Beef Studio

11/05/2024

Love and respect to the wonderful CITY OF TOMORROW woodwind quintet for making this amazing performance video of my composition “40,000 flies running the arms of my soul, singing…”

They are such amazing musicians and very cool people. I feel pretty lucky to know them.

Check it out!
😎

This playlist is comprised of the material composed for the Connectome Project, from July 2022 to July 2024.

09/24/2024

Check me out on SoundCloud! ‘Follow’ my page, why not? 🤷🏻‍♂️

Gonna be bulking this space up with new music in the coming days, weeks, and months. I’ve been working on a whole bunch of pretty good stuff behind the scenes.

☕️😎

Ken Topham is a world-renowned performer, composer, and educator of music.

04/09/2024

Facebook reinforcing the decision to not participate in the sham they’re trying to push as legitimate avenues for conducting business. Shut my page down for no reason. I haven’t posted anything on Beef Studio for a while. I wonder what could have been flagged for violating “community standards.” 🤦🏻

02/02/2024

I have a bunch of music available on Bandcamp. Check it out.

Hopefully I’ll have a bunch of new stuff on this Bandcamp page by the time the next big bAnDCaMp fRiDaY rolls around.

I’ve been busy. So have you.

11 track album

12/08/2023

I guess this little guy turns 16 today 🎂. There’s a whole backstory to this album. I won’t bore you with all the details, but it started out that it would be a split EP with another local Santa Cruz band that was on the same label. It didn’t pan out. I ended up recording and mixing the whole album in my apartment, using GarageBand 😝. Then we drove up to Oakland for a day to engineer it with the great Dan Rathbun of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum at Polymorph Recording (a very exciting day for me). I did all the artwork by hand. All hand-cut and glued collage with some paint here and there. All the writing was done with a toothpick dipped in ink. The original artwork is long gone; vaporized and/or disintegrated 🤷🏻‍♂️🪦. Cheers 🥂

12/05/2023

Just finished up this woodwind quintet that I’ve been working on for the past 6 months. I learned a lot. I have a lot more love and respect for these instruments than I did when I started this piece. This is another piece in the Connectome puzzle I have been constructing for the past year and a half. “40,000 flies running the arms of my soul, singing…” is a mystery. I have told several people that I do not really remember writing it. The piece seemed to just present itself to me and I did my best to document it. It feels like everything is happening all at once, but on different planes. I am very happy with this piece. I am grateful for its existence. This piece will be premiered in Pennsylvania next month by the wonderful woodwind quintet. ❤️🤷🏻‍♂️😎☕️

11/29/2023

This is the artwork I created for my band GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES!’s release titled “Rite Of Summer.” It is a digital collage. The piece took me about 50 hours to complete. My favorite part of the process of making this was creating the customized shadows for all the creatures. Composing the music took longer and is one of my favorite pieces in the band’s catalogue.

“Rite Of Summer” is available for digital download at Bandcamp.com and is streaming on all platforms.
😎

11/25/2023

“The Notion Of Observable Reality Is Drifting Out Of Reach”

The inspiration for this piece stems from a quote that resonated with me that I heard during an interview on a news talk radio show discussing the potential dangers of the dissemination of disinformation and biased news. The idea that individuals will perceive an event uniquely- that one event can be interpreted and manipulated to serve the will of the witness and potentially weaponized- begs the acknowledgement of the concept that observable reality is subjective. The piece is somewhat of a game that serves to echo this notion. Each performer will interpret the parameters provided in their own way, based on their perception of what characteristics are inherent in the materials required to perform the piece.

(Completed December 2021)

Composed and performed exclusively by myself. The piece is graphically notated. There are aleatoric elements inherent in the form. Much of the direction of the piece is dependent on the materials available to the performing ensemble. The piece is a study in ambience and experiment in sonic textures.

Instrumentation is as follows: tape recorder/player (6), harpsichord, processed contrabass, trumpet, polyphonic synthesizer pad, pencil on paper.

The idea that each performance will be unique is what I find appealing and exciting. No two performances will be identical. Performers are instructed to retrieve their own tape samples based on the information provided in the score. There is also a degree of self-referential or “meta” concept to the piece. Tape recorders/players are employed as instruments to play pre-recorded tape samples, while also serving as producers of live sounds themselves. The clicking and whirring of the buttons and tape, the sound of the tape being inserted, stopped, rewound, etc. are integrated into the piece. The listener observes the recorded sounds on the tapes, as well as the mechanical sounds of the tape recorder/player as the medium that translates them to the listener.

