Catalog

Compositions For Computer: Vol 1.

By Joel Mellin

Limited Edition Book & CD (100): Signed and Numbered
Can language be evolved from randomness?
Do clouds have tempo?
Can fire listen and respond to melody?
Do you need a surf band to make surf music?

Composer Joel Mellin explores questions like these. Since leaving his job as a NASA satellite engineer in the late 1990s, he’s been using computers to realize new musical ideas, going beyond the now commonplace electronic instruments of the last century. He creates innovative digital music systems using Genetic Algorithms and sonar based instrument controllers for real-time performance, taking computer music far beyond simple loop-making and recording. His compositions have been heard in performances from the Feldman Gallery in Soho to, most recently, the Dublin Dance Festival in Ireland.

“Computers can provide an abstract framework, completing tasks humans can’t do,” explains Mellin. “I find this liberating. I’m free to explore musical ideas that’d be impossible with traditional musicianship and written composition.”

Composition for Computer: Vol. 1 is a multi-media collection of these compositions and the concepts behind them. The full-color book and companion CD is more like a chronicle of a dream than an academic tome. Pairing stream-of-conscious verbal abstracts with dreamlike images by award-winning photographer John Soares, it invites you into Mellin’s mind and guides you through wit and surreal melancholy.

Composition for Computer: Vol. 1 also features an introduction by collaborating performance artists Holly Faurot and Sarah H. Paulson, humorous commentary by poet Garrett Caples, a complete discography of Mellin’s work and details of each original performance.

Take a look inside at an excerpt from the book:

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“Mellin’s sound scores are layered, sophisticated — sometimes jarring and surprising, sometimes meditative and unrelenting — worlds I want to place amongst my dance. His computer generated sounds mysteriously reveal themselves into a swirling landscape, perfect for the choreography to unfold, to stray and settle in and, eventually, a place for the dance to live.” –– Jodi Melnick, Choreographer

"Joel Mellin's compositional sense is firmly planted outside those boundaries that most composers fight to break through. While others may think "outside the box", Mellin does not recognize the box in the first place. A maverick with a deep respect and understanding for of formal disciplines, his innovations push both technological and aesthetic boundaries with razor sharp clarity and a kind of revolutionary charisma that invites the listener into a welcoming, if not always comfortable sonic world." –– Nick Didkovsky, Composer and Author of the Java Music Specification Language (JMSL)

Downloads

PDF: Compositions For Computer 1 Sheet