Music by Charles Céleste HUTCHINS

Lacewing This piece was commissioned and titled by Tim Walters. This piece has two instruments – one uses the Ringz Ugen in SuperCollider and the other is a Sine wave which is phase modulated by another sine wave where both are tuned to the same frequency. It is in harmonic minor, tuned with the default just tuning. Harmonic minor is known as “Mogen Ovos”

Shorts #41: Catalyst. Commissioned and titled by Andy Bannister This piece was commissioned and titled by Andy Bannister. Explaining why he picked this title, he said, “My thought process for this, is that the first half sounds like a catalyst for a reaction towards the latter half which could also be interpreted the sound of a substance or object changing state, like

Glass – for Irene’s birthday This piece was composed using SuperCollider and a synthesiser for Irene’s birthday. It was presented as a part of an installation at the Rupture Gaming Festival in Kent. The source material is recorded with an analogue modular synthesiser. The SuperCollider program takes that material and granulates it, dramatically changing the

Sawtooth Minimalism My colleague, Jackie Walduck, was showing students how to create phase music by putting loops out of synch in a DAW. Then I went home from teaching and created a PD patch to play low-pass filtered sawtooth waves, as an example for a different class. I got curious how much easier it would be in SuperCollider and created a tiny program that did the same thing

The Last Christmas: III Misterioso As per holiday tradition, I have again produced a Christmas album, although only an EP this year – or a virtual chamber ensemble playing once piece in five movements. This movement is the odd one out, using the same MIDI data for pitch and rhythm as the other movements use. The only sound used, however, is one sample. The same sample app

Santa Loves You I was extremely startled to hear the religious content in the second verse of Here Comes Santa Claus. It seems the authors were responding to criticism of the secular/commercial focus of most Santa-based songs and thus were trying to have it both ways. The addition of God only increases the tension of the culture war’s resonances within this song. Instead of

Sledge Trudge Some songs have hidden dystopian meanings or inner, subtle depth. And some are just dull but still popular. From Kenny G’s wholly regrettable key changes to the Ronnette’s questionable special effects, the recorded history of pop acts covering Sleigh Ride is one of desperation to make anything interesting happen. Somehow, this song lingers in the top 20 o

The Santopticon (He Sees You) He sees you when you’re sleeping. All of my Christmas songs this year are fundraising for the Hackney Night shelter, which my wife has been volunteering at. There are very few shelter beds in East London. This roving shelter makes up a large percentage of them.

Funky (The Slow Jam) This uses three different audio sources. In this version, there’s no effort to do beat matching and the playback rates are all based on the same minor pentatonic scale, but without coordination between the rates. I like the end. All of my Christmas songs this year are fundraising for the Hackney Night shelter, which my wife has been volunteering at. Ther

Walking in a Winter No Man’s Land Perhaps the strangest part of the lyrics of the original song is when a snow man demands to know if the narrator is single and the narrator immediately suggests polyamoury: [The snow man will] say ‘Are you married?’ We’ll say ‘no, man. But you can do the job, When you’re in town.’ This rendition primaril