Coppice Output

Coppice was founded by Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer in Chicago in 2009, as an inquiry into the capture and generation of music and its relationship to its physical sources.

Its compound studies include Bellows & Electronics (prepared pump organs, shruti boxes, and tape processors) between 2009–2014, and Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses between 2014–2018; focusing on the interactions between direct and reproduced sound, and the perceptual links between original and emulated sources, respectively.

Its third study in Phonography & Fiction (in progress since 2018) scrutinizes the dynamics between its previous two studies, and their relationship to architecture and time: the acoustic preservation and obsolescence of the Yerkes Observatory’s refractor and reflector telescopes in Williams Bay being the locus of investigation.

With sustained interest in sound’s capacity to cross domains, Coppice crafts pathways between music and technology in a cross-disciplinary language, resulting in work that is an overarching documentation of experimental music in-formation. Operating in cycles of instrument construction and modification, recordings, and live presentations, its productions incorporate sound design, sculpture, installation, software, images, and video.

Output

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Stratégies Obliques II

An array of experimental harmony.
Stratégies Obliques II
Coppice – Bridge to Oblique Landscape (Distance in the Unison with Crosscutting Triangles)

# ingeos ~ toy.bizarre # – Kdi Dctb 346 [a] [Water / Reverse / You Can Only Make One Dot At A Time / Use Filters / Do We Need Holes? / Remove Ambiguities And Convert To Specifics / Put In Earplugs / Overtly Resist Change / What Mistakes Did You Make Last Time? / Mute And Continue]

<a href="https://fernsrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/strat-gies-obliques-ii">Stratégies Obliques II by Coppice</a>

Bridge to Oblique Landscape (Distance in the Unison with Crosscutting Triangles) was produced in 2023 in response to an invitation from Fern Recordings (FR) to engage with Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards designed to inform a creative process.

An interpretation of John Cage’s In a Landscape (1948) for piano or harp, a composition whose purpose, as influenced by Gita Sarabhai, is “to sober and quiet the mind, thus rendering it susceptible to divine influences.”

The composition is heard through Aircraft Halation, an arrangement of phantom musical glasses in a dual induction of 432 and 440 Hz tunings.

Eight sine waves are evenly spread between 432 and 440 Hz, and shifted between those bounds and their repetitions three octaves down with the spreads between 54 and 55 Hz. These frequencies are faded in and out of eight different virtual speaker positions with two moving and six in fixed locations. Sometimes multiple virtual speakers share frequencies, and sometime multiple frequencies share virtual speaker positions. Eight virtual speaker positions were chosen for their sound, and for being difference between 432 and 440 Hz.

Instances of triangles and their overtones cut across this array of experimental harmony.

Format: Limited edition of 200 copies white vinyl
Label: Ferns Recordings (frond_14)
Artwork: Pole Ka
Including: Aircraft Halation, Electronics
Date: August 2024
Draw Agreement

A spatiotemporal synthesis of Abdridgements, Observatory Sound, and Sonic Observation.
Draw Agreement
A nesting time capsule that cycles

Folded time and layered space

Sound, mechanical rooms, time travel

Refraction, Reflection, and Diffusion

Rotation, Turning, and Flux

A spatiotemporal synthesis of Coppice’s auditory and musical experiments (2009-2022) with custom, prepared, and modified musical instruments and devices.

This 3CD set abridges Coppice’s first three studies, artificially inserts them into the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, WI, and binaurally captures their diffusion across Elastic’s CLEAT (Chicago Laboratory for Electroacoustic Theatre), a 16-channel 96-speaker sound system.

CD1: Abridgements

Circumpass (2009-2014)

Compass (2014-2018)

Hourglass (2009-2022)

At the Poles (2014-2016)

Composed by montaging audio quotations from Coppice’s first two studies, «Circumpass» representing Bellows & Electronics (2009-2014), and «Compass» representing Physical Modeling & Modular Syntheses (2014-2018). Representing Phonography & Fiction (2018-2022), «Hourglass» abridges Coppice’s overarching sonic palette across all three studies (2009-2022). «At the Poles» is a conjunction of two unaltered solo performances, one for an Estey pump organ (cir. 1935, prepared in 2013) by Noé Cuéllar (recorded in January 2014), and one for modular synthesis by Joseph Kramer (recorded in May 2016), each of which has been separated from «Soft Crown» from “Vantage/Cordoned” (caduc., CA, 2014), and «Here» from “Green Flame” (caduc., CA, 2018).

