Brandon Lucia
Email: blucia [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com
Web: http://brandonlucia.com
Soundcloud: Tiny Pony
Bandcamp: tinypony
science.
music.


netcat

[web] [bandcamp]

I started a band called netcat with my friends David Balatero and Andrew Olmstead. We released an album called Cycles Per Instruction in April 2014 as a digital download and a cassette tape. We also released our album as a Linux kernel module and we believe we are the first to have done so. In January of 2020, we released our second album Before the Orbit which is a companion piece to a research project at CMU.

Press:
Slashdot
Hacker News
Reddit
Network World
jwz.org
album release show and installation at the Ballard Jazz Festival!



Chango

The Chango is a new musical instrument that I invented and built that transforms images collected by your computer's camera into harmony. You can get more information here. You can download the chango for OSX here. You can try playing a simplified version of the chango in your web browser here. The source code for the chango is on github.



Records

Hardware Synthesizers, Drum Machine, DIN
netcat - Before the Orbit, Digital Release 2020

Chango, Percussion, Computers
netcat - Cycles Per Instruction, Digital, Tape, and Linux Kernel Module Release April 2014
Released on Table and Chairs

Chango, Studio Recording
King Tears Bat Trip, Released on Positive Beat Records (PB008)
Limited Edition Lathe Cut 10" - A:Math Problems/B:Tricks

Chango, Studio Recording
King Tears Bat Trip, Tape release on Hanged Man Records; Digital release on Table and Chairs Records
Press: Olive Music, Italy's Ondarock, Subpop, RateYourMusic.com's #100 of 2012

Computer Music, Compilation Track
Racer Sessions Curators Compilation, Volume 1, Released on Table & Chairs Records. The track is Nondeterminate from my first Racer Sessions curation. Get a copy here.

Drums, Studio Recording
The Foghorns - A Diamond as Big as the Motel Six, Released on Beefy Beef Records

Live Recordings

Drums, Live Recording
King Tears Bat Trip, "Stolen Police Car" live in Red Square at UW.

Chango, Live Recording
netcat, "Ambient" live at Heartland February 16th, 2013.

Chango, Live Recording
King Tears Bat Trip, "Martha" Live at the Cry & Roar Festival Racer Sessions on January 20th 2013.

Computer Network, Algorithmic Music, & Drums, Live Recording
netcat cureates The Racer Sessions "netcat" performed with David Balatero as netcat

Drums, Live Session Recording
Sonarchy Radio, Aired November 27th, 2011. With Jen Gilleran (drums), Don Berman (drums), Kate Olson (sax), Steve Treseler (sax). Podcast available here.

Chango, Live Recording
Racer Sessions Curation "No Air" - Mvmt. 1 & Mvmt. 2 (April 17th, 2011) Mvmt 3 (November 20th 2011)

Algorithmic Music & Speech Model, Live Recording
Racer Sessions Curation "The Internet is an Apt Mother Fucker" with Tony Fader (November 20th 2011)



Computer and Internet Music

netcat

netcat is a piece of music that David Balatero and I wrote and realized for the Racer Sessions on April 15th 2012. The idea behind the piece is that communication is constant and often implicit - we're always communicating, but we may not always be aware of it. To illustrate this theme, David and I wrote some software that converts computer network traffic into music. We defined a mapping from network traffic to musical primitives like playing a specified note at a specified volume for a specified duration. More details of the mapping are available in our essay about the piece. Using a program that collects computer network traffic, and some software that implements our traffic-to-music mapping, we composed netcat by carefully orchestrating network traffic and playing our instruments. You can listen to the result here. This piece was developed more and became a track on our band netcat's album Cycles Per Instruction.

