Winter Leaves is an investigation into the relationships between harmony and timbre.
The basic technique is to build sounds whose spectra have a harmonic value. One of the ways to achieve this is to create sounds whose spectral components have chordal relationships.
In fact, Winter Leaves is based on 3 sounds, each made up of 5 sinusoids whose frequencies have a fixed musical interval between them. All sounds are built on the same root (47.5 Hz, about G). The other 4 components have ratios of 2 (8ve) in the first sound, of 2.24 (major 9th) in the second and 2.8856 (non-tempered interval corresponding to an increasing 11th) in the third.
The 3 basic sounds, therefore, have the following sinusoidal components:
Ratio 2 -> 47.5, 95, 190, 380, 760 (overlapped 8ve)
Ratio 2.24 -> 47.5, 106.4, 238.3, 533.9, 1195.9 (overlapped 9th)
Ratio 2.8856 -> 47.5, 137.1, 395.5, 1141.3, 3293.4 (overlapped 11th+).
Of course spectra like this have both a tonal and a harmonic value. In the first spectrum the sound is a perfect consonance, in the second is a temperated dissonance and in the third with a non-tempered sound.
The Wires basic idea is working with large sound masses evolving and changing through the time like a complex flux. Each mass is composed by a great number of single sounds (from 10 to 300, average is 50 to 100) that can seldom be perceived as “notes”.
So the way the mass “sounds” depends on parameters like frequency range, density, durations, attack time and spectra of composing sounds in a sort of granular micro-polyphony.
I composed Wires defining the masses evolution at high level by means of tendency masks, using the first version of my computer assisted composition system, called ALGEN to generate the low level instructions controlling the single sounds that has been synthesized by a simple FM algorithm.
Wires was realized at the “Centro di Sonologia Computazionale” (CSC – University of Padova) using the MUSIC360 software for digital sound synthesis.
Click here to listen.
Note: This is a compressed stereo reduction from original quad – MP3 256 bps – Dur 7’30”
This piece was composed for the International Year of Astronomy (2009) and for the “Music and Astronomy” conference organized by the Bonporti Conservatory of Trento and Riva del Garda.
In the first Star Trek movie, V’ger (pron. Vyger) is the name given by the Borg to a fictional Voyager 6 intelligent probe, launched from Earth and recovered by them while wandering in outer space. The real Voyager 1 and 2 probes, was launched in the late 70s and destined to get lost in interstellar space, after passing around the outer planets from which they sent us images, but also sounds.
George Crumb, Zeitgeist, Six Tableaux for Two Amplified Pianos (Book I) (1987, rev. 1989)
I. Portent – Molto moderato, il ritmo ben marcato
II. Two Harlequins – Vivace, molto capriccioso
III. Monochord – Lentamente, misterioso
IV. Day of the Comet – Prestissimo
V. The Realm of Morpheus (“. . . the inner eye of dreams”)
Piano I: Lentamente quasi lontano, sognante
Piano II: Adagio sospeso, misterioso
VI. Reverberations – Molto moderato, il ritmo ben marcato
Alexander Ghindin & Boris Berezovsky Amplified pianos
In 2002, the Scandinavian composer Leif Inge took Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and stretched it out to 24 hours without distortion or pitch variations. The 9th Symphony’s standard duration is around 67 minutes (but it depends on the director: it can also exceed 70′ and reach up to 77’16 “in the Kubelik version of ’74), it is an expansion of about 21.5 times.
The title of this expanded version is 9 Beet Stretch. It sounds like a slow-moving sound continuum, but not so slow that it does not allow you to perceive changes in a reasonable time (a few minutes, but generally shorter). Obviously, with these times, the melody is completely lost and everything turns into a sequence of chords, but the dramatic sense of harmony remains.
All note’s entries are very gradual because it is not a simple metro slow-down but an audio signal stretched, so any attack that in the original file lasts 1/10 second, becomes 2.15 seconds in the expanded version. The audio file is a Naxos recording directed by Béla Drahos with Nicolaus Esterházy Symphony and Choir (Naxos 8.553478).
The stream can be listened on the internet from the 9 Beet Stretch site (click the player at the top right of the page). It’s an ongoing 24/7 stream of 9 Beet Stretch, starting at the time of sunset, Wien, march 26th, the date Ludwig van Beethoven died, so the four movements start at:
An excerpt from the Suguru Goto’s Japanese tour of 2016. The video, from Tokyo concert, is a collage of three songs with music by Suguru Goto and graphics by three different artists Patrick Defasten, Lucio Arese and Antoine Schmitt .
The songs are:
Body Jack, Suguru Goto music, Patrick Defasten graphics
CsO, Suguru Goto music, Antoine Schmitt graphics
Continuum, Suguru Goto music, Lucio Arese graphics
There is no detailed info, but I guess that all the songs could be generated with one of the classic audio and video software, such as Max/Jitter or PD/GEM or, at least, Max/PD exchanging data with Processing.
In the first two tracks the graphic part is completely generated by the computer. The second one is based on the particles most likely by Jitter.
