h. james harkins, composer

H. James Harkins is a composer of electronic music for live performance, based in Guangzhou, China in the Modern Music Department of the Xinghai Conservatory of Music.


Photo: Elaine Marschik

A demonstration of live coding in SuperCollider.
Youku link for Chinese readers.

2017-09-04: Shadowplay CD; EM2017 video

Two updates:

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2017-06-23: ddwChucklib-livecode video

Finally, after two years, I’ve updated the live coding video on my front page. It’s a fresh performance of material that I played in a concert at Xinghai Conservatory this week (June 19). With the new generator framework, the music develops faster, into a more complex texture, than I could manage before. It’s a new milestone.

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2017-01-16: Holiday film cue; ddwSnippets quark

Recently completed: A short music cue for a film, Holiday, by Chen Zhihai (an up-and-coming Guangzhou-based director). The film is a gently-paced view of life in Yunnan province, touching also on the family pressures that young Chinese gay men and lesbian women still face concerning marriage. Expected to be shown in some film festivals in the coming year (though the film is still in post-production, so screening dates aren’t confirmed yet).

Recently released: A new quark extension for SuperCollider, ddwSnippets, making it fast and easy to insert reusable code templates into ScIDE code windows.

Quarks.install("https://github.com/jamshark70/ddwSnippets.git");

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2016-12-06: Jupiter Chimes premiere

On December 6, 2016, the new Sirius Ensemble performed its first concert of new music in Guangzhou, PRC. Founder and electric guitarist Pierre Stordeur, bassoonist Michael Garza and violist Yang Jing performed works by Stordeur, Isang Yun, Michael Jarrell, Steve Reich, new Bach arrangements by Stordeur and… a new electronic piece by myself, Jupiter Chimes.

I don’t have recordings of the concert, but you can listen to Jupiter Chimes at Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/dewdrop_world/jupiter-chimes

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2016-10-05: chucklib-livecode v0.3

I’m releasing chucklib-livecode v0.3, with a major update to the generator framework. It is now much easier to compose generators together, to get complex behaviors from simple functions.

I’ve also cleaned up the new version to be released as a Quark extension for SuperCollider. It isn’t in the master Quark list yet, but soon (I’ve submitted the pull request, awaiting approval). In the meantime, you can install it directly:

Quarks.install("https://github.com/jamshark70/ddwChucklib-livecode");

Some demonstrations:

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2016-05-21: Performances: Just done, and upcoming

Brief update, after too long:

Images after the jump.

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2015-10-22: Chucklib-Livecode v0.2 released

With some trepidation, I’ve just pushed out v0.2 of my chucklib-livecode extensions for SuperCollider. The major new feature is Generators.

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2015-09-10: New page: SuperCollider work

I’ve just added a page describing my SuperCollider work. Check it out!

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2015-09-03: New school year, new website

On the eve of the 2015-2016 school year, I decided that my website wasn’t representing my work cleanly and clearly enough: strange color choices, busy backgrounds and weak layout. Also, the content had fallen far out of date. Time to do something about it.

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CC-BY-SA 4.0 by H. James Harkins (2015): Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike

Acknowledgment to the php-markdown library © 2004-2015 Michel Fortin.

The Dream Orphans font is used according to its noncommercial license.

The Vera Humana 95 font is distributed apparently without a license.