The Internet is an Apt Mother Fucker

The Internet is an Apt Mother Fucker is a retake of Apt Mother Fucker version 1.0 (below). IAMF is a piece of music built on top of Apt Mother Fucker. There are two other components. First, the piece uses a complex statistical model of questions on the internet invented by Tony Fader, to generate sequences of real questions with interesting linguistic and aesthetic properties (rhyming, etc). Second, the piece incorporates English-speech-like mumbling generated from a Markov model of internet text (using Mumbley, a mumbler I wrote). The culmination of these three parts is a piece that illustrates the incomprehensibly large body of information on the internet. Most is unintelligible, some is incomprehensible, and then occasionally, there is a kernel of real, useful information that emerges from the cacophony. You can read more about IAMF here and listen to a live performance of it from the Racer Sessions here.

Compositions that led to the Chango

Here are a couple compositions that I wrote while I was developing the ideas that eventually became the chango.

No Air, Movements 1 & 2: Points in Space

No Air is a new piece of music that I composed for a new musical instrument that I created. This piece was debuted at Cafe Racer in Seattle on April 17th, 2011. This piece was built around a new musical instrument that I created called the Chango. The Chango is a computer program that allows its player to continuously vary the intensity of a cluster of tones that are always being emitted. Such continuous variations change the focus of the resultant harmony that the Chango emits. In addition, some discrete tonal variations are possible. The details of the Chango, a description of the piece, and a recording of the piece are available here, as well as on the Racer Sessions archive.

No Air, Movement 3: Light and Motion

The original presentation of No Air (April 17th, 2011), has two movements, with an absent third movement. I have since written No Air, Movement 3: Light and Motion. Light and Motion is based on the PhotoChango, which converts light and motion into music, using a camera and some software that I wrote. You can read about it here and listen to it here.

Nondeterminate

Nondeterminate is a generative, nondeterministic computer music project that I composed. This piece was debuted at Cafe Racer in Seattle on October 3rd, 2010. The piece renders the nondeterminism of concurrent programs in music. The full source code to the project is available, as well as a recording of a performance of the piece from its debut at The Racer Sessions. This piece is featured on a compilation of pieces by prior Racer Sessions curators, and is available for purchase. Get your copy The Racer Sessions Curator Compilation, Vol I today, and support your local music scene!

Apt Mother Fucker version 1.0

[Mac Executable]

Apt Mother Fucker is a tribute to Julius Eastman. It is built from a pentatonic scale riff that he relied on heavily in one of his compositions. AMF is generative music. It plays a large number of concurrent copies of the piece's main theme. It plays each at a randomized offset in time, resulting in different overlays of the sound with each new instance of the theme. The goal was to emphasize the regular rhythmic structure that shows up in lots of Julius Eastman's songs, and to add a textural component to it using randomization. In addition, the piece is infinite, to mimic the seamless quality of the songs Julius Eastman wrote for Unjust Malaise. I wrote AMF in C++, using an Hardware Abstraction Layer, Sine wave generator, and sample mixer that I wrote from scratch. The code will be on the web real soon.


Other Compositions

Denver

[Score]  [Audio]
Denver is a short jazz etude that I wrote mostly in one night, after returning from a trip to visit my sister in Denver, Colorado. It's nice to have siblings. The piece is built using very run-of-the-mill jazz idioms, and the melody is simple and repetetive. Harmonically, it is a sequence of modified ii-V-Is. The first three phrases are four bars each, and have the same structure. Two bars introduce a ii-V-I progression, but stop short of the tonic. Instead, the third and fourth bar perturb the progression with a tritone substitution for the root in the third bar, and a return to the root in the fourth bar, but with a m7b5b9 chord. I was inspired to use a tritone substitution this way by the chord progression at the end of Wayne Shorter's/Miles Davis' E.S.P. In its last bar, it moves from Db (ii) to Gb (V) to F (augmented 4th Maj). I used the m7b5b9 to follow the tritone because it implies a scale with all but one or two of the same notes.


Associated Groups

netcat

netcat is a computer and ambient music group I have been developing with Andrew Olmstead, David Balatero, and occasionally, Tony Fader. Check us out on Soundcloud for now: /usr/bin/nc. We're putting together an album right now that is really exciting and full of awesome music.

