The McLean Mix

Priscilla McLean (born Taylor) is an American composer, performer, video artist, writer, and music reviewer.
In 1969, at Indiana University, Bloomington (MM), she was greatly influenced by the music of Xenakis, who was teaching there.
She sings with extended vocal techniques and plays the piano, synthesizer, violin, percussion, and Amerindian wooden flutes, as well as newly created instruments.

Barton McLean graduated from State University of New York (SUNY) Potsdam (BS 1960), Eastman School of Music (MM 1965), where he was a student of Henry Cowell, and secured a Doctorate in Composition from Indiana University (1972). In 1967 he married fellow composer Priscilla Taylor. From 1969–76 he directed the Electronic Music Center at IUSB-South Bend where he pioneered the first large-scale commercially-available digital/sequencer synthesizer in the USA (Synthi 100 – from EMS), and pioneered the first sampler while directing the Univ of Texas Electronic Music center (Fairlight CMI -1981 -1983).

In 1974 Priscilla and Barton McLean began to perform together as The McLean Mix, presenting their electro-acoustic music.
The McLeans worked from 1971-6 with the Synthi 100 and Arp 2600 Synthesizers, Scully tape recorders, spring reverbs, the ElectroComp 101 Synthesizer, and many small devices in the Indiana University at South Bend Electronic Music Center.
The equipment, large and cumbersome, filled the four walls of the studio, and the composers would often run, back and forth between stations, spending as many as twenty-two hours at a time to develop one complex sound…
They performed from 1974 to 2013, presenting their separate works and collaborations across the USA and internationally.

You have been pioneering in Modular Synthesis and The McLean Mix has been extensively touring for decades, would you please retrace your career?

(Bart) We both began as traditionally-trained composers and performers, emerging in the 1960s and early 1970s. My teacher at Eastman School of Music, Henry Cowell, was an inspiration in that he was completely open to every technique, new or old, and every type of sound source. Then in the early 70s, we both studied in the studio of Iannis Xenakis at Indiana University, where we were introduced to modular synthesis on the Moog. Xenakis too was agnostic about any restriction in using modular vs concrete and happily used whatever sound generating method served his purpose at the moment.

This philosophy of not being tied to any type of sound generation served to guide us throughout our careers.

Our first touring group was called “The Mix,” and included David Cope and Burton Beerman along with Priscilla and myself. We toured briefly in1974-5 at our respective universities where we were teaching (Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania) but travel logistics soon caused Beerman and Cope to leave the group, leaving myself and Priscilla, so it was renamed “The McLean Mix.”

1973-83: The “McLean Mix” rapidly gathered momentum, balancing university teaching with touring, which expanded to many USA states and European countries. Our sound production instruments varied, from recorded whales to early modular (Arp, Electrocomp, EMS), and most extensively, piano and tape, with slide projections. Often we found ourselves giving concerts to enthusiastic audiences in venues that never before had any kind of electronic music.
In 1973 we began a long series of commercial vinyl and CD releases, beginning with Orion and CRI Recordings.

1983-2001: Upon divorcing from academia (our touring was becoming too extensive for us to reside at stable academic positions), The McLean Mix began its long journey in 1983 with composing and touring as its principle income source. Over the next 30 years our duo would perform in 42 states, 3 Canadian provinces, many European countries, as well as Malaysia, Philippines, Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand. Studio production for our tape works expanded with two TX 81z synthesizers, two Korg Wavestations, two Prophet 2000s, an ASR-10 sampler, and other synthesizers under the Opcode Studio Vision Pro sequencer. Often, visuals such as slide projections and video accompanied the works. One special visual addition was my invention of the Sparkling Light Console, a large panel of flashing colored LED lights with patterns controlled by a MIDI keyboard to the accompaniment of my “Fireflies” work. 1985 began our long immersion in environmental concerts and installations, with sounds often derived from nature (birds, water, ocean, etc). Our CD release “Rainforest Images” (now available on New World Records) became our iconic work.

2002-2012: Our concerts and installations turned to MAX/MSP programs I designed for control (delays, sequencing, and resonant filtering) and Priscilla created intriguing and varied videos to accompany the electroacoustic works, which became multimedia on DVD.
Our Mac computers were the controlling hardware with the MAX/MSP software.

