Best of ICAM

Senior students in the ICAM-Music major program presents their projects during the Spring Quarter of their final year at UC San Diego. For June 2022, students presented both in the Conrad Prebys Music Center, North Courtyard as well as inside the Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater.

Presentations in the Conrad Prebys Music Center, Experimental Theater were livestreamed online and available for on-demand viewing: https://vimeo.com/716992700

Check out some pictures below and learn more about each student's project.

View the Courtyard Presentations Program | View the Theater Presentations Program

Best of ICAM

June 2022 Presentations

Eliezer Cervantes - Arrivando

Website

Instagram

Valen Chang - The Sound Palette - Web Based Interactive Music Making Tool for beginners

**Valen Chang - The Sound Palette - Web Based Interactive Music Making Tool for beginners**

The Sound Palette is a web based interactive music making tool designed for beginners who want to start off
with sound designing, producing, and live jamming. The application is composed of 6 key features: Looper, Sequencer, Synthesizer, Effects, Visualizer, and Embedded User Guide. Users will be guided using the application to record, design or synthesize sounds and eventually make a jam with generated visuals.

Purpose & Goal:
With an educational goal in mind, this project intends to create a friendly music making process for beginners with easy-to-use but creative interfaces. Additionally, the experimental purpose is to encourage music creators to look at music making differently and potentially appreciate the concept of Musique concrète in modern days.

Future plans:
An optimization to this project is planned and is open to collaboration. Please follow the updates on for a new release!

Joshua Chiu - Efferent

Artist Statement:

Information being sent from a neuron outward to a synapse is categroized as an efferent neuron. As an individual who struggles with emotional stability, I wanted to work outward and represent my struggles musically. Extreme emotional events translate better to memory because it involves the amygdala portion of the brain to encode into long term memory, and so extreme emotions become the foundation of this project.

Tracks:

Rage 2. Terror 3. Panic

Equipment:

Electric Guitar
- Epiphone Les Paul Custom Ebony 2021
DAW
- Ableton
- Custom drum rack
  - Files from Ableton Library
- Custom Midi Bass
  - Files from Ableton Library
Alesis vmini midi controller

Ruby Do - Untitled

Programmed a music game.

Eden Evans - Letters Unsent, Words Unspoken

Audio/Visual Design: Eden Evans
Choreography/Performance: Kenzie Barnickle

Letters Unsent, Words Unspoken is an interactive media and dance narrative influenced by the experience of loss and healing. My challenge with this work has been discovering how to visually and audibly interpret such an incredibly personal and ultimately universal experience. In doing so, I’ve loosely structured the piece into sections informed by the process of grieving–each with its unique character of sound, movement, and visual design. While the structure of the piece follows a defined trajectory, what I hope is made clear in its finale is that no linear path or solution to acceptance exists, as well as the strength in acknowledging that even in acceptance lies pain and process.

As much as my work was devoted to creating a piece of performance art, it was also an experiment in testing methods to emulate highly complex and typically expensive performance technologies and techniques. My inspiration for integrating movement and interactive procedural visuals stems from the incredible hybrid artworks produced by Troika Ranch - a performance ensemble with the expertise and access to equipment, software, and spaces designed and optimized for media and movement integration. Creating this piece with free, educational tools and softwares such as Teachable Machine offers a step towards discovering more accessible and affordable methods of reproducing these complex performance environments for a broader spectrum of artists and performers.

Special thanks to my professors Amy Alexander and Tom Erbe for their help and guidance during this
process, Karen Makhoul for starting this journey with me, and Kenzie Barnickle for her incredible talent and choreographic vision in helping me realize this performance.”

Kevin Garnica - Echoes

Echoes is a collection of pieces by Kevin Garnica that explores themes of loss, grief, and prevailing hope in the face of uncertainty. Amidst the struggle of friendships growing apart and moving away from home, Kevin sought out to “make the music he always wanted to make”. Kevin aims to breathe new life into familiar genres of electronic dance music while also weaving in nostalgic samples from the 90’s and early 2000’s. The piece will also be accompanied by original visuals and animations by Kevin as well.

Website | Soundcloud | Instagram | Twitter

Timothy Gmeiner - Pigments of Imagination

Pigments of Imagination is a virtual reality composition that presents the creative process as a narrative relating the neurological inner-workings of one’s unique imagination to the universe around us. It is an observation on the beauty, fear, adventure, sadness and loneliness of self-discovery and the artist’s ultimate recognition of process as goal as told through the story of a small child’s journey to the moon.

I will be continuing work on this project both in my current position at the QI Audio Spatialization Lab and as I transition into UC San Diego’s Computer Music Doctoral program. The next version of “Pigments of Imagination” will be presented at the Qualcomm Institute via their IDEAS program in May 2023.

Christy Huynh - Revival

The project is centered around sound healing. I incorporate binaurals, where two different tones are played in separate ears and creates an auditory phenomenon where a third beating tone can be heard within the head when using headphones. There is a belief that the oscillations of brain waves is like music, thus we can use binaural beats to synchronize our brain waves. Depending on which range of brain waves are being activated via binaural, different effects can occur such as increased relaxation (Lee), creativity (Reedijk), and in some cases can serve as a natural anti-depressant (Chaieb).

