general information

composition date
2001
duration
9 min
editor
Inédit

type

Electronic music / fixed media / mechanical musical instruments (Electronic music / fixed media / mechanical musical instruments)

information about the creation

date
October 3, 2001

Belgique, Bruxelles, Chapelle de Boondael, festival L’Espace du son.

Information on the electronics

Electronic device
sons fixés sur support

observations

Finaliste au Concours international de composition de musique électroacoustique Musica Nova à Prage (République Tchèque) en 2001 et 24th Luigi Russolo International Electroacoustic Music Composition Competition 2002 à Varese, Italie ; V Pierre Schaeffer 2005 - International Computer Music Competition in Pescarese, Italie.

Program note

Response for tape was composed during the summer of 2001 while I was composer in residence at the studio Métamorphose d’Orphée Musiques et Recherches in Ohain, Brussels. It follows Breakwater as the second piece of a project in process called Grand Piano Trilogy. I decided to take a unified sound source, the sound of the piano, in order to go deeper into the sound and the structure of it, to investigate its own gravities and tensions.The piece is characterized by a wide variety of both artificial and natural responses, triggered by energetic impulses and resonators. The response vibration may be a simple harmonic motion based on a minor second, or a more complex action created by distorted sounds or inharmonic textures. The response’s impulse may be as short and simple as a click of a spire along the string, a cluster produced by a modified hammer inside the piano, or a damped or pizzicato note. In these examples, the sound material is manipulated in the time domain through convolution, granular processes, time-stretching and other techniques. On the other hand, the response may be an elaborate resonant structure itself. Energy is applied as a repeated stream of pushes functioning as sound generators. The sources used to achieve this are circular, sweeping and accelerated strumming sounds performed inside the piano with different materials such as glass or plastic. The processing techniques which are applied are in frequency domain FFT-based cross synthesis and analysis/ resynthesis, as well as more standard signal processing, such as harmonizing, frequency shifting, phasing and specialization.

The piece unfolds as the initial idea is gradually developed and transformed. Sections which involve pitch implementation are followed by inharmonic sections and so on. Each phrase is built up by many short sound samples in a kind of micro montage / mixage, revealing interesting timbral interactions between them.


Panayiotis Kokoras

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This entry is encyclopaedic in nature and does not reflect the collections of the Ircam media library. Please refer to the "scores" entries.


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