2014-present: Having retired from touring in 2013, we are reflecting on almost 40 years of being able to exist doing what we love without the encumbrance of a university position. I’m not sure a group starting out could be in the same position today due to the depressing change in non profit and academic institutions’ budgets. We have been, since 2014, immersed in the Kyma System, an all-encompassing creative vehicle that, once its protocols have been mastered, affords us with all we need in terms of flexibility, sound creation and exploration. Since 2013, with my last CD album on Innova and Priscilla’s last on Centaur, we have produced a wealth of new audio (with video accompaniment) works composed with Kyma, all available on YouTube. To find all this, go to Youtube and search for “Barton and Priscilla McLean Playlist.”

You chose to include the word “Mix” when you were playing live. Was there ever any confusion with DJing, which is what mixing is all about?

(Bart) To give you an idea of the extent of our awareness of “DJing,” I had to look up the term on Wikipedia!

From your point of view as pioneers, is there anything left to invent in music? Do you think it’s important to try and innovate, or should the priority be to play, to have pleasure while creating?

(Bart) Sometimes I have great pleasure in creating (not always!), sometimes I need to try to innovate, sometimes I just love to play around and try different combinations. I can’t say which is more dominant at any given time. They are all present to some degree as I fire up the instrument. I remember that my mentor and teacher Henry Cowell was always excited with some new Indian raga, or some kitchen implement, or some exotic scale. To be open to all the world as sound source is to create to the fullest.
When we were “pioneering,” we thought that everything was possible, only to come to realize that certain areas, such as creation solely by modular means had such a limited gestural and sonic pallet that some composers such as Mort Subotnick, having skimmed the cream in his amazing « Wild Bull » « Silver Apples… » and other similar works, seems to have left the rest of us in the dust if we tried to emulate his approach. I would say the same about Klaus Schultz in his “Kontinuum,” and Wendy Carlos in her “Switched on Bach.”
In my opinion, oscillators, filters, modifiers just do not have the capacity to sustain multiple creative voices at this highest level of composition. In other words, purely modular electronic sources are such that their very best creative potential is very quickly used up due to their very nature and lack of timbral and gestural richness, and that is why we often (but not always) incorporate into our work the infinite possibilities with the pallet of sounds from the natural world and live musical instruments, while still using modular techniques when appropriate.
One unusual approach is our collaborations. In Rainforest Images, a 48-minute electro-symphonic work incorporating many nature sounds, and involving sounds and performers on four continents, we jointly composed each section, with one of us initially taking a stab at it and the other then jumping in and often significantly revising that section, resulting in compromises where the result was far better than each of us could have done alone. This was all created on the Studio Vision Pro sequencer in a mixture of MIDI synthesizer, nature sounds, and modular-like instruments, with a significant dose of live virtuosic performers.

(Priscilla) The amazing thing is that Bart and I think so much alike, yet my music is quite different from Bart’s.
I love being inventive with all sorts of sounds, especially the human voice, and I shy away from techno music and academic electronics. We made an excellent team when touring, our styles being just different enough to keep it interesting.

(Bart) Priscilla was the star performer on many touring works with her virtuosic experimental vocal techniques tied to a very sound traditional vocal training.

I often think that in the 60s, and still in the 70s, when electronics were still in their infancy, anything seemed possible. You can sense in the creative work of that period that composers let themselves be surprised by the new. It seemed possible to invent in those days?

(Bart) Actually, in those days, I found it a huge struggle to utilize those primitive instruments to compete with non-electronic possibilities. Many of my main works of that period were with instrument and tape (from modular and natural sources).

(Priscilla) I was fascinated with the possibilities of the Synthi 100 synthesizer which we were both using, and didn’t feel I was struggling, except when the Synthi 100 power supply malfunctioned, and I had to resort to a series of twelve car batteries which hummed and ran down rather quickly, making for quite emotional music-making!

Then, in the 80s, a certain notion of control emerged, a desire for synthesis that would allow the instruments of the orchestra to be remade. A desire for classicism? What was that like for you?

(Bart) Yes, nicely put. For us, the advent of MIDI and the digital sequencer allied with the desktop computer in a Timeline format helped a lot, although the danger was that it could be used as a crutch in trying to imitate and parallel traditionally notated music and the return of “notes” and traditional scales.
On the other hand, the continued development of modular systems without MIDI forced composers to think in terms of pure sound, gesture, and texture was a reason for us both adopting the Kyma system in 2014 (Kyma does not allow traditional MIDI notes to be inserted in a Timeline) .

