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Black Box {Otac​í​lio Melga​ç​o} [duration 56​:​20]

by Otacílio Melgaço

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about

B l a c k B o x

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 56:20] all rights reserved

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The artist Otacílio Melgaço has two official curators in the virtual world. A curator (from Latin: ´curare´, meaning ´to take care´) is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, library or, as the present case: sound archive) is a content specialist charged with an institution's collections and, highlighting the context in force here, involved with the interpretation of personal (heritage) material. Both, Mr. Paz and Mr. Campbell, are, therefore, reviewers of the Melgacian works. To learn more about their missions, tasks, assignments and responsibilities by means of valuable informations regarding the compositional process, the performative rhizomes and other special features, just click the following link: otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/preamblebypsp
(O.M.Team; P r e l u d e)

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"´Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.´ (F.Z.)

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We´re faced with two petards here. The genius First is jazzistic and interweaves fabulous coloraturas and fluent instrumental dialects by guitar, double bass, soprano saxophone, trumpet, violin, vibraphone and drums; the kaleidoscopic Second introduces us renovated contemporary prisms for percussion.

I would use two quotes as epigraphs.

´Flight Recorder´ under the aegis of Frank Zappa: ´A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules...´;

´Do Not Open´ under the aegis of Michael Tilson Thomas: ´And what classical music does best and must always do more, is to show this kind of transformation of moods, to show a very wide psychological voyage.´

2

´The opposite of a black box is a system where the inner components or logic are available for inspection, which is most commonly referred to as a white box (sometimes also known as a ´clear box´ or a ´glass box´). In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a device, system or object which can be viewed in terms of its input, output (or transfer characteristics) without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is ´opaque´ (black). Almost anything might be referred to as a black box: a transistor, an algorithm, or the human brain.´

The real fascination is in the phrase: ´...without any knowledge of its internal workings.´ Or human brain.

´The black box is an abstraction representing a class of concrete open systems which can be viewed solely in terms of its stimuli inputs and output reactions. The constitution and structure of the box are altogether irrelevant to approach under consideration, which is purely external or phenomenological. In other words, only the behavior of the system will be accounted for. The understanding of a black box is based on the explanatory principle, the hypothesis of a causal relation between the input and the output, and: input and output being believed to be distinct; having observable (and relatable) inputs and outputs; being black to the observer (non-openable).´

The real fascination is in the phrase: ´...being black to the observer (non-openable).´ Or an abstraction.

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´The child who tries to open a door has to manipulate the handle (the input) so as to produce the desired movement at the latch (the output); and he has to learn how to control the one by the other without being able to see the internal mechanism that links them. In our daily lives we are confronted at every turn with systems whose internal mechanisms are not fully open to inspection, and which must be treated by the methods appropriate to the Black Box.´ (W. Ross Ashby)

´Children learn by experiment, for every thing that it see as B.B.´

The Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Otacílio Melgaço opens this treasure chest! His sonic ´Black Box´ and, in terms, Melgaço is the antithesis of Pandora. O.M.: The Boxer!

But specifically what do we find? Is a mystery, even when we opened. What I know and feel is that Otacílio opens with the supreme curiosity and inventivity of a child. And, yes, I agree with Goethe when he says: ´There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.´

That's it!

First of all, ladies and gentlemen, we'll find in both stupendous Melgacian musical gems: roots and wings..." (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"´In aviation, the flight recorder is sometimes called a ´black box´, although it is usually bright orange to facilitate their being found after a crash. In an airplane or helicopter, the flight recorder records the conversation of the pilots and also logs information about controls and sensors. If an accident happens, investigators can use the recordings to assist in the investigation.´

A flight recorder. ´Black Box´ can also be interpreted as a Melgacian metaphor (just as the enigmatic cover art). Our lives, our flights. A record before the ´accident´ - or adversity or ordeal or fatality or mismatches and other obstacles inherent to human life... So we can find out what really happened. Would we have our own black boxes and would know actuate and decode them towards a greater existential maturity? Would we be able to open them whenever necessary?And what would we do before the (almost psychoanalytical) warning 'do not open'? Only people with the ´proper training´ (someone seasoned) could and I can hear the resounding question arising from the prodigious Artist's mouth:
´Are you ready?´" (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - A flight recorder (or aircraft's black box) is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents.

