Ben Neill - Trove

Ben Neill is a composer and performer with a musical CV stretching back to the early 80's. Working with Robert Moog he began developing an instrument called the Mutantrumpet. Ten years later, he took the project further at the STEIM research lab in Amsterdam and developed it in a digital direction. There's been further iterations of this in the 2000's, and most recently in 2016-17.

So how does this instrument work? 'The acoustic sound of the Mutantrumpet is captured and processed in real time by my custom interactive system using the instrument’s 28 onboard electronic switches, joysticks, and knobs.'

Here's Trove Sonation, a track created solely on the Mutantrumpet, no synthesisers were used in this track...

Here's a picture of Ben Neil performing with his Mutantrumpet...

Ben's Trove compositions are a 'durational ambient music project', a series of 104 tracks composed over 1 year. It's a project that is well mapped out in advance. As Ben says "The compositions move through a series of chords whose pitches are based on a Fibonacci series matrix. Other aspects of the music including rhythm, melody, duration, and formal structure are based on Fibonacci sequences, which model the forces of growth and reproduction in the natural dynamical systems of plants and animals."

Here's another composition from the series, this one's called 'Trove Overlook'...

Ben Neill Links

benneill.com
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram