about me

everything you need to know about mike fabio

research

inquiries into electronic music

composition

music i have written, recorded, etc.

publications

papers i have published

resume

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revrev AT media DOT mit DOT edu

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	composition
	2006 fire|hose mov fire|hose is an experiment in video and multichannel surround sound. it is taped in high definition 1080i hdv and edited in final cut pro. sound work was done with feedback and audio processing using digital performer and a guitar. unfortunately the video i've made available on the web is much smaller, and is a two-channel mixdown of the quad audio track. 2004-2006 the vast majority of work i have done recently is with my band, the supercosmic transcendentaldam orchestra. you can check out our webpage at http://supercosmictranscendentaldamorchestra.info 2003 Elegy for B pdf My best friend passed away in December of 2003. I miss him dearly. This is for him. Still slightly unfinished. Harlequin pdf Harlequin is a piece inspired by the Commedia dell'Arte character of the same name. During my senior year of school, I worked fairly intensely on my thesis about Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. Having been inundated with the traditions and grotesque delusions of the Commedia, I wrote a short piece for a jazz combo that evokes the comic madman Harlequin. Hakranah midi mp3 pdf It means 'irradiation.' I have no idea why I called it that. This tune is based on the klezmer phrygian scale. Please excuse the midi file. It's just what happens when you dump it from Sibelius. The mp3 is my band playing it, but it is unrehearsed (I had to make a quick recording and turn it in for a class :). 2002 The Adventures of J.Z. and Kojak mp3 A minuet and trio in classical style for string quartet. The recording here is absolutely awful, but don't fault the piece for that. It's actually a somewhat humorous outing within the confines of this musical style. Bad Luck Card mp3 pdf This piece is a lied in the style of Schubert/Schumann. The text is taken from the poem Bad Luck Card by Langston Hughes. In an attempt to keep the somber, bluesy feel of the poem, I utilized some dissonant tones, but still kept within the realm of "proper" 19th century harmony and counterpoint. The recording is from the sight reading session, featuring Margaret O'Keefe (soprano) and Charles Shadle (piano). Jennie Gottschalk: The Lord is My Portion mp3 Well, I didn't write this one, but I recorded it. A friend came to me and asked if I'd like to do a multitrack recording of a piece for voice and organ, and I said, "where's the organ?" So we went over to the Christian Science Church in Harvard Square, set up a bunch of mics, fired up Digital Performer, and went at it. It's Like Science, Except Science Sucks mp3 Not entirely sure when I wrote this, but it was probably at the time I declared myself a music major. I have since accepted science to be a farce created by educational institutions as a capitalist tool. This is a really good track. I'm quite proud of it. Beethoven's Juicy Inkblots mp3 Rego was taking some class where they studied the manuscripts of Mozart and Beethoven. Some leading musicologists have theorized about the smudges and blotches that appear all over the manuscripts. Thus, we have Beethoven's Juicy Inkblots. Hands Abruptly There mp3 A brief experiment in ambient noise. This piece was made using Reason. It consists of only three synthesizers, played through a whole melee of digital effects. By running each voice through up to 12 signal processes, a whole range of timbres can be created using only single sparse notes. Most of the effects are controlled via MIDI automation using the Reason sequencer. The title of this piece comes from the book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. Castlevania is, Like, the Coolest Game Ever mp3 When I started writing this, I had no intention of making anything that sounded like some creepy video game music. But, well, that's what it turned out like. Much of this is sampled, either by me or some free stuff downloaded from the Internet. Some of the loops were made using Reason 1.0.1. All of these samples were loaded into Acid and then exported as individual tracks. The final mix was done using Digital Performer 3.0. For some reason, Acid keeps cutting out all my high frequencies, so the final mix doesn't have anythign above ~10kHz. I'm working to fix this. Epistrophy by Thelonious Sphere Monk mp3 pdf This is an arrangement of a tune by T.S. Monk that I did as my final project in 21M.340 Jazz Harmony & Arranging. The score here is not complete. It was just a sketch before writing a handwritten score (for some reason we werent' allowed to print the score on the computer in that class). The recording reflects the final written version. It's a pretty bad recording, but it was just a sightreading. 