What have you been working on lately, and do you have any upcoming releases or performances?

(Bart) When I first encountered the Kyma System in 2013, thanks to the advice of my friend and colleague Joel Chadabe, I decided to take a year off to just explore the immense possibilities of the system (my review of this can be found in Computer Music Journal, Fall, 2015). Most electronic/computer systems have certain biases as to how one will create. Kyma can do anything, but there is a long learning curve to realize its full potential.
Priscilla and I have been exclusively creating works on Kyma and have several available as Youtube videos. Now in our early and mid 80s, we do not perform publicly anymore but are very active in creating.

What do you usually start with when composing?

(Bart) Over the 10 years I have been composing with Kyma, I have produced thousands of sounds, all made searchable as to their characteristics. I have also produced hundreds of Multigrids, which allow one to have a collection of sounds all capable of playing (or not) at once under the control of a mixer and other output controls.
One of the most difficult parts of starting a new work is to try to imagine how sound combinations, that have never been heard before, will sound together. So I start with that. When I find a multigrid preset that is promising, I convert it to a Kyma Timeline. During my work I am constantly expanding and deleting sections, a task made easier with Kyma’s “insert-delete” tool.

(Priscilla) I often start with a thematic idea, such as my last piece, called “Quarantined!”.
Then I search out sounds that would fit this idea, which leads me to exploring hundreds of sound combinations through my own samples or Kyma’s vast collection, often creating new sounds from experimenting. The piece evolves on its own momentum after that, carrying me along.

How do you see the relationship between sound and composition?

(Bart) You begin with a sound, and what you do with it is composition.
Many electronic composers make the mistake of taking a static, boring sound and thinking that they can use the composition process to rectify it. This tendency comes from traditional composing, where all single sounds by themselves are boring (such as one piano note, for example), and the TOTAL burden of making the composition work lies in taking these boring single notes and working with them. This usually does not work in an electronic composition, because the initial sound itself MUST BEAR MUCH OF THE BURDEN of the composition’s success, particularly if the formant and timbre of the sound can not change naturally, as it would do if it were acoustically-derived.
Consequently, I try to make the initial sound itself as interesting as possible, and in doing so, the composition sometimes composes itself.

(Priscilla) Amen!

I can see what you mean, even if I love the sound of a piano note… This topic brings to mind some « Interesting » experimental music which sometimes may sound so difficult to access that it is difficult for most to listen or return to. What bores one wouldn’t bore another… In such case what would be the bridge allowing « listenable » to remain « Interesting » ? How do you work that out or don’t you ever ask yourself and simply produce what you want to hear?
Do you think of a « potential listener » at times?

(Bart) An essential part of how I work is to, after “finishing” a composition in the studio, I put it aside, sometimes for many months, until I can again listen with ears that have largely forgotten the original. This way I can approach the work with fresh ears, almost as any skilled listener would do. Thus I can try to approximate both the ears of the immediate (who is emotionally involved) and the distant (who can be more objective). As a result, the finished work can be a product of the subjective as well as the objective listening, and as such, does not discriminate between potential audience and myself. In essence, I become the audience. I may still have creative biases, as we all hopefully do, but they are tempered by time-honed objectivity.

How strictly do you separate improvising and composing?

(Bart) They are not separate. I begin with improvisation and end with composing in the same session. In my composition teaching, I strongly urged my students, both electronic and acoustic, to use improvisation as an important tool. Improvisation opens the door for unforeseen possibilities. The opposite of this is an approach that produces stale results. The Kyma Multigrid allows a composer to improvise with timbres, textures, gestures (vertical) before committing them to a more formal Timeline (horizontal).

Agreed ! In fact I meant, had in mind, improvising related to « playing live » opposed to « composing » creating in studio.
Would you agree that playing live is to be created on the spur of the moment, heard/seen once whereas « composing in studio » one may hope for listeners to return and listen to repeatedly, implying more attention to details, refining, etc…?

(Bart) Yes, that is exactly correct. Before we begin a touring composition (such as “Earth Music),” we engage in all sorts of improvisation, most of which should never be heard outside our studio. Gradually we find ideas that are workable toward a viable composition that can be more permanent. Electronic groups that improvise their content on the spot will rarely produce work that could stand repeated hearings, but on the other hand, this sometimes produces flashes of inspired on-the-spot sound that could never be thought of beforehand.
That is why I still love to hear electronic or instrumental groups that improvise, such as Chris Mann and the “Machine for Making Sense”.

