E C O ( s i n g l e )

O t a c í l i o M e l g a ç o

[duration 09:19] all rights reserved

"ECO" (and "DUKE" and "LACAZ")
form a Triptych (of Singles).
Respectively are dedicated to
Umberto Eco, Wesley Duke Lee, Guto Lacaz.

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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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"In Portuguese - language of the Brazilian Otacílio Melgaço -:
ECO - surname of Italian Umberto - means
ECHO.

In audio signal processing and acoustics, an echo is a reflection of sound, arriving at the listener some time after the direct sound. Typical examples are the echo produced by the bottom of a well, by a building, or by the walls of an enclosed room and an empty room. A true echo is a single reflection of the sound source. The time delay is the extra distance divided by the speed of sound. The word echo derives from the Greek ἠχώ (ēchō), itself from ἦχος (ēchos), ´sound´. Echo in the folk story of Greek is a mountain nymph whose ability to speak was cursed, only able to repeat the last words anyone spoke to her. Animals that use echoes are cetaceans (dolphins and whales) and bats.

Retaking one of his favorite instruments, the Rhodes piano, and combining it to a percussive tapestry + delicate noises, O.M. does literally the intersection of semiotics (the word as meaning-making + as last name of the honoree) and sonic reflection (waves that have been reflected by a discontinuity in the propagation medium, and return with sufficient magnitude and delay to be perceived).

Once said Umberto that ´musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness.´

The ´risonante´ pendulum in constant motion contained in this mesmerizing Single approaches, at my point of view and echoing Eco, the higher form of consciousness that, yes, is a higher comfort. Here consciousness through Art. Art as such ´Opera aperta, bustina di Minerva, apocalittici e integrati: struttura assente, misteriosa fiamma, serendipities dall'albero al labirinto.´ And among all the possible connotations, ´una Melgaciana filosofia del suo Singolo sonoro linguaggio.

Nove minuti 19/2 di desiderio.

Equo!´" (Pablo S. Paz; Argentinean musicologist)

"Two infatuations of Umberto Eco,
the Average Age and Semiotics.

*

´I developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.´ (U.E.)

´Dark Ages´.

Are a mirror for the present.

What does (I say: mediaeval) culture want? To make infinity comprehensible.

´ECO´ is a medieval work.

*

´To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.´ Music is not a matter of feelings, ´poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings. Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile,
and so on ...´ (U.E.)

And musical. Semiotics of music is the science that studies acoustic bases, perception, aesthetics, composition etc.

´ECO´ is a (boundless) semiological work.

*

And between one thing and another, ´how beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.´ Perhaps this procedure exists. Who knows if we orient ourselves, aurally, through the(se) ec(h)o(es)?

post scriptum

Highlighting (on disc cover) the ´graphic sculpture´ also made by Otacílio Melgaço - under his designing designer vertebra. He works here as a doer of ideograms." (Caio Campbell; Anglo-Brazilian semiologist and musician)

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I - Umberto Eco (1932 – 2016) was an Italian novelist, essayist, literary critic, philosopher and semiotician. He is best known for his 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He later wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, was a best-seller.

Eco also wrote academic texts, children's books and essays. He was founder of the Dipartimento di Comunicazione (Department of Media Studies) at the University of the Republic of San Marino, President of the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici (Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities), University of Bologna, member of the Accademia dei Lincei and an honorary fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford;

II - In music performance and recording, electric echo effects have been used since the 1950s. The Echoplex is a tape delay effect, first made in 1959 that recreates the sound of an acoustic echo. Designed by Mike Battle, the Echoplex set a standard for the effect in the 1960s and was used by most of the notable guitar players of the era; original Echoplexes are highly sought after. While Echoplexes were used heavily by guitar players (and the occasional bass player, such as Chuck Rainey, or trumpeter, such as Don Ellis), many recording studios also used the Echoplex. Beginning in the 1970s, Market built the solid-state Echoplex for Maestro. In the 2000s, most echo effects units use electronic or digital circuitry to recreate the echo effect.

...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.