CD2: Observatory Sound

Rotations in Refractor (Simulated Diffusion in the Likeness of the Yerkes Observatory)

Turning in Reflectors (Simulated Diffusion in Objects against the Yerkes Observatory)

Composed in 2021 using virtual acoustics of the Yerkes Observatory, through which are simulated the diffusions of «Circumpass» and «Compass». Spatial models and field recordings recorded on May 16 and 24, 2018 at the Yerkes Observatory, Williams Bay, WI.

CD3: Sonic Observation

Clocks in Flux (Elastic Capture-Source Diffusion post-CLEAT)

Composed in 2022, combining a binaural recording of Coppice’s performed diffusion of «Hourglass» and «At the Poles» using CLEAT (Chicago Laboratory for Electroacoustic Theatre), a 16-channel 96-speaker sound system, and 2.1 PA system, with additional headlock audio not heard during the performance. Recorded live on July 8, 2022 at 8:43 PM, at Elastic Arts, Chicago, IL.

Voices: Mark Booth, David Toop, NNN Cook, Jenny Vallier. The production of «Sonic Observation» was supported by an Individual Artists Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events.

Thank you to Doyal “Al” Harper, Ed Struble, Jesse Wirth, Kathryn Schaffer, Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, The Chicago 00 Project, The Princess Grace Foundation, Seismograf, Jenny Kendler, Brian Kirkbride, the departments of Art and Technology Studies and Sound at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Nathan Keay, Mark Booth, Jenny Vallier, Stephan Moore, and Sébastien Gautheron.

Format: 3CD set
Label: Ferns Recordings (ferns_stem_15)
Artwork: Coppice
Duration: 170 minutes
Date: January 2023
Stewardship to Obsolescence and Preservation

A manufactured sonic frame.
Stewardship to Obsolescence and Preservation: Listening to Specimen Music through Yerkes Observatory's Refractor and Reflector Telescopes
Founded in 1892 and known as the birthplace of modern astrophysics, the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin ceased operations in 2018. That year, its mechanical technologies were captured by Coppice (Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer) to draw parallels between its acoustic signatures and functions, and those of Coppice’s glossary of study since 2009.

Musing on the lack of delimiting frames (Chion, 2016) and vanishing point (Carpenter and McLuhan, 1972) in the auditory, Coppice manufactures a frame out of Yerkes’ architectures and acoustics. Within that frame, Coppice’s creative processes are anecdoted, while pointing to coordinates where conjunctions of its music may be found. Highlighting the intermediary influence of recording and reproduction technologies on perception and perspective – both in limiting and enhancing ways – open-ended questions of actuality and fiction are posed.

In this self-reflexive documentary experiment of music and phonography, obsolescence and preservation are creative resources that span from instruments and devices to shapeshifting spaces. Addressed directly, the listener observes sonic identities in flux, and finds footing through retrospection, projection, and imagination.

Coppice’s sonic artifacts in alignment with Yerkes’ telescopes intersect multiple domains of time, space, and scale. How is experimental music conceived over time and what is seen through it?

Listen to the peer-reviewed audio paper on Seismograf.

Read the script on Issuu.

Format: Script and audio paper
Label: Seismograf
Artwork: Coppice
Duration: 20 minutes (60 minutes, extended version)
Including: Mark Booth and Jenny Vallier (narrators)
Date: April 2021
Chrome/Boundaries Scaling Stereo Images and Promises (Some False)

An asymmetrical emblem of balance.
Chrome/Boundaries Scaling Stereo Images and Promises (Some False): Viewing Microphones and Listening Cameras
Chrome/Boundaries reports the long distance realities of documentation. Its images assimilate sight and hearing and the mechanics of audiovisual/information frames – relations at times incongruous. Things we see but do not hear, things we hear but do not see-through.

Executed, composed, and presented during Syros Sound Meetings’ Sounding Paths Residency (Ano Syros), and in Athens, July 2018.