Do you find that you record straight with no overdubbing, or do you end up multi-tracking and editing tracks in post-production?

(Bart) I often record straight, but with Kyma, you are recording the sound parameters, not the actual audio. As such, these can then be more easily edited in the Timeline. Multitracking is sui generis with Kyma, but usually in the sense that each track is a recording of the parameters as they exist in the keyframe below. But you can also record multitrack traditionally with the result as an audio file.

What type of instrument do you prefer to play?

(Bart) Priscilla is a professional singer and pianist and our tours have often featured her as the main soloist. Her vocal techniques (as seen in “In the Beginning”) are extraordinary. I used to play piano for fun. In one of our early tours I performed a difficult work for piano (Dimensions VIII). I worked my way through college playing jazz bass. On our tours, we often performed other instruments as well, amplified and effects-processed bicycle bowed and struck, woodwinds, keyboards, audio mixing, sparkling light console, processed found objects. While Priscilla played percussion, piano, music boxes, woodwinds, violin.

Obviously you are interested in gesture, physical move to create the music, right? What is your favorite way to achieve such expression?

(Bart) Our most interesting gestural performance work is my “Happy Days,” where Priscilla goes through all sorts of contortions to try to tame the music boxes which she plays live. Being a professional singer, she also provides a very gestural approach to her “Wilderness” and “In the Beginning”.
I use gesture sonically in works such as my “Demons of the Night,” and certainly in a work you are presenting in this retrospective Session, “A Lecture,” where British composer Trevor Wishart’s gestures increasingly play a pivotal role as the work progresses.

How can one avoid losing the spontaneity that the analogue instrument allows and that so many composers have lost since they do everything from their computer? The click of the mouse doesn’t sound like the turn of a knob, does it?

(Bart) In Kyma, there are so many more parameters to work with in the Timeline keyframe field that this produces an alternative range of gestural and timbral possibilities when compared to modular approaches. The goal here is not to mimic the analog, but rather to offer so many new possibilities through multiple parameter controls that one forgets the difference.

Your compositional process is also based upon the use of acoustic instruments that you process or combine with Electronic. How do you work to marry that Electronic with your acoustic matiere?

(Bart) Very simply, I try to make the electronic sounds as close as possible to the acoustic. And I try to make the acoustic sounds mimic the most interesting features of the electronic.
Carla Scaletti once characterized my approach to electronic sound as possessing “physical plausibility.”

How were you first acquainted to Modular Synthesis? When did that happen and what did you think of it at the time?

(Bart) We both began with the Moog in 1971 at Iannis Xenakis’s studio at Indiana University. I didn’t think much of the Moog at the time, but Priscilla had a ball and actually came out with a fairly decent piece.

(Priscilla) Called “Experimenal Landscapes” and not John Cage’s piece unknown to me at the time— “Imaginary Landscapes”, this music was a collage of my singing through a mayonnaise jar, a wooden ruler vibrating rapidly against a desk, excerpt of Xenakis’ “Nomos Gamma”, and raw sounds from the Moog, created in one day in the Indiana U. studio.
Do not look for this piece in our repertoire. It was a beginning, anyway.

Would love to hear that! Anyway the « Landscape » thematic has been with you since those early days, up to the early 2000s when you had a retrospective CD named « Electronic Landscapes ». Would you tell us more about it?
How do you imagine the notion of landscape in your music?

(Priscilla) My use of the word “Landscape” in our music has always been used as a metaphor, and as an overriding theme for different styles. It probably stems from our hiking and snorkeling adventures — exploring so many natural landscapes in the world, and absorbing the musical qualities, whether they are human, nature or animal-made. Using all the different electronics over the years has allowed us to feel symbiosis with all sounds, which resulted in our wide variety of musical inventions.
A quote from Opus One Records’ jacket has a good explanation of the “surrealistic” landscape concept in our music: “The music may be described as “surrealistic”
in the sense that the listener’s subconscious is probed through use of gestural, imageric, and environmental ideas, woven into an abstract musical fabric which evokes sound images that fluctuate between these “worlds”.
Harry Haskell of Musical America magazine adds: “The McLeans’ music has an immediate appeal by virtue of its colorful, impressionistic textures, poetic texts, and abundance of concrete sounds.”
This was around 1980.