The graphic notation is also intended to function as visual art, to be hung on a wall to enhance the aesthetic of a space. This piece speaks to my belief that music notation is visually appealing and can be engaging and enjoyable, with or without musical accompaniment, to musicians and non-musicians alike, despite our differences in perception.

(Copies of the score are available for purchase upon request)

from the album THE BLEED

11/21/2023

“Now, More Than Ever” is the title of my most recent multimedia project. This piece is very dense and microcomposed. But then, maybe it’s hollow and substanceless. It’s up to you.
A variety of materials, compositional elements, and experimental techniques were used to create this piece, including (but not limited to) analog synthesizers, musique concrete, custom one-of-a-kind instruments and sound producers, and tape manipulation.
Some people have declared to me that, to them, it is non-linear; that it is freeform or “abstract.” If that is what they think, then they are not wrong. For me, there is a story being told in this project. There is a narrative. But that’s me. It’s not my intention to inform you, but rather to urge you to find your own meaning and interpret it in your own way, or don’t. Maybe just let the experience wash over and through you.

I hope you like it, but if you don’t, it’s ok. If you find no intrinsic artistic value to this project, it’s ok. If you just don’t get it, it’s ok. I don’t entirely get it either, and I’m ok with that. I am intrigued and excited by this project, and I am willing to share it with you. I urge you to experience this in a stereophonic setting- either use headphones or a set of speakers set wide enough apart to enrich the stereo experience. But, it’s up to you.

Thanks

11/18/2023

Howdy friends,
I have a page all cooked up for Beef Studio over here. I made it a while ago. I plan on populating it with much more content, as I have been amassing a significant pile of new music and multimedia projects. Maybe you can convince your cool friends to go ahead and like my page, eh?

(Don’t tell Zuckerberg)

😘

Modular creative hotspot located in the middle of the western part of Massachusetts. Audio and video

09/28/2021

THE BLEED is an album that was recorded over the course of more than a decade, in studios, bedrooms, basements, hotel rooms, and tool sheds across North America. Many of the pieces of music on the album are comprised of combinations of recordings from various points in time within a ten-year span. For example: a piece may include vocals, guitar and bass tracks I recorded in different spaces in Santa Cruz, CA in 2008, a piano track recorded in Ludlow, MA in 2012, combined with drum and vocal tracks I recorded in Easthampton, MA in 2016, and a baritone sax recorded in Monson, MA in 2019. Some musique concrète samples combine sounds from scenes in environments recorded in a variety of spaces across America.

THEREFORE…

THE BLEED is a collection of pieces of music recorded by multiple versions of myself, all collaborating from different points in time and space. With this concept in mind, THE BLEED slowly evolved into it’s own entity that simultaneously exists within and outside of time.
It may help the reader/listener to visualize multiple photo transfer sheets overlaid, with each instrument part for each piece being played by a different version of myself at a different point in time and space, but all coordinated in sync to create a new self-contained space that exists outside of the concept of a traditional linear timeline.

THE BLEED is an eclectic collection of styles, genres, song forms, and electro-acoustic ensemble combos. Almost every single sound captured, performed, recorded, composed, arranged, and mixed on this album was created by me, in isolation.

This album is dense with instrumentation and experimentation. It begs the listener for multiple listens to broaden and deepen the overall experience. For, with each subsequent listen, new material presents itself to us as we progress through our own perceived timelines.

THE BLEED demands an open and vulnerable approach from the listener. Suspend your preconceptions and allow the music to wash over and through you.

Thank you,
Ken Topham

11 track album

08/06/2021

Hey big spenders,
Today is another Bandcamp Friday where 100% of all sales go directly to the artist when you purchase their music.

Here is the link to my page. There are many amazing musicians, artists, composers, creators on the Bandcamp platform.

Justify your Spotify habits by directly supporting some creative humans. That .003 cents per stream is taking a while to add up.

Much love ❤️

💥(((FEEL FREE TO POST LINKS TO YOUR BANDCAMP PAGE IN THE COMMENTS!!!)))💥

Ken Topham is a world-renowned performer, composer, and educator of music.