In the workshop, composer-musician Benjamin Miller will lead participants in an immersive experience in which they are invited to explore the possibilities of images as conductors of sound, and sound as a compositional tool for images. This workshop is open to all!
Miller will provide old-school technologies such as analog tape loops and a Casio SK1 sampler to capture found sound in real-time. In addition to this, participants will be encouraged to use paper, plastic, junk metal, voice, found items on location, transistor radio, analog synthesizer, vinyl records, homemade instruments – anything! – as source material to compose from.
While listening to compositions generated by Miller in real time utilizing the aforementioned found sound materials, participants will create their graphic scores with paint and paper. These graphic scores will show how signs and symbols can be used to represent sounds, textures and various kinds of sonic events. Participants will then be given the opportunity to collaborate and interpret, perform, and record each other’s scores. Recordings will be made available to all participants.
About the Instructor
Ben Miller is an American rock and avant garde guitarist born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and now based in the NYC-metro area. He has formerly been a member of such Detroit/Ann Arbor bands as Sproton Layer, Destroy All Monsters,[1] and non-fiction. Destroy All Monsters, in particular, still a cult favorite, was a big part of the proto-punk, punk, and post-punk Detroit rock scene, featuring such bands as the MC5, the Stooges, Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, and Up. Currently Miller performs solo with his self-deconstructed multiphonic guitar (picture) and conducts / composes for NYC’s Sensorium Saxophone Orchestra.