And how do you prefigure that “Landscape”? How do you set it up, and could it be part of a voyage, in the sense of an auditory/imaginary change of scenery?
A parallel journey within oneself, an invitation to sit back and listen… Take time for yourself?

(Priscilla) I created a piece for tuba and whales, using altered sounds from two records, (CBS Records: “Voices of the Whale” and “Deep Voices”). called “Beneath the Horizon”, and the visual seascape with its California coast and sounds of ocean waves became very important to the tuba music and whale calls. The work was premiered in 1982, and has had dozens of performances by adventurous tubists since, It is still performed today, often with a set of whale images gathered over the years. This is as close as I ever got to actual program music and is one of my most successful works.
Since 1993 when The McLean Mix began to actually incorporate real landscapes as visual accompaniments to our music (“Rainforest Images”, for example), the images have become much more important. We needed to add images to some of our electro-acoustic music for our live concerts, as some pieces were totally on recordings we had made. This effort was hugely appreciated, and extended our concertizing for ten more years. I became a video artist, and when we retired from concertizing, the images became part of the gestalt for our YouTube recordings.

When did you buy your first system? What was your first module or system?

(Bart) It was an Arp 2600, which had a couple of oscillators, a filter, sample/hold, mixer, and some other devices.
I remember before we purchased it, we had a picture of it posted on a wall, and we looked longingly at it for weeks before we were able to buy it.

How long did it take for you to become accustomed to patching your own synthesizer together out of its component parts?

(Bart) The Arp 2600 was all in one ready-made unit and patchable. Assembling the rest of the analog home studio, later with some digital, took c. 30 years, going through at least 4 compete iterations.

Which instruments did inhabit the rest of your analog home?

(Bart) Synthi 100 with dual digital keyboard sequencer and matrix patching. Scully 1/2 inch 4 channel tape deck. A Kincade Reverb. Synthi AKS. Revox tape deck. Arp 2600. Tascam 4 channel tape deck at 1/4 inch tape. Electrovoice RE 20 mics. Prophet 2000 rack unit, Prophet 2000 keyboard unit. PAIA sequencer units. Arp multimode filter. Kincaid Wavemaker. A large E-mu modular synthesizer, which was the largest such unit E-mu produced unit to that time (with possible except of Frank Zappa’s unit). Amplified bicycle wheel via piezo transducers. “Videonics” video controller. Serge synthesizer. Fairlight CMI with keyboard. Bode vocoder and Eventide harmonizer. + a custom mixer by John Thomlinson, a Chicago audio engineer.

What was the effect of that discovery on your compositional process? On your existence?

(Bart) Initially, Priscilla actually produced a great piece called “Ah-Syn,” in which an autoharp was patched into the Arp 2600, which modified it. We performed this on our initial concert tours. As for me, my claim to Arp fame was a work called “Gone Bananas,” in which I wound up sitting on the edge of the stage eating a banana while the Arp sample/hold chugged along. I don’t remember what the rest of the piece sounded like. This also was part of our first tour.

(Priscilla) Those early synthesizers revolutionized my life! Suddenly my music had its own voice and led to creating really original music and a whole career inventing and performing and traveling the world.

Priscilla, may I ask which of these electronic instruments – aside the Synthi 100 – were your favorite ones? And why?

(Priscilla) The instruments available to me have always influenced what I composed, and after we moved to Austin, Texas I wrote traditional plus electroacoustic music using small modular electronic instruments as we built our own private desktop midi studio. When we moved again and began our long touring career based in the Taconic Mountains of New York, our studio included the Prophets 2000 and 2002 keyboard MIDI samplers, which we carried with us for our concerts. I loved the Prophet until the ASR 10 became available, which was a much more powerful instrument, with larger memory and editing capabilities. We still have the ASR and use it as a keyboard for the Kyma system.
My favorite add-ons before Kyma were the Yamaha SPX 1000 pitch shifter and delay unit, Eventide Harmonizer, and Bode Vocoder, all controlled by a MacIntosh Studio Vision program. Then along came the Kyma system which incorporated everything in a Pacarana program, and I stopped using all the others, which kind of reminds me of getting married! Kyma is my favorite instrument now, but it is very complex and difficult to use. I use these instruments to create music that gives me joy and amazing flexibility.
All of these instruments I mentioned are my favorites, because they have opened up a world of wonder for me.