Any type of aircraft in any condition of flight, can be viewed in terms of its input parameters (e.g. control instructions) and output parameters (e.g. flight sensors), without any knowledge of its internal workings, as a black box model. The flight data recorder (FDR) is an independent device that preserves the recent history of the flight, through the recording of dozens of parameters, collected several times per second. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR), preserves the recent history of the sounds in the cockpit, including the conversation of the pilots. The two recorders give a testimony, narrating the flight history with accuracy and impartiality, to assist in an investigation.

FDR and CVR may be combined in a single unit. The two recorders are required by international regulation to be capable of surviving the conditions likely to be encountered in a severe aircraft accident. For this reason, they are typically specified to withstand an impact of 3400 g and temperatures of over 1,000 °C (1,830 °F) as required by EUROCAE ED-112;

II - The Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein's album Reise, Reise is made to look like a CVR; it also includes a recording from a crash. The recording is from the last 1–2 minutes of the CVR of Japan Airlines Flight 123, which crashed on August 12, 1985, killing 520 people; JAL123 is the deadliest single-aircraft disaster in history.

Members of Collective: Unconscious made a theatrical presentation of a play called Charlie Victor Romeo with a script based on transcripts from CVR voice recordings of nine aircraft emergencies. The play features the famous United Airlines Flight 232 that landed in a cornfield near Sioux City, Iowa after suffering a catastrophic failure of one engine and most flight controls.

Survivor, a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, is about a cult member who dictates his life story to a flight recorder before the plane runs out of fuel and crashes.

...for purposes of pragmatism and clear exegesis,
quotes have Wikipedia as a source...

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Between two parentheses...
(Atonalism, Twelve-Tone, Serialism, Musique Concrète... Acousmatic. Eletroacoustic. Magnetic Tape. Expressionism, New Objectivity, Hyperrealism, Abstractionism, Neoclassicism, Neobarbarism, Futurism, Mythic Method. Electronic...Computer Music, Spectral, Polystylism, Neoromanticism, Minimalism and Post-Minimalism...are addressed by Melgaço. Paradoxically New Simplicity and New Complexity also.
Art Rock, Free Jazz, Ethnic Dialects, Street Sounds are occasional syntax elements.
All the possibilities mentioned above and others that were not mentioned are the usual accoutrements of the composer/instrumentalist to establish his ´babelic´ glossary. We can prove this in a short passage of a single composition up along the entirety of a conceptual phonograph album. All distributed over a career and idiosyncratic records. Have we a universe before us and I propose to see it through a telescope, not a microscope.
I propose not handle very specialized topics here. Otherwise would be, with the exception of musicians and scholars, all hostages of a hermetic jargon. Because more important is to present Otacílio Melgaço to the general public and not to a segment of specialists. Faction of experts not need presentations, depart for the enjoyment beforehand. For this reason there is no niche here for intellectual onanism and encrypted musical terminology. The reason for these parentheses is to establish such elucidation. The non-adoption of technicalities leads to more panoramic, amplifier reviews. Are You always welcome. Those who do not dominate contemporary music and are introduced to the world of ubiquitous O.M. [autodidact and independent artist who, being more specific, does not belong to schools or doctrines; artist who makes Music and that´s enough; music devoid of labels or stylistic, chronological, historical paradigms or trends] and Those who belong to the métier and turn to enjoy propositions they know and also delving into advanced Melgacian sound cosmogonies...
I conclude poetically. ´Certeza/Certainty´ by Octavio Paz. ´Si es real la luz blanca De esta lámpara, real La mano que escribe, ¿son reales
Los ojos que miran lo escrito? De una palabra a la otra Lo que digo se desvanece. Yo sé que estoy vivo Entre dos paréntesis.´ If it is real the white light from this lamp, real the writing hand, are they real, the eyes looking at what I write? From one word to the other what I say vanishes. I know that I am alive between two parentheses.
We´re all more and more a-l-i-v-e now.)
- P.S.P.

credits

released January 1, 2015

Hear more here:
soundcloud.com/otaciliomelgaco

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O t a c í l i o
M e l g a ç o {conception | composition | arrangement | synopsis | instrumentation | orchestration | engineering & sound design | art design [O.M., after Redon] | production | direction}

Special Guests: Nausícaaa Ensemble (Track 1)

Estúdio Yoknapotawpha/BR + Unidade Euromobile

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Otacílio Melgaço Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Composer, Arranger, Conductor, Multi-
Instrumentalist
from
Minas Gerais,
Brazil.
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Official (English) Site
otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/omenglish
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PORTAL O|M
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otaciliomelgaco.wixsite.com/otaciliomelgaco
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"Music is like a bewitched Mistress." (Paul Klee)
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