David Novak was born in London, England in 1969.  His first instrument was the flute, which he played in the school marching band, beginning to work with tape media, guitar, and organ a few years later.  He studied electronic music and ethnomusicology while receiving his B.A. in East Asian Studies at Oberlin College.  In 1992, he received the Darmasiswa grant from the Indonesian government, enabling him to spend a year studying gamelan music and travelling through Asia.  Mr. Novak has performed with a number of ensembles, including his band Habit Trail, under the solo name Rabbit Tail, and most recently playing reed instruments with the Anthony Braxton Ensemble, which whom he studies composition.  He spent the summer of 1998 in Tokyo, where he performed with experimental musicians Otomo Yoshihide, Merzbow, and others.  Mr. Novak is currently enrolled in the graduate music program at Wesleyan University in Connecticut.

I identify with Kerouac's ideal of spontaneous composition in the formal approach to constructing work.  I think for some time about a piece, consider it, and walk around with it, and then work quickly to assemble the information, in order to produce the most intuitive and natural resultant form.  In performance, the process returns again to a contemplative scrutiny of the structure, working over time to develop a deliberate and clearly ordered course of actions.  This method enables me to employ a systematic analysis with regard to my material, but provides an entry point for other parts of my consciousness in the "compositional" framework.

 
One of the central issues in both my electronic and acoustic works has been the exploration of sounds on a micro-structural level - the particles that establish the identity of the sound are used as the primary compositional blocks for large structures.  These ideas have manifested themselves in various editing techniques, such as cutting off the beginnings and endings of recorded sounds, effectively removing the identifying "code" that communicates the sourceís location, length, and other characteristics. A larger phrase can be manifested as a stream of particles, or sound source groups may be isolated from the potential body of sounds of a particular instrument and translated into larger compositional structures. When applied to acoustic, non-recorded material, a parameter of the sound-forming action is isolated and varied -- on a bassoon, for example, locating the point at which the air produced sets the reed into unstable motion, or the point at which the air forms a tone group complex in the tube.  Each exploration should be a "song."
 
Currently, I am interested in instrumental techniques that result in the transformation of static pitches, combination tones, and "noise" (harmonically unstable) tone complexes, among others.   Some recent improvisational work has been vocal, with vibrations amplified by contact microphones attached to my larynx.

 
A recent interest in the tonal matrix embedded in the structure of  "simple" modal songs ("folk songs" of the United States, for example) has led to the development of frequency maps that stretch the songs over time structures, projected to indefinite lengths.  The matrix is constructed by extending each note at the point of its initial occurrence, formulating a harmonic structure that reflects the position of the mode as modulated by the song, changing with each rotation of chorus and verse.

The matrix structure has also been brought into an improvisational context, in which the harmonic projection of the matrix becomes vertical.  The players are presented with the base parameters -- the tones, time periods, etc -- and rotate the matrix in a hocket fashion, each player holding down his assigned sector.  Each player's improvised lines are constructed from the tones of the matrix, reflecting that individual's position in relation to the group-established frequency map.

 
 
 
Recent Compositions:

Giant Skips (1992)
Clkclkck (1994)
Clkclkckrmx (1998)
Smooth Out (1997)
Drumset (1997)
My Vision 4/09 (1998)
Matrices in Vertical Flux (1997-98)
Home on the Range, Intervals plus Matrix (1998)
Surf Wave Formation (1998)
DNG (1998)
Bc vs Cbs (1998)
Approximation (1998)
 

 

CONTACT INFO:

A. Music Department Wesleyan University Middletown CT 06459  E. dnovak@wesleyan.edu