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My name is Corey Fogel, I am a percussionist and performance artist, submitting to the residency program. I was turned on to both STEIM & LiSa recently, when I shared a concert with flautist Anne LaBerge in London. She inspired me to investigate, which led me to discover that several of my mentors from CalArts have also worked closely with STEIM.

My approach to drumming and improvising is equally present in nearly all of my performances and their genres/media. I strive to mend gaps between recognizable rhythms and textural improvisations/sound exploration. Regarding respective audiences and outlets in the musical subculture, projecting a wide range of subtle dynamics and nuances can be heavily compromised in larger, louder venues with common technological accomodations. In many cases, the ever-growing dissolution of genre barriers seems inaccurately matched by its account for various physical approaches to sound. Stylization and genre barriers remain intact.

As a soloist, utilizing all of my faculties - voice, limbs, implements, extremities – contributes to the generation of sound gesture. The functions that result from the continuum of [sound yielding visceral reactions yielding more sound] are integral to any traceable narrative in my music. I often resisted the Digital Sample, in favor of emulating specific electronic sounds, awkward rhythms, and common digital permutations through physical impulses and purely acoustic means. Not merely aesthetic, it has refined my physical approach to the drums. I have regurgitated my sounds interfaced with Max/Msp, Supercollider, and other stochastic manipulations, and I am interested in going further.

My interest in STEIM is exploratory. I want to realize my options for new instruments, or new skeletal modifications for my drumset. I am seeking technological assistance overall. I'm interested in new, more advanced techniques of isolating, amplifying, and distorting my sound spectrum. These methods would be unique to my stylistic nuances - determined by my limbs' coordinates, motions, and choreography. I want to identify points of translation from drumming to computing. I want to discretely pair up my range of physical actions with their equivalent digital permutations; [gestures:parameters] with regard to volume, velocity, density, effort, expression I feel that fast, high-resolution gesture-sensing is less possible with existing MIDI sensors, and that audio-rate sampling of gestural input would be a better means to reveal/explore/erase boundaries between audible wave and visceral motion.

Like the piano, which is the most immediate visual representation of musical language/theory, drumming to me is one of the most direct and open translations of visceral sound expression. I’m looking to marry this process, this notion of physical, gestural effort with the production of electronics and noise.

Corey Fogel
June 11, 2007. Oakland, CA