Quite often modularists are in need for more, their hunger for new modules is never satisfied? You owning an impressive amount of gear, how do you explain that?

(Bart) To paraphrase a joke I recently heard, “To teach a man to fish is to feed a whole family. To teach him an instrument is to put him in poverty for the rest of his life.” We did go through a ton of gear, finally giving most of it away and selling some on eBay. Rather than trying to explain it, take a peek at our web site shown below (click on “Gallery” in the top menu) which pictures our home studio evolution from before computers to Kyma.
Actually, the constant hunger for new effective instruments lies in the actuality that the older instruments are inadequate. In fact, the journey of electronic music composing may be thought of, in one sense, as a constant desire to surmount the inadequacies of the instruments in one’s possession.

How has your system-instrumentarium been evolving?

(Bart) Besides our home studio mentioned above, much of our serious creative work was done at the two university studios I directed. At the Computer Music Center at Indiana University-South Bend, in 1971 we purchased a Synthi 100 from Electronic Music Studios in London, with 22 voltage-controlled oscillators and eight voltage-controlled filters Two monophonic keyboards (both keyboards together produce four control voltages and two key triggers simultaneously). The digital sequencer has three (duophonic) layers, 10,000 clock events and 256 duophonic note events. Two 60 × 60 matrixes were used to connect the different modules by using patch pins. The keyboard spread could be adjusted, making it easy to play a tuned equal temperament scale as well as alternative microtonal tunings up to 61 divisions of each semitone. Thus, it was the first large-scale digital sequencer, as well as matrix patch device, working in the USA.
The other pioneering effort was in 1979, where, as director of the Electronic Music Center at the University of Texas-Austin, I set up the first commercially-acquired sampling instrument in the USA, the Fairlight CMI.

Would you say that your choice of an instrument can be an integral part of your compositional process?

(Bart) Certainly. Although Kyma is unparalleled in flexibility and impartiality, its lack of MIDI keyboard control does skew one’s composition ideas away from traditional note-oriented composition, and as such approaches more of the modular synthesis concept.
For me that is a good thing and frees me up. For others it may be a problem.

Would you please describe the system you used to create the music for us?

(Bart) “A Lecture”: In 1982 Trevor Wishart was in residence at our Electronic Music Center.
Many of you will know Trevor for his rigorous writings in technical and philosophical aspects of computer music such as “On Sonic Art.” He also has a formidable basket of vocal ranges, effects, and techniques and is a very unusual composer in many areas. We thought it might be fun for him to take a very dry and pompous computer manual and read it while his voice slowly disintegrates. This was recorded and composed at the University of Texas-Austin. I used the 8 track Scully 1 inch deck with a mixer, and enhanced his performance with a background and vocal processing through a Serge system.

For For “Dimensions I” (1971)and “VIII” (1981) the process was similar. All of the Dimensions series utilize an experimental notation system where the performer plays off of visual cues in the score taken from the audio portion.
Violin sounds were recorded by Madeline Schatz and processed through the Arp 2600. Also prominent in Dimensions I is the use of the ARP 2600 synthesizer’s oscillators. Sounds were multi-tracked in my Indiana University studio on a Scully 8-track 1 inch tape deck at 15 ips.

“Dimensions VIII”: Additionally, “Dimensions VIII” explores my fascination with nature sounds, most prominently that of the bluejay and robin, albeit used in decidedly non-natural contexts.
The main synthesizers involved were the Serge Modular system (mostly for the pedal bass notes) and the Fairlight CMI, upon which I sampled many of the bird sounds and then lowered them, such as a bluejay (heard in the middle climax as a “500-lb canary”) chickadee, and robin. The main processing equipment was an Eventide Harmonizer, which gave many of the sounds their characteristic sweeps or bursts, especially at the climax. A digital delay with feedback was also employed extensively. The pulsating drone heard through uses much the same technique as in my “Dimensions II for Piano and Tape”, with a metal rod inserted between two low piano strings which are very short and unstable and thick, thereby producing many inharmonic (but nonetheless pleasing) partials. This rod was stroked (producing the pulses) and processed through the harmonizer, graphic equalizer, and delays to broaden the sound. The tape part was composed on a 1-inch 8-track Scully deck at 30 ips using DBX noise reduction in my Electronic Music Center at the Univ. of Texas-Austin.
You can follow along with the music and score by going to Youtube, search “Barton and Priscilla McLean Playlist,” and selecting one of the “Dimensions” works.