The former exhibits a considerable amount of objects assembled in a toroidal configuration, which then explode into other forms. Rotations are not a problem because they are not the objects to move, but the virtual camera (the “viewpoint”). But the amount of objects and their arrangement suggests some kind of specialized software.
In the third, however, there are almost organic shapes that resemble jellyfish, and it is more difficult to understand if we have to deal with a totally computerized graphic or with a few shots.
Hello, by Alexander Schubert (2014) For {any number of} instruments, live-electronics and video
Excerpts from composer’s notes:
The piece is audio-visual. It’s basically a video that is accompanied by the instruments. The video consists of video recordings of the composer performing certain actions / gestures. These gestures are notated in the score as well and need to be interpreted by the musicians (as musical events – not as theatrical actions / physical movement – the idea is to find corresponding or contrasting music events for the given gestures).
The piece is really based on the video and the electronics in the tape, meaning that in the rehearsal progress, rather use the video as an orientation and not the only the score. The score is a tool to make it easier to play along with the video, but eventually the video is the real score.
The piece can be played more or less by any combination of instruments. It is advised to have at least four players, one of which is a piano/guitar/accordion or similar to play chords. Also a percussionist should be included. For combinations that do not fall into this description please contact the composer to check.
You are invited to use other small instruments or props other than those found in your ensemble. For example toy instruments, everyday household tools or found objects. Chose these instruments in order to fit a given video gesture you want to accompany.
Dispacci dal fronte interno [Dispatches from the homefront] is a work by Andrea Valle for feedback system including ad libitum strings, printer and live electronics.
Audio from strings, printers and environment is not only manipulated live, but some features are extracted and used to control not only the same sound processing but also the real-time generation and print on the fly of musical notation to be performed by the player.
In short, the performer receives “dispatches” which content depends on what s/he is playing.
From SONIC SCREENS, an event by U.S.O. Project (Matteo Milani, Federico Placidi) in collaboration with O’ and Die Schachtel
Milan, 01/12/2012
An excerpt from the premiere by:
Èdua Amarilla Zádory – Violin
Ana Topalovic – Violoncello
Since I have just updated some posts on bird songs and Messiaen’s interpretation of them, I thought I’d post his Little Bird Sketches in the 1985 version for a piano (there is also a version for two pianos).
Messiaen had already found the convergence between his two passions, ornithology and music. Already in 1951 he had composed a virtuoso piece for flute and piano used as an admission test for flute at the Paris conservatory (remember that the Paris conservatory is at a higher level and is equivalent to our own specialization academy). The piece was called Le merle noir and is his first work entirely inspired by the song of a bird (some fragments were included in previous works).
In 1953 he composed Réveil des oiseaux (The awakening of the birds) for orchestra, composed almost exclusively of transcriptions of the songs of the birds that the author could hear between midnight and noon in the mountains of the Jura Massif.
From this time he got into the habit of incorporating these transcriptions in all his works, as well as writing collections entirely dedicated to this subject (Oiseaux exotiques (Exotic birds) for piano and chamber orchestra, 1955-1956, La Chouette hulotte for piano, 1956, the monumental Catalog d’oiseaux (Catalog of birds) for piano, 1956-1958, La Fauvette des Jardins for piano, 1970-1972, Un Vitrail et des oiseaux (A stained glass and birds) for piano and orchestra, 1986, up to these Petites esquisses d’oiseaux (Little sketches of birds) for one or two pianos, 1985-1987). As works they are not simply collections of transcriptions, but real symphonic poems. Paul Griffiths observed that Messiaen was a more conscientious ornithologist than any of the composers who had preceded him, and a more attentive musical observer of birdsong than all previous ornithologists.
Indeed, Messiaen’s transcription work is accurate and takes into account musical problems that often escape scientific ornithology. He himself explains:
The bird, being much smaller than we are, with a heart that beats faster and nervous reactions much faster, sings at extremely fast tempos which are absolutely impossible for our instruments; therefore I am obliged to transcribe it at a slower tempo. Moreover, this speed is associated with extreme acuity, being a bird able to sing in such high registers as to be inaccessible to our instruments; therefore I transcribe the song one, two or even three octaves below. And that’s not all: for the same reason I am obliged to suppress those too small intervals that our instruments could not play. So I replace these intervals of the order of one or two paragraphs with semitones, but respecting the scale of values between the different intervals, that is, if any paragraph corresponds to a semitone, then a true semitone will correspond to a whole tone or an interval of third; everything is enlarged, but the ratios remain unchanged, nevertheless what I give is correct.
Petites esquisses d’oiseaux (1985) – Håkan Austbø, piano
Le Rouge-gorge (erithacus rubecula – pettirosso)
Le Merle noir (turdus merula – merlo)
Le Rouge-gorge
La Grive musicienne (turdus ericetorum sinonimo di turdus philomelos – tordo bottaccio)
Le Rouge-gorge
L’Alouette des champs (alauda arvensis – allodola)