Lynden Kim - Lost at Sea

A Hip-Hop EP curated by Lynden Kim.

Artist Statement:

(1) Get over the fear of jumping into the water; (2) fully submerge yourself; (3) the weight of the world becomes lighter and lighter the deeper you sink.

Track 1: Laundromat

With Laundromat being the first track of the EP, my intentions were to completely dissipate any and all expectations for my music. Not a conventional song. By breaking down these barriers, I aim to also knock down the wall we've placed around our hearts and our souls, whether on a micro level such as for personal reasons or on a macro level such as for societal reasons. I wanted this track, even if it's for a brief moment, to allow listeners to loosen up, feel vulnerable, and become more open minded to the internal battles that could be stirring in their hearts.

Track 2: Boss Up

Now that the first track has ahllowed listeners to come face-to-face with their emotions, my goal is to allow listeners to ot have to worry so much about other people's judgement, and instead find weays to provide vaule for themselves. I want to produce a track that's about the internal conflicts one goes through as they face the overwhelming weight of life. I want to include as many detailed personal accounts that I can in order to really solidify the imporeesion that absolutely nobody is perfect. the fast pace of society prevents many of us from taking a moment to slow down and catch a breath.

Eito Murakami - Teleclone - Virtual Reality Programming Environment using Pure Data

**Eito Murakami - Teleclone - Virtual Reality Programming Environment using Pure Data**

Website

Teleclone is a virtual reality programming environment using Pure Data. Developed in Unreal Engine, the software allows a user to dynamically create and patch Pure Data objects using the VR interface. Teleclone further gives a user the ability to control visual elements in the virtual 3D scene using existing Pure Data objects. The environment connects multiple participants over the network to create patches and perform an audiovisual composition together in real time.

Mary May Nguyễn - Album: L@$T College Daze, Song: “Good Night”, Demo: Xpole Theremini

**Mary May Nguyễn - Album: L@$T College Daze, Song: “Good Night”, Demo: Xpole Theremini**

Good Night is about having a good night, including stars and what the future might hold. Falling in and out of love, making decisions based on other people's opinions but finally realizing it alienates personal feelings tinkering between thoughts of loneliness and good memories with in those moments we reminisce.

Album L@$T College Daze is in the final stages of the rest of the written songs. With time this project will heavily be based on a Xpole Antenna Matched Theremimi. Special thanks to Grammy Winning Producer Tristan Boston, Cinemetograhher Marley Kepano, TA John Burnett, Professors Jacob Sundstrom, Brett Stalbaum, Tom Erbe, and pureData creator Miller Puckette for the time spent on my senior project ending my college career and beginning my future in interdisciplinary arts and media. I am looking forward to releasing singles from my album every month until the winter holidays when my last two UC San Diego courses will be completed.

Email | Instagram | Facebook

Raymond Rubalcava - Mostly Clear

Mostly Clear is a three track EP blending the sounds of electronic dance music and hip-hop to create smooth, luscious melodies and colorful imagery.

Email | Website | Soundcloud | Spotify | Instagram

Shangshu (Mint) Shi - Symphonic Suite: The Tale of The Blind

About the past,
About the reality,
About a story that never happened,
About a future that awaits to become the reality.

Soundcloud | Instagram

Charles Weigel - Not Now

Not Now is a story driven interactive music video in the style of a 2D side scrolling video game. The story follows a character with ADHD attempting to complete the seemingly trivial task of writing a paper.

Jeffrey Xing - Bird box: a machine-learning-based birdsong instrument

**Jeffrey Xing - Bird box: a machine-learning-based birdsong instrument**

Email | Instagram

Throughout history, composers have been enamored with and inspired by birdsong. Musicians who study birdsong as musical material, however, inevitably grapple with a difficult question: is birdsong music?

Many would argue that birdsong is not music, that music is our unique evolutionary heirloom as human beings. It is certainly true that functional differences exist between human music and birdsong, where the birdsong can be seasonal and tied to certain ethological functions in ways human is not. Scientific evidence supports, however, that many structural similarities exist between birdsong and human music: categorical and expressive rhythms, isochrony, use of harmonic overtone series, balance of repetition and novelty, many of which previously thought to be hallmarks unique to human music.

The goal of this work is to cast birdsong into a musical light directly as an instrument, in hopes of further understanding of this question through improvisation and meditation. I do not seek to argue in this work that birdsong is music, but I hope that through enacting and embodying birdsong, we can advocate for the belief that songbirds are musicians just like us.

Daniel Yi - Our Story

Electronic dance music EP

Yichan Yin - Music for Chinese Kung Fu

Yu Zhang - You Can Sing Too!

Website

Mermaid is a pitch training game I made to help people improve their pitch in a relax and easy way through gaming! The inspiration of this project was by tone deaf friends around me that after seeing them struggle in karaoke events due to their lack of confidence to singing, I want to help them to improve their singing skills so they can be more confident in social events. The game design surrounded by the myth of mermaid use singing to catch sailor and evolved to the mode of players need to listen a pitch then try to sing the same pitch in order to catch sailors.