaughn (Released by net.label Bricolodge). This two-track record  explores concepts of intention and deconstruction in electro-acoustic improvisation, and I wished to revisit those same ideas within a new framework and instrumentation.


Bio:

Composer/audio-artist, jazz musician/improviser, and graduate student in music composition at the University of Victoria; born in Regina, Saskatchewan, August 23, 1979, Jeff Morton (aged 27) completed his undergraduate study in Music Composition at the University of Saskatchewan with composer Gyula Csapo, a few years ago. Today, his formal music composition explores rhythmic patterns, harmonic restrictions, and effusive melodic oddities, simultaneously very challenging to perform yet sounding otherwise simplistic or improvised. Jeff is an active electronic and electro-acoustic musician, producing works with artists in Saskatoon, Regina, Montreal, Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto, and Eastern Europe, among others. Recent highlights include a circuit-bent-fred-astaire DJ set at the 50/50 Gallery in Victoria, and the release of conceptual electronic music collection Yes, Really on Bricolodge as well as Saskatoon Shoes, on Panospria, and Bloops for Alice, on Notype. While in school, Jeff Morton is one of three members of LUVLEE, the Live University of Victoria Laptop and Electro-acoustic Ensemble, dedicated to experimental performance with emerging and/or originally developed technologies. Many of Jeff Morton’s works have been released by net.labels in Canada and abroad, under the internet- pseudonym “nuthre” (pronounced “nous-tres”), including Panospria (Montreal), NoType (Montreal), Bricolodge (Saskatoon), PopQuiz (Saskatoon), Nishi (Vancouver), and Archipel Musique (Germany), among others.

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