GregFoxSixSoundcardSonatas audio opensource_audio Greg Fox Avant-Garde John Cage Indeterminacy Electronic Experimental http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ A collection of pieces for computer soundcard exploring structures not related to human anatomy. In other words these are in theory works for purely abstract computer "limbs" rather than being partly defined by instrumental/practical considerations. The spice comes from the classical forms - these are as though Beethoven / Haydn had desktop PCs. After all Beethoven was always trying to stretch what the human hand could do, piano-wise... that's not at all to say these are virtuoso pieces though, quite the contrary!! And only Beethovenian in hairstyle! 2005-10-31 2006-02-19 17:51:03 2006-02-19 23:55:28 gregskius@tesco.net gregskius@tesco.net Greg Fox / La Voix Fidel 2006-02-27 15:49:13 Greg Fox Greg Fox 94 Minutes (Indeterminate cuts made when making hard CD copies) Greg Fox "Six Soundcard Sonatas" Started at the beginning of October 2005 and supplemented in December 2005. Finished Christmas Eve. The sonatas were all written using the generic sound-font of the soundcard which came with the computer, and essentially the sounds are pretty bog-standard synthesized noises intended to ape live instruments to a greater or lesser extent. This is highly appropriate for the project, which seeks to ape the meanderings of the human ego via chance operations. The software used was the multi-document version of my random MIDI event generator. It takes parameters for pitch, duration, amplitude and voice, and then generates either single MIDI events or aggregates of up to four notes. This type of material was then manipulated as though they were sounds rather than notes. Sonata 1 Written 10th to 13th of October 2005, the first movement is a long (six minute) prelude for drones in the low register and shimmers in the high, with the odd coincidental mixing together of the registers into apparently clear notes. The second is a melodic, emotional elegy for tune and chords and they use the same material. The chords progress from minor triads through to major ones, with the third of the chord undergoing a graded transformation throughout, so that towards the middle of the piece the third of the triad is halfway between a major and minor third above the tonic. The third movement is for faked piano and seeks to ape virtuosity. At the same time there's a bagginess about the piano as quartone-shifted sections are overlaid. Equally some of the notes are a bit high to be any real approximation of a normal piano. The practical considerations of whether it could be played are irrelevant as there's now no way of producing a score other than by ear, and surely if it can be notated by ear then it can be played (maybe). Sonata 2 Starting similarly to the first sonata, the opening is a nocturne, though of fairly restricted range, to impersonate some kind of mechanical device (machines imitating machines is a technological peculiarity of our time). The Scherzo is a Handelian / Gerald Barrian string of pitches with amplitude peaks serving to differentiate the phrases, as well as the pitches themselves of course. Towards the end the virtuosity of the melody is beyond the pale. To offset this, the third movement is a textural Rondo, with minimal, split chordal moments juxtaposed with degrees of decay of the apparent system. Sonata 3 The third sonata consists of just two movements: the first is a traditional sonata form continuous movement of twelve and a half minutes. The themes developed in the opening sonata form movement are them summarised in the three-minute Interlude (a tribute to John Cage's way of organising form.) Sonata 4 The fourth sonata is the longest and is really a Sonatina for fake jazz organ. The first movement is a merry Jaunt, the second a sadder but still rhythmically active Lamento and the third a spacier but equally serious Fragmento, and is an attempt to simulate the nervous innovations of live improvisation. Throughout the sonata, the registers of the various strands of data are intended to mimic a jazz organ, with single note pedals, three-note left hand and one and two-note right hand passages of generally greater rhythmic variety and pace. Sonata 5 The fifth sonata is a return to the secure form of the first two sonatas, with its opening prelude (albeit more panicked now and shorter). The middle nocturne movement is a moment of smooth jazzy reflection before the dissonant morbidity of the Ricercare, which combines changing materials and fixed ones. The fixed bass accompaniment is microtonally dissonant with the leading reed-like melody, and as soon as the accompaniment begins, you know the melody is doomed to fade out. Each time this happens, a bell-like note sounds after an uneven pause. After the gloom of this series of failures, the Rondo is a moment of relaxation and clarity, except it's quite severely twisted and screwed up. Sonata 6 The sixth sonata opens with a sub-Rondo where in fact the returning features are durational rather than contained in the musical material itself. Here the durations are all fibonacci numbers (in milliseconds) and the material is subjected to repeating (hence Rondo) patterns of transposition (up to a quarter-tone higher) and fade (to bring about phrases). The changes of pace and register were entirely improvised, but because of the other highly-structured aspects (of transposition across tunings and of amplitude losses) the piece seems repetitive. Its coda is a kind of bleak preparation for the Sinfonia 2nd movement, which is a sort of stylophone sonata and is organically constructed, fitting different-length phrases on top of each other by stretching them out, as though a tall man and a short woman were trying to touch fingertips and toes in bed. There's also a sense of there being a lead chant and a choral response, but this is only a hint: a hint which influences the way of thinking about the remaining movements: a highly abstract Canzona of five and a half minutes with lots of elements which are simply out of place in order to emphasise the cohesion of the main material, and finally an Offertorium which is like a little three-minute concertina for very fake piano and extremely fake strings. Overall the set of sonatas takes around 94 minutes to play, which means that when placed onto CD (which in 2005 held 78 minutes of music), it was necessary to remove one or two tracks at random in order for it to fit. The Sonatas fit into a conceptual macro-set of albums from 2004/2005, the tracks of which can be inter-combined to match the predicted tastes of a particular listener so that personalised CDs can be made to fit. Sound 2006-03-30 03:45:03 Greg Fox / La Voix Fidel