2001 8 Pt Agenda (8pt remix) by Herbaliser and Latyrx mp3 A remix of the song 8 Pt Agenda by Herbaliser and Latyrx. Made this using Acid with some downloaded samples and some taken from other sources. This is incomplete and needs to be properly mixed and effects added. The concept of this mix is in the 8 motif samples which occur throughout the tune. Saint Michael, Minnesota: September 01 mp3 pdf My most recent work for piano, this was completed as requirement for 21M.302 Harmony and Counterpoint II. It is in a pseudo-18th century style akin to early Beethoven. The theme and variations range from four-part Bach chorale with imitative counterpoint to a light-hearted romp through Mozart's 40th Symphony to a more 19th century (dare I say Debussian?) final variation using some extended harmonic techniques. Dedicated to Laura Elizabeth Goode and premiered at final project recitals December 13, 2001. [Update: I finally got around to recording this piece. It is now December, 2004, several years later. My friend and colleague Mary Farbood was kind enough to play the piece for me. It is completely digital, recorded via MIDI, then played through a Steinway grand sample set, and finally placed in a recording studio using Altiverb. The result is satisfying.] after the phone: bluestone walk, 1650 b.c. pdf Written specifically for tenor saxophone and bass guitar with any number of other instruments ad lib. This is a little bit of avant-jazz toe-dipping, I have to say. Most of the jazz I listen to falls into the Ornette Coleman/Albert Ayler/late Coltrane styles of experimentalism, and I have recently been inundated with the writings of John Zorn. I thought I'd give it a try, and make it a bit of a shout-out to one of my favorite groups, Happy Apple. This piece has never been performed. My Only Friends are Black and Decker mp3 Sequenced by hand in Reason. The basis of this piece is a study in density: horizontal density representing time and vertical density representing chord size. The visual sequencing capabilities of the Reason program allowed me to 'draw' the music on a graph-like grid (D'Arrezzo's music notation is also just a graph). The piece is largely atonal and has no discernable melody. Up mp3 My first piece of algorithmic music, written in the MAX language and realized in Reason. The piece is a series of randomly generated scales chosen from all possible scale intervals. This version was recorded in 2001 at the MIT Media Lab. 2000 You Make Me Want To Cry, Art Museum Girl Sparse piano music a la Satie or Feldman inspired by a horribly tragic art museum attendant at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal. Dedicated to that girl, whoever she may be. This piece may have been lost, I am still in search of the score. You Are Not Your Fucking Khakis mp3 A sample-based piece written in Cakewalk. I wrote this piece while failing physics in my first semester at MIT. Written in only a few hours, this piece is not quite complete, more of a work in progress, although I don't have plans of working on it anytime soon. She's So Suite For jazz quartet midi midi midi Written using Finale and Band-in-a-Box. It's pretty straight ahead jazz in three movements. Unfortunately the score was lost, but I scavenged these midi files. 1999 Drunken Sketches For five string electric bass guitar and orchestra Admittedly this concerto is a bit of a joke, mostly on myself. It is an attempt at writing some kind of amalgamation of the many styles of music I listen to (although a true sampling would be completely futile without dragging the piece out to several hours length). This was premiered with the Edina High School Orchestra in 2000. String Quartet No. 1 For her majesty my love mp3 pdf One of my best, and earliest compositions. A one movement string quartet, highly influenced (obviously) by minimalist composers (Glass, Reich, etc.). Winner of the 1999 Minnesota State High School League Composition Contest. 1998 Vibes of Fury mp3 An early sample-based piece I made using Cakewalk Pro Audio. I've always like the transition/similarity between hip-hop and drum n bass. This piece was thought lost forever until I found it on a minidisc sometime in 2000. Done under the pseudonym Biff. Colder Months For violin and bassoon A nice little duet for violin and bassoon. Unfortunately this piece was lost in the nether regions of the computer world, so the only remaining copy is a score in my archive at home.