King Tears Bat Trip

I played the Chango on a recording with King Tears Bat Trip that came out in January 2012. That recording is here. Give it a listen, and if you like it, buy a copy! The Chango is featured on Elevenogram. More "information" is on the King Tears Bat Trip Website

The Racer Sessions

Recently, I have been participating in The Racer Sessions, a night of collaborative, improvisational free jazz/improvisational music at Cafe Racer here in Seattle.

The Foghorns

The Foghorns is a project assembled, coordinated, and in large part executed by Bart Cameron. Bart's been Foghorning for about 7 years, and he's about 5 albums deep by now. The rest of the present crew are siblings Rich Quigley & Katie Quigley, Jason Kopec, and me. I played music with the Foghorns in 2008 and 2009.

Shudaimon Dubbafucc

Rich Quigley, Nick Davis, and I played some improvisational music together. We had no name for a while, so one night, as the result of a series of events which make up a story which isn't actually that interesting, we decided to call our little trio Shudaimon Dubbafucc. Our music is primarily derived from tribal candy store muzak and associated arhythmic whale call remixes. I play drums, Rich plays wonderful things (including guitar and keys), and Nick plays the bass. We mostly just improvise, giving us the freedom to wave our arms wildly and hoot until our hearts are content. The band is a lot of fun, and I hope you like our music.


Performance History

This is a record, mostly for my own sake, of performances and recordings I've done in the last few years. The place I've played the most is at The Racer Sessions.

Synths (Mother-32 + Cathedral), Live Performance
Live at Control / Freak @ Assemble, Saturday May 7th 2016, with Rainsleep, Mythshifter, Welling, and Echo Lightwave Unspeakable. As TinyPony.

Chango + Synths + Mumbley, Live Performance
Live at The Space Upstairs, Thursday April 28th 2016, for Spednar's amorpheaux EP release party with 8Cylinder, Disheveled, Morgantics, Good Dude Lojack, and Spednar. As TinyPony.

Chango + Synths, Live Performance
Live at Experimental Night @ Assemble, Saturday March 26th 2016, with Russ Hoffman, Echo Lightwave Unspeakable, and Spednar, as TinyPony

Computer Video + Synths, Live Performance
Live on Hollow Earth Radio (via Skype)Glossophonic Showcase Live on Hollow Earth Radio, Friday March 25th 2016, as netcat

Chango + Synths, Live Performance
Live at Experimental Night @ Assemble, Saturday February 13th 2016, with Russ Hoffman, Echo Lightwave Unspeakable, Autumn Pool, APE, and Vasculator, as TinyPony

Chango + Synths, Live Performance
Live at Vermillion's Table & Chair's 2nd Wednesdays Series, Wednesday February 10th 2016, with Ings, and William Hayes as netcat

DIN, Live Performance
Live, Curating Racer Sessions, Sunday February 4th 2016, with as TinyPony

Chango + Synths, Live Performance
Live at The (closed) Night Gallery (such bad luck!), Friday October 23rd 2015, with Bad Luck and Dwayne Rifle, as TinyPony

Chango + Synths, Live Performance
Live at DebacleFest 2015, Saturday July 10th 2015 as netcat

Chango + Synths, Live Performance
Live at Roboto Project, Thursday June 4th 2015 as netcat (minus Olmstead)

Chango + Synths, Live Performance
Live at Crucible Sound @ Modernformations with John Paul Zigterman and Nevhar Anhar, Thursday April 9th 2015 as TinyPony
↿Pittsburgh, PA


⇃Seattle, WA

Chango + Computers + Drums, Live Performance
Live at LuciaFest @ The Demolished House with Operation ID, Midday Veil, and Suggi (Carol Weber, Andrew Olmstead, Jared Borkowski) , Saturday October 25 2014 as netcat

Chango + Computers + Drums, Live Performance
Live at the Royal Room with The Daniel Rosenboom Quintet , Tuesday September 16 2014 as netcat

