the Tristanilizer


a gift for Tristan's retirement


After thirteen years, Tristan Murail has decided to retire from Columbia University. I hesitate to say "retire" without qualification, because I suspect (as does he) that life will be even more full with composing, traveling, music-making. We're certainly going to miss him here, though. I know that to say the following is about as clichèd as you can get on this occasion: but it truly has been an honor and a privilege to count Tristan as a colleague. I believe that one of the biggest strengths of our music composition program at Columbia has been the diversity of musical approaches, the range of musical thinking that we have shared. Tristan was one of the pillars marking that range. Now he will be gone.

The Music Department hosted a send-off reception for Tristan, and I wanted to do something to let him know how much I have appreciated working with him. I also wanted to communicate to Tristan my enjyoment of his music. Even though we inhabit different parts of the musical universe, I surely admire his sound-crafting skills. He can coax amazing sounds out of the musical resources he employs in his compositions.

Fred, George, Fabien and I all planned a few remarks for Tristan, but I wanted to do a little more than simply put on my Indiana accent and say: "Doggone Tristan, I like your sounds!" So I constructed a fictitious scenario where I searched for an 'app' (there's an app for that!) to fill the void left on our faculty by his leaving. Of course no such app exists, so my going-away contribution was to write one myself that would recompose and remix a few of my favorite moments from Tristan's music. Here is a screen-shot of the iPad result, the tristanalizer:



It has Columbia colors in it (go Lions)! The buttons are even in French! What more could you want from a snazzy iPad app?

Well, one thing I would want is a straightforward way to distribute this app to anyone with an iPad who would like to try it. Unfortunately, because of the obnoxious and annoying policies adopted by Apple concerning distribution of iOS applications, the only way I could "legally" give away the finished application is to get it set in the infuriating and bothersome iTunes App Store. Arg!

Instead, I'm posting the entire source code for the tristanalizer here. Anyone who would like to run this in the simulator only has to download -- at least this is freely available -- the most recent (I used 3.2.4) XCode/iOS SDK and fire up the project and go. If you want to load it on your iPad, you will be forced to pay the Apple Developer Fee and go through the vexing and aggravating process of setting up your device for development. Arg again!

Yikes, sorry to get so irked, especially here when this should be a happy web page. So here's the good stuff:

I did a short "live performance" using the app in order to demo what it sounds like, here is the audio file:
Finally, here is a link to what I vaguely recall saying to Tristan as part of the presentation:
I wish all the best for Tristan and Françoise in the coming years, and I hope this little app will bring a smile or two their way. It has been an extraordinary time to be at Columbia, due in large part to Tristan and Françoise' involvement in the Department. And ya know what?

Doggone Tristan, I like your sounds!


-- Brad Garton, 12/2010