Read: Imaginary Correspondence (2018) and TinyMixTapes Interview (2018)

Format: Video
Duration: 27 minutes
Including: Participations and contributions from Mitchell Akiyama, Renato Grieco, MP Hopkins, Eva Matsigkou, Savvas Metaxas, Phill Niblock, and David Toop.
Date: December 2018
Head Turning Songs

Digital accommodation for songs with concrete voices.
Head Turning Songs
Dense Day Cooling

Coverage

The Wall

Flywheel

Fake Memories Object

<a href="http://futurevessel.bandcamp.com/album/head-turning-songs">Head Turning Songs by Coppice</a>

Format: Digital
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Coils, Fans, Motors, and Magnetically-Permeable Sheet, Copper Plate, Fender Rhodes Piano Bass, Modular Synthesizers, Multi-Material Filter, Pyrex Vessel, Transmission Line
Date: May 2019
Wet Hologram

The before and after pictures.
Wet Hologram
Wet Hologram

Wet Hologram (Transistor)

<a href="http://futurevessel.bandcamp.com/album/wet-hologram">Wet Hologram by Coppice</a>

Format: Digital
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Copper Plate, Modular Synthesizers, Multi-Material Filter
Date: April 2019
Surreal Air Fortress

Post-industrial device music.
Surreal Air Fortress
Coverage

Surveillance

The Wall

Exposure

Solvent/Emulsion

Wet Hologram

Format: LP
Label: Entr'acte (224)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Coils, Fans, Motors, and Magnetically-Permeable Sheet, Inductive Mixing Table I, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Modified Boombox III, Multi-Material Filter, Tape Case
Date: April 2018
XYZ

A chiral object of memory.
XYZ
Dense Day Cooling (Ventral)

Fake Memories Object (Descendant)

Fake Memories Object (Antecedent)

Dense Day Cooling (Dorsal)



Format: C22 lo-fi ferro cassette
Label: Falt (Falt 9)
Artwork: Chemiefaserwerk
Including: Copper Plate, Coils, Fans, Motors, and Magnetically-Permeable Sheet, Fender Rhodes Piano Bass, Multi-Material Filter, Transmission Line
Date: January 2018
Green Flame

Music for driverless dream cars on their self-driven way to the junkyard.
Green Flame
Ground

Is This The Spot?

Country Road

Afterthought

Here

Cul-de-sacs

Ashdown (Slimy)

Is This The Spot?

Emanations

Format: CD
Label: caduc. (CA25)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Capillaries, Copper Plate, Fender Rhodes Piano Bass, Field Generating Boxes Transmitters
Date: May 2018
Open On Occluded Conditions

A molten image of songs, falsehood, and deflection.
Open On Occluded Conditions
Memory on Fake Fire Screen (POV)

Disappearing Act Monitored Over Fake Game Console

Lodge Message To Be

Burning Message/Message Burning

Inscription

Sweaters

Thought with Pollution at Simulation of Construction Site

Intercalary

Thought with Pollution at Simulation of Construction Site (Continued)

Disgusting Knot

Slimy Hideout

Burning Message/Message Burning (Embossed Emporium)



Format: Digital
Label: Untitled Folder (untitled folder 9)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Multi-Material Filter
Date: December 2017
Fake Air Storage

#777777
Fake Air Storage
Fake air was modeled between 2015-2016 and used in many Coppice compositions of that period. Read about and listen to Fake Air Storage at Noemata.

Format: Digital
Label: Noemata
Artwork: Coppice
Duration: 45 minutes
Date: July 2020
Preamble to Newly Cemented Dedication to Freedom

Sensual music for a folding world in which songs are directions to look.
Preamble to Newly Cemented Dedication to Freedom
Induction and Bifurcation

Flut (Tighter)

Sucked In



Format: 3" CD-R
Label: Aposiopèse (APO_11)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Multi-Material Filter
Date: December 2016
Blueberry

An object induced by manipulated magnetic fields.
Blueberry
Blueberry is an object induced by manipulated magnetic fields.

Opportunities to receive Blueberry were extremely limited; none remain available at this time.

