Compositions

Music gets composed, music gets played or sung, musical instruments get designed and made, musical events get organised, music gets listened to and danced to, recordings get made and distributed. . . . all equally important parts of a scene, helping music thrive.

Some Personal Strands

Hocket

A musical technique where two or more voices or instruments make a melody by alternating notes. As in some African flute and horn groups, some mbira, some gamelan, church bell ringing, some mediaeval vocal music.

overflow I love the sound of it. I think it's because it immediately creates a community in the relationships between sounds. Lots of my music has elements of this in it, but it is most prominent in my four pieces for plastic pipes: Overflow, Song of the Slugs, Bakerloo Boogaloo, Submerging Polly. (Recently reissued on the CD "Ses Plus Grands Tubes")

Hocket was also the subject of a five part radio series written and presented by Will on BBC radio 3's "The Music Machine" in 1997.

Jazz and African Music

I started my musical life from jazz, playing sax and writing for jazzbands. Lots of pieces for small big band (-?- in this case that means eleven instruments!) Bullit. Jazz to me is physical. Strong emotions expressed passionately and spontaneously. Later, jazz led to African music and a whole set of different sounds.

New Instruments

Jazz also led to free improvisation and exploring the sounds of many instruments less standardised than the normal orchestral ones. Ersatzophone, oozler, mbira, llechiphone, gurgler and others have been incorporated into my compositions and performances. In the last couple of years I have started sampling many of my own instruments and natural sounds, and making recorded pieces using these together with soprano sax. (Some of these are now available on the "Celebrating Rain" CD.)

Some Pieces

For small big band
The Articulate Mr Lush
Rimba
You Don't Need A Partner To Dance
A Split In The Mountain (plus three llechiphones)
End Of A Bad Time
For large group (at least 20)
Community
For new instruments
Overflow
Song Of The Slugs
Bakerloo Boogaloo
Submerging Polly
For voices and instruments
Fitting (two women's voices)
Think Deeply (for Hakurotwi Mude) (one man's one woman's voice)
Zenzanzonga (one man's one woman's voice)
Cross art form (see resOnance)
Cān Y Graig - Slate Voices
Strong Winds and Soft Earth Landings
For sampled and natural sounds
The Song Of The Grape (wine sounds)
Pots Pieces (ceramic percussion)
Drip Slate (dripping and soprano sax)
alt.org (breath blown sampled organ pipes)
Text and images © copyright Will Menter.

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