(Patricia) “July Dance”: The third piece in the “SYMPHONY OF SEASONS” quartet of videos and music by Priscilla, “JULY DANCE” is a brief frolic with summer, with all the Northeastern U.S. in celebration, from jiving birch trees to children playing with balloons.  
The music is a romp, with squealing balloons, violin effects, wooden recorder and ocarina, a moaning microphone cord, a metal pizza pan, a flexatone — all performed and multi-tracked in layers on the Studio Vision computer program by Priscilla McLean, with children laughing and enhanced with the Korg WaveStation Digital Synthesizer.

“Autumn Requiem” (Collaboration with Priscilla and Barton): “AUTUMN REQUIEM”  was created as a result of a McLean Mix artist residency at the iEAR Program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2001-2.  Its “requiem” thematic content was originally inspired by the tragic yet renewing nature of the fall season in the USA Northeast, with all its beauty, starkness, death, and eventual rebirth, and the September 11, 2001 tragic destruction of the World Trade Center. The familiar “Dias Irae” melody is also performed, plus other references to autumn which the listener can identify. Singing is performed by Priscilla McLean, and at times she sings and plays the violin simultaneously, as in the “Dias Irae”. She also used several small and invented instruments, including  squealing balloons, turkey caller, and autoharp. This piece was performed live, premiering on March 22, 2002 at Missouri Western State College during the premiere of the “MILLing in the ENNIUM” concert, which was performed through 2007 all over the U.S. and Europe.
The video portion was created by Priscilla McLean on Final Cut Express in the McLeans’ home studio, with additional support from the iEAR studios in working with the Adobe “Aftereffects” video processing system, Joseph Reinsel, technical assistant.
One of the main benefits of the residency was to enhance the McLeans’ repertoire of audio processing capabilities, and to this end, Bart fashioned a powerful audio processing system using elements of MAX/MSP software, resulting in a gamut of delays, pitch shifting, sampling, resonators, filters, and granular synthesis (derived from Dan Truman’s “Munger” patch), controlled live via a Slidemate MIDI controller. 
This work is largely improvised in some details, but tightly structured in its entirety.

Do you pre-patch your system when playing live, or do you tend to improvise on the spot?

(Bart)When we perform a live concert, it takes all day to set up, rehearse, do sound checks. Every sound level on every piece is carefully marked. We tried to have backup media for everything (backup computer, CDs, slide bulbs, etc.).
For our duo performances, we begin the composition by extensively improvising in the home studio. As the rehearsals progress, more and more of the content becomes fixed. In concert performance, much of this content, as well as the exact timing, is fixed. Within that framework we improvise the details.
Our McLean Mix concerts rarely had to cope with technical difficulties as a result of our careful setup procedures.

What would be the system you are dreaming of?

(Bart)As for systems, we have everything we need. What I would like to dream of instead is for schools to include electronic music in their curriculum, more venues to support it, and the arts world to recognize it as a more viable and important artistic medium.

Which pioneers in Modularism influenced you and why?

(Bart)Generally I wouldn’t separate “Modularism” from any other direction in creativity in terms of our influences. But there is one exception: I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Mort Subotnick on several occasions, and have been and still am impressed with his early creative contributions such as Wild Bull, Silver Apples, and Touch. He not only single-handedly created the ideas behind the Buchla instrument, of which he so expertly was master, but, as he told me in a conversation, large portions of those aforementioned works were done in a single pass of live performance (this was before multitracking).
Apart from that, in terms of electronic music, Priscilla and I have also been initially influenced, not by composers, but by their individual works, such as Xenakis’s Orient-Occident and Ivo Malec’s Dahovi.
But perhaps more significantly, our influences have broadened to natural sounds, concrète sounds, and all sorts of live sounds that have richness and gestural capabilities, such as door squeaks.

Any advice you could share for those willing to start or develop their “Modulisme” ?

(Bart)The most important advice I gave my students is twofold:

(1) listen, listen, listen and become familiar with new and old works and techniques, to the point that it is in your blood.

(2) begin by composing short pieces—studies if you will— knowing that they will be learning devices and probably be eventually discarded. Model them after existing works or techniques.
I have always learned more by my failures than my successes (see Thomas Edison).

Success produces future imitation and diminution. Failure plants seeds for future success.

https://bartprismclean.wixsite.com/mcleanmix