frey – finality-excerpt
March 7th, 2008 at 3:05 pm | music : tracks to download[title] is an exploration of changes in chords, and of pedal points, in particular pieces of popular music. Conceived as an improvisatory piece to be performed live, it relies on the performer's sensitivity to the development and release of the tension of conventional western classical harmony and the passing of time.
Music is fed into a series of PureData patches, best described as a live-sampling Mellotron-like instrument, manipulated in real time by the performer through a MIDI keyboard. The instrument separates out the music in time based on its underlying harmonic content, and maps sets of harmonically similar samples to separate keys on the MIDI keyboard. This process happens continuously and in real time, based on the guidance of the performer.
To generate sound the performer plays back the samples under each key on the MIDI keyboard in a way as to reconstruct the source harmonies or to find new sets of harmonic relationships. The performer has specific control over many parameters of the playback system, so that from a single sample a large range of sounds is possible.
The success or failure of the performance then depends on the performer's abilities as a musician to perform the complete instrument, and to improvise an engaging composition for an audience. Since the process of live-sampling is somewhat indeterminate, the musician is required to listen very closely to what sounds are being produced, to identify potential points of musical departure within the sound stream, and be able to focus in on these points and explore them, taking themselves and the audience through the minutiae of what is ultimately just short fragments of already recorded music, crafting a unique musical journey for each performance.
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