Conspirator
Sxip Shirey
Composer, performer and storyteller. We recorded two improvised duets in 2015, his shruti box and prepared guitar against my Continuum.
Gene “Sxip” Shirey is an American composer, performer and storyteller who grew up in Athens, Ohio, and moved to New York in the late 1980s. He works with found objects, rare and modified instruments, and electronics. He was a founding member of Luminescent Orchestrii, released the solo albums Sombule (2006) and Sonic New York (2010), and scored Neil Gaiman’s short film Statuesque (2009).
He was composer and music director of the circus production LIMBO, which toured from 2013 to 2019, and with the choreographer Coco Karol he created The Gauntlet, a site-specific choral and movement work first performed at National Sawdust in 2018 and since at the Sydney Opera House, Rockefeller Center and the Cleveland Museum of Art. He is a 2011 United States Artists Fellow and a curator and artist in residence at National Sawdust in Brooklyn.
Sxip opens up a chord using levers on the Shruti Box, then uses his trusty SM 58 to mic highlight different notes within the chord, creating a melody within the drone.
Sarth Calhoun, YouTube, May 29, 2015
Introspections
In 2015 he came to (Gr)album World Headquarters with an idea for a piece built on his shruti box, and in one day we recorded improvised duets at !N’Douglass Studios, filmed and edited by Jacob McCoy and mixed by Tim Knowlton. Two are on my YouTube channel: “Continuum Fingerboard vs. Shruti Box,” May 29, 2015, his amplified shruti box against the Continuum’s plucked-string model through a Sparkle Drive and a Marshall 4x10; and “Prepared Guitar and Continuum Fingerboard,” June 30, 2015, his guitar with paper clips on the strings and a harmonica to vibrate them, against a pulse code cello in Kyma. Both are part of Introspections, and I have named him among the improvisers I explored those ideas with, alongside Laurie Anderson, Moldover, John Zorn, Marc Ribot and Rob Wasserman.
Jacob McCoy, who also plays the Linnstrument drones on the other Introspections duet, later directed, shot and edited the documentary on The Gauntlet.
The creditSxip Shirey, shruti box and prepared guitar, and Sarth Calhoun, Continuum Fingerboard: two improvised duets recorded at (Gr)album World Headquarters in 2015, part of Introspections.
The two videos“Continuum Fingerboard vs. Shruti Box,” May 29, 2015, and “Prepared Guitar and Continuum Fingerboard,” June 30, 2015. Sxip Shirey and Sarth Calhoun. Filmed and edited by Jacob McCoy; recorded and mixed by Tim Knowlton at !N’Douglass Studios.
What I wrote under the videos
Sxip Shirey visited (Gr)album World Headquarters last week with an idea for a really cool piece. This is based on his Shruti Box, which is a traditional Indian drone instrument working on bellows, similar to a harmonium ... or similar to an accordion.
Sxip opens up a chord using levers on the Shruti Box, then uses his trusty SM 58 to mic highlight different notes within the chord, creating a melody within the drone. The 58 is tun through an Electro-Harmonix Micro POG to add depth to the melody.
Sarth is playing the Haken Continuum Fingerboard, using an internal sound called Plucked String, a Karplus Strong physical model of a plectrum. The patch has an unusual property where it plucks more quickly the more you push. Moving forward and back on the continuum changes the length of the notes, allowing them to be distinct or blur together.
To have more control over the volume and timbre of the plectrum the continuum was routed through a Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive and in to a Marshall 4x10 guitar amp.
On the same day as our shruti/continuum duet, we played a few more pieces using different combinations of instruments.
This one was built around a pulse code cello sound in Kyma, controlled by the Continuum Fingerboard. Sxip thought the prepared guitar with reverb and pitch shifter would match the sound, and it really did!
The guitar has paper clips and such on the strings, and Sxip uses a harmonica to vibrate the strings.
My descriptions under the two videos on YouTube, May 29 and June 30, 2015, without the gear lists and credits.
My thoughts
The profile is from public sources, linked where they appear. What we made is the record on this site and the sources cited above.