The Music



The music for "Finding Time" will be a blend of notated and improvised elements coordinated in time and communicated through a graphic, or visual score. The foundation of the composition is that of a drone. The initial pitches of the drone are predetermined, and form a basic, or "fundamental" chord. Though Finding Time is not a tonally based composition, harmonies will be present and relative, if spontaneous. Melody, as an organizational element will not be in the foreground, but will function rather as a unit of vocabulary, and manifest as a product of otherwise motivated movement and action. Likewise for rhythm.


Those movements and actions will be broken up into roughly four different categories. Those being: drone, improvisation, vocabulary based gestures or deviations (from the drone state), and silence. The separation of the sound states into discrete elements is somewhat deceptive, as they overlap in many ways. In the drone state, there will be room for improvisation with regards to timbre, pitch, precise velocity, etc. The vocabulary based directives are loose instructions for general sound creation and are widely open to interpretation, falling only slightly shy of improvisation. The improvisation should be relevant and contextual, referring to the present sounds as a "sonic score," thus circumscribing the definition of freedom to the realm of significant (if that is possible, or even necessary to state). Silence, is an infinity.


The score itself will be a graphic symbolic representation of the various described states and a communication of the particular nuances therein. Each player will be working from a different part, contributing a unique, though coordinated voice to the whole. A graphic artist is working in conjunction with the composer to develop an explicit and intuitive visual language which maintains aesthetic integrity. These images will be collected into a key, or legend, distributed to the players, and combined in various combinations by the composer to create a set of instructions that will act in a similar fashion to that of a traditional score. Hopefully, however, contributing to a greater sense of autonomy, and a closer personal relationship with the materials, on the part of the players than a traditional score affords. Both the symbol key, and the individual scores will be available to the viewers of the piece, as a direct demonstration of the link between visual materials and sonic expression.


In the beginning, the gesture to gesture process will be determined by the composer through a process of personal aesthetics, meaning that the composer will be making the decisions about what will happen from moment to moment within the piece. (Of course allowing for the fact that web-based performances are inherently unpredictable, due to temporal delays, technical dependencies, and geographic separation.) Further down the line, it is our wish to diminish the moment to moment responsibilities of the composer and introduce a feedback element into the piece which can in some way take on such responsibilities. In other words, we wish to develop a system that can drive itself, much like an improvisation, but can retain the concept of overall structure as a priority. This is an ongoing process of research and experimentation which may involve such things as brainwave technology, msp, and so called "virtual" intelligences. But as implied by the title, the main priority in some literal way is finding time.


See also Music Overview


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