Chango + Computers + Drums, Live Performance
Earshot's Jazz: The Second Century, Thursday July 24 2014 as netcat

Chango + Computers + Drums, Live Performance, Instrumented wifi network installation, Interactive Chango installation (with glowing balloons)
Ballard Jazz Festival's Jazzwalk, Friday April 18 2014 as netcat
Voted Winner of the Earshot's 2014 NW Concert of the Year

Chango + Computers + Drums, Live Performance
Da'Daedal's Second Year Anniv. Show, Sunday March 16 2014 solo

Chango + Computer Music, Live Performance
Cry & Roar IV - The Racer Sessions Festival, Friday, January 31 2014 as netcat

Chango + Computer Music, Live Performance
Heartland, Seattle, Friday, January 17 2014 as netcat

Chango, Live Performance
Columbia City Threatre, Thursday October 24 2013 with King Tears Bat Trip (Seattle Weekly: Preview and Review)

Chango + Internet generated music, Live Performance, Panel Discussion
Kittredge Art Gallery, Univ. of Puget Sound, September 19 2013 with Andrew Olmstead as (2/3 of) netcat.

Chango, Live Performance
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, April 27 2013 with King Tears Bat Trip. Performing as part of IMPFest 2013. Also performing: Japanese Guy + How Glass is Made

Internet generated music + Drums/Percussion Live Performance
Another Dream, March 30 2013 with David Balatero as netcat.

Chango, Live Performance
Heartland, February 16 2013 with Andrew Olmstead & David Balatero as netcat.

Chango, Live Performance
Cafe Racer, January 20 2013 with King Tears Bat Trip. Performed 'Martha' as part of Cry and Roar: The Racer Sessions Festival, curating The Racer Sessions.

Chango, Live Performance
The Black Lodge, May 5 2012 with King Tears Bat Trip. Performing as part of DebacleFest. Also performing: Eternal Tapestry, Operative, Pulse Emitter

Internet and LAN Generated Music, and Drums, Live Performance
Cafe Racer, Curated the Racer Sessions April 15 2012 with David Balatero. Performed netcat a piece based on computer network audiolyzation and improvisational drums and guitar. More info here.

PhotoChango, Live Performance
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, MagmaFest, March 24, 2012. Performed on the PhotoChango with King Tears Bat Trip. Also performing that night: WA, Figeater and T'th & Hare.

Chango, Live Performance
The Josephine, January 28th, 2012. Performed on the Chango with King Tears Bat Trip. Also performing that night: Trevor Dunn, Travis Laplante, and Thunder:Grey;Pilgrim.

PhotoChango and Internet Music, Live Performance
Cafe Racer, Racer Sessions Festival, January 13, 2012. Performed on the PhotoChango and with Tony Fader as Neighbor's Cat. More info here.

PhotoChango and Internet Music, Live Performance
Cafe Racer, Curated The Racer Sessions November 20, 2011. Performed on the PhotoChango and with Tony Fader as Neighbor's Cat. Session is here.

Chango, Live Performance
Cafe Racer, Curated The Racer Sessions April 17, 2011. Session is here.

Drums, Live Performance
MagmaFest 2011, March 5, 2011. Live performance on a Seattle Light Rail train with Neil Welch (sax), Luke Bergman (bass), Evan Woodle (drums), David Balatero (cello), Chris Icasiano (drums), Ivan Arteaga (sax), Rob Hanlon (sax), Aaron Otheim (accordion), and Garret Sand (shady costume) from The Racer Sessions

Computer Music, Live Performance
Cafe Racer, Curated The Racer Sessions October 3, 2010. Session is here.

Drums, Live Performances
Variously in Seattle with The Foghorns during 2009-2010 at The Comet Tavern, The Blue Moon Tavern, The Baltic Room, High Dive, Nectar, Bob's Java Jive (Tacoma), The Sunset, Hollow Earth Radio (in studio performance)

Drums, Live Performances
With Blue, Pig. 2009 at The Comet Tavern, The Blue Moon Tavern, The Sunset Tavern