Nordlig Vinter
Nordlig Vinter is an album of compositions for percussion and iOS devices created by Charles Martin while living in Piteå, near the Arctic circle in northern Sweden. Harshly cut field recordings reflect the dry, icy environment while minimal jazz inspired melodies on vibraphone and marimba evoke the quiet beauty of such a strange place.
Special thanks to the other performers on the album - some of my biggest inspirations - Anders Åstrand, Evaristo Aguilar, and Christina Hopgood. Thanks also to my collaborators in Piteå who supported this work: Maria Finkelmeier, Jacob Remington and Daniel Saur.
The album was released in July 2013 on Bandcamp, stream for free, if you like it, click "buy" to download!
About the music
The iOS devices run two native iOS apps, "Snow Music" and "Nordlig Vinter", both created using Pure Data and libpd. The Nordlig Vinter app plays background soundscapes for three compositions in the suite, "Ice Drum", "Snow Bells" and "Clusters", while "Snow Music" is a simple instrument for manipulating field recordings of snow by tapping and swiping an iPad or iPhone screen.
Both apps are free in the iTunes app store, and run on all iOS devices with at least iOS 5. For more information, see my apps page.
Solo Suite
I also play some of the works from Nordlig Vinter as a solo suite. This version was recently presented at the 2013 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression in Daejeon, South Korea.