For more information, please visit suppedaneum.com

Format: 10" lathe and double CD-R set
Label: Suppedaneum (no. 12)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Coils, Fans, Motors, and Magnetically-Permeable Sheet, Inductor Table, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Modified Boombox IV, Multi-Material Filter, Fender Rhodes Piano Bass, Inductive Mixing Table I
Date: December 2016
Whiting Belt

Territory sees digitally held air seeing edges holding.
Whiting Belt
Territorial Scan

Sweet Thread (Topple)

Scanned Exit



Format: Digital
Label: Panospria (PAN 097)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Fender Rhodes Piano Bass, Handheld Samplers, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Transmitters
Date: September 2016
Matches

A story with many holes.
Matches (Saga Edition)
Held Cascade

Bromine

Labile Form

Discharge Form

Subparallel Episode

Bramble

Caper

&lt;a href=”http://futurevessel.bandcamp.com/album/matches”&gt;Matches by Coppice&lt;/a&gt;

Format: Limited edition of 100 CDs in manually-assembled packaging (jewel case, diamond aluminum mesh, colored thread, transparencies, and hand-numbered card)
Label: Category of manifestation: (KIND_2)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Accordion, Amplified Melodica, Fire Bellows, MIDI Box, Modified Boombox I, Monophonic Oscillator, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Shruti Box (Orange), Shruti Box (Pink), Sphygmomanometer, Transmitters, Wooden Input Bars
Date: September 2015
Bypass Ideal

A proposed “idealisation” of experience of parts.
Bypass Ideal
<a href="https://futurevessel.bandcamp.com/album/bypass-ideal">Bypass Ideal by Coppice</a>

Format: Edition of 100 C42 cassettes in clear poly shell case with risograph print
Label: Hideous Replica (HR9)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Modified Boombox III, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Transmitters
Date: May 2015
Hoist Spell Extensions

Series of remixes, interventions and interpretations of Hoist Spell.
Hoist Spell Extensions
Hoist Spell (The Paver Version)

Hoist Spell (Michael Pisaro Remix)

Hoist Spell (Machinefabriek’s Philicorda Version)

Hoist Spell (Rushford & Talia Remix)

Hoist Spell (mAAs Remix)

Hoist Spell (James Hoff Remix)

Heist Poll (Bundy K. Brown)

Hoist Spell (Jeff Gburek Remix)

In The Pulse The Spirit (Joachim Nordwall)

Hoist Spell (VA AA LR Remix)

Hoist Spell (Labycz’s Hardware Construct)

Hoist Spell (Lescalleet Reconstruction)

&amp;lt;a href=”http://quakebasket.bandcamp.com/album/hoist-spell-extensions”&amp;gt;Hoist Spell Extensions by Coppice&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

Format: Digital files
Label: Quakebasket (qb 25.1)
Artwork: Coppice
Date: April 2014
Ex

Studies, alternate takes, and live versions from the Big Wad Excisions sessions.
Ex
Big Wad Experiments

Handheld Sampler Extractions From Hoist Spell

Alternate Turbulence

Corrugation Exercise

Snuck Keel (Live)

Sop Version (Live)

Ex includes an excision of the original board photographed for the Big Wad Excisions artwork, a CD-R with studies, alternate takes, and live versions of material revolving around Big Wad Excisions, and a handwritten carbon note. The twenty copies produced were offered in support of Coppice’s Compound/Excisions tour in March 2014.

Format: CD-R
Label: Self-released
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Handheld Samplers, Modified Boombox III, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Transmitters
Date: March 2014
Big Wad Excisions

Accretion, excision, nostalgia.
Big Wad Excisions
Snuck Keel

Impulses for Elaborated Turbulence (Excised)

Sop

Hoist Spell

<a href="https://futurevessel.bandcamp.com/album/big-wad-excisions">Big Wad Excisions by Coppice</a>

Format: CD in semi-gloss folded insert packaged in a dual slot hi-gloss outsized gatefold card mini LP, album type, sleeve with booklet
Label: Quakebasket (qb 25)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Handheld Samplers, Modified Boombox III, Monophonic Oscillator, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Prepared Pump Organ (Estey), Transmitters
Date: October 2013
Soft Crown Transparencies

A navigable composition for software.
Soft Crown Transparencies
Soft Crown Transparencies is a ‘navigable composition for software’ that repositions the listener in a new type of active listening. It provides coordinates for engaging shifts of vantage point (as all sound layers develop in time) through a navigable vertical axis on the screen. Multiple sectors are accessible for close listening of different points of the interior of a prepared pump organ and of multiple generations of tape processes.

Soft Crown Transparencies isn’t a game or a tool. It invites the listener to figure a porous journey through a listening format that they can intersect as the music unfolds – to obtain finer details of the music’s materialities and to localize additional audio not found in the fixed stereo mix of Soft Crown.

Version: 1.0.1
Size: 252 MB
© 2014 Coppice

Compatibility: MacOS 10.6.8 or later
*Requires QuickTime
(Currently not available for Windows OS)

Special thank you to Mathieu Ruhlmann, and to Joey Beaver, Cole Friel, Ryan Hogg, Anthony Martinez, Tim Mena, Brad Nayman, Phil Pobanz, Brent Reardon, and Kyle Schroeder for their help in the construction of portions of the Estey Expander Module electronics present in Soft Crown.

Format: Software (MacOS 10.6.8 or later)
Label: Self-released
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Estey Expander Module, Multi-Material Filter, Prepared Pump Organ (Estey), Sphygmomanometer
Date: February 2014
Vantage/Cordoned

Two cordoned-off vantage points.
Vantage/Cordoned
So Lobes Drape As Such Gills Over A Hanger’s Pit

Soft Crown



A special thank you to Joey Beaver, Cole Friel, Ryan Hogg, Anthony Martinez, Tim Mena, Brad Nayman, Phil Pobanz, Brent Reardon, and Kyle Schroeder for their help in the construction of portions of the Estey Expander Module electronics.

Format: CD-R
Label: caduc. (CA03)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Estey Expander Module, Modified Boombox I, Multi-Material Filter, Prepared Pump Organ (Estey), Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Sphygmomanometer
Date: February 2014
Compound Form

A summer amalgam.
Compound Form


Compound Form is a composition for amplified prepared pump organ (Kinder) and tape processes in an extended musical arrangement of various compositions.

Bramble (2012), Scour (2009), So Lobes Drape As Such Gills Over A Hanger’s Pit (2013), Pivot (2011), While Like Teem or Bloom Comes (Tipping) (2012), and Brim (2009) are present in Compound Form.

Compound Form was performed numerously in Chicago and throughout tours. Its instrumentation sprung compositions that formed the core of Coppice’s live repertoire between 2012–2014, staged stereo recitals presented close-up to the audience.

Recorded live on October 26, 2012 at the crow with no mouth series, Studio Z; St. Paul, MN.

Format: CD-R
Label: Triple Bath ‎(TRB.038)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Acoustic Filters, Modified Boombox I, Modified Boombox III, Modified Boombox IV, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Transmitters
Date: May 2013
Cores/Eruct

What is kept in.
Cores/Eruct
Bluing

Son Form

Seam (Kinder)

While Like Teem or Bloom Comes (Tipping)

Blueing

&lt;a href=”http://futurevessel.bandcamp.com/album/cores-eruct”&gt;Cores/Eruct by Coppice&lt;/a&gt;

Format: CD in in gatefold printed cardstock digisleeve with resealable poly bag
Label: Category of manifestation: (KIND_1)
Artwork: Coppice
Including: Handheld Funnels, Modified Boombox I, Modified Boombox III, Prepared Pump Organ (Kinder), Shruti Box (Orange), Transmitters
Date: February 2014
Epoxy

Artifacts on tape pulled from cassettes used in a dual tape-processing device.
Epoxy
A Deflective Index

A Refracted Index of “Seam” with Girls

All index transfers are artifacts on tape pulled from cassettes used in a dual tape-processing device. Side B contains a sequence of trio performances of Seam (2010), recorded between 2011-2012 in Chicago. In order of appearance: Carol Genetti, Sarah J. Ritch, Berglind Tómasdóttir, Julia A. Miller.



Format: C41 (limited, hand numbered, in three colors)
Label: Pilgrim Talk (PT26)
Artwork: Nick Hoffman
Including: Modified Boombox I
Date: April 2013