Straight-to-field-recorder audio from my set at Sound Studio 1 presented by The Low Pass at Pageant:Soloveev in Philadelphia. Sound Studio 1 took place June 1 2024. The other performers included Brian Wenner, brednotbred, and MANNA.

The set was entirely improvised and the instrumentation included my chaotic modular synthesizer and a generative Max patch running on my laptop.

Documentation of Sound Studio 2 featuring William Fields, Anne Ishii, and Death Aria at Pageant:Soloveev in Philadelphia July 26th 2024. The Sound Studio concert series is presented with The Low Pass and is curated by Matt O'Hare and Ben Rosenbach.

Documentation of Sound Studio 1 featuring MANNA, brednotbred, and Brian Wenner at Pageant:Soloveev in Philadelphia June 1st 2024. The Sound Studio concert series is presented with The Low Pass and is curated by Matt O'Hare and Ben Rosenbach.

The recordings featured on Death Metal Wellness Awareness Week (DMWAW) were created using a variety of chaotic modular systems.

Utilizing carefully devised methods of feedback, each improvised session unfolds as a wrestling match between the artist and the instrument, where human intention is continuously thwarted by an unpredictable yet palpable intelligence.

Here, the machine’s resistant behavior is framed not as a malfunction, but as an invitation towards creative response.

Documentation of Fire Museum Present's A Page of Madness (1926, dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa) with a live score by me and the Totally Automatic new music ensemble.

For the performance, I operated a modular synthesizer receiving control voltage from the film via image-analyzing software I created in Max/MSP. Musical parameters including tempo, volume, and timbre were all affected by brightness, motion, and acceleration values.

The performance took place December 8 2023 and was commissioned by Fire Museum Presents with funding from the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Special thanks to Totally Automatic for going on this adventure with me.

Utilizing a collection of motion-analysis algorithms, the Max patch in this clip converts visual information into control voltage for the modular synthesizer used for the film screening.

An earlier version of the patch controlling a software-based FM synthesizer and a basic echo effect.

Shiloh began as a series of improvisations performed on guitar and processed live in Max/MSP. Vocals and synthesizer were added later. Recorded in Houston, TX and completed in Philadelphia at Haverford College as part of a residency at VCAM (Visual Culture, Arts, and Media).

The album title comes from the site of the 1862 battle as part of the American Civil War.

Released on my 40th birthday May 23, 2023

Music, Mixing, and Mastering: Matt O'Hare

Artwork: John Muse, Untitled 11.15.2022 (from the Auction Catalog Series), cut paper, ink, acrylic, digital composition.

The Flowstates Series pairs longform solo music improvisation with first-person video footage recorded in a variety of environments.

The intent is to underscore the exploratory aspect of freeform music by comparing it to, say, a walk in the woods. In retrospect, Flowstates are also a product of the COVID era, which (at least for me) was conducive towards long introspective periods and contemplation.

While I don't count it as part of the Flowstate Series, the above video East Side Ride demonstrates my first experiment with this format.

Part 1 of a computer music piece that explores unusual divisions of equal temperament. Realized in the Max/MSP programming environment. Originally performed live at VCAM at Haverford College.

When we begin the synthesis portion of my computer music class, I often demonstrate how the octave is divided into twelve equal parts to create the common tuning of 12 tone equal temperament (12-TET). Just as easily however, the octave may be divided by an arbitrary value to discover less common intervallic relationships. The two tuning systems used here (7 and 9-TET) produce intervals that are both familiar and unnervingly alien to Western ears.

Haversounds was recorded November 21, 2021 at the Visual Culture, Arts, and Media (VCAM) center at Haverford College in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

An improvised performance by Brian Wenner and Matt O'Hare created in a single take with no preparation, editing or overdubs. Recorded as part of Brian Wenner's residency supported by VCAM.

Brian Wenner: Eurorack Modular System

Matt O'Hare: Moog Synthesizer and Guitar Pedals

Separator is a 42-minute, single channel digital video work with a multi-channel electronic soundtrack. It is a collaboration between Matt O'Hare (visuals) and composer Brian Wenner (music).

The visual content of Separator is best understood as a series of algorithmically-generated living collages that utilize a variety of found materials including architectural simulations, video game screen-captures, animations of surgical procedures, and hundreds of elements taken from internet advertisements. The result is a digital hallucination that rapidly oscillates between the beautiful and alienating, and is reminiscent of the literature of Philip K. Dick, the films of Godfrey Reggio, and the euthanasia sequence towards the end of Soylent Green.

Separator is best experienced in a darkened cinema equipped with a 16:9 projection surface, four loudspeakers configured for quadraphonic sound, and a subwoofer.

Phaethon is a straight-to-field-recorder album from 2012 when I was living in the front room of a railroad style apartment on Driggs Ave in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Along with the sounds of moving along the floor of my bedroom and the clicking of looping pedals with my fingers, street ambience occasionally slips into the mix.

Phaethon marks a period in my life when I moved away from composing music in DAWs and fully embraced the spontaneity of electronically-assisted improvisation. The result is slowly unfolding, low-fidelity vocal music that anticipates a lot of my subsequent creative output.