1 - 5 : petrification #1 fixed multitrack recording
6 - 10 : petrification #2 fixed multitrack recording
11 : Ambience
1. #1 part 1
2. #1 part 2
3. #1 part 3
4. #1 part 4
5. #1 part 5
6. #2 part 6
7. #2 part 7
8. #2 part 8
9. #2 part 9
10. #2 part 10
11. AMBIENCE
1-5 : 30th june 1999
3-4 : july 1999
AMBIENCE
Automatic Music for four computer-controlled synthesisers
11 : automatic music for four computer-controlled synthesisers - 7:52
11 : October 2002.
THE COPENHAGEN INTERPRETATION
What happened at 8:00pm, Sunday 20th June 1999, in the Cambridge University Faculty of Music Concert Hall situated in West Road, Cambridge, marked the culmination of about two years' work. At 8:00pm, more or less precisely, four people each activated the programme called pSY on one of four standard IBM-compatible PCs. Each PC was controlling a Yamaha SY77/99 synthesiser. Activating the play button told pSY to begin playing a score called The Copenhagen Interpretation. Each of the SYs' outputs was routed to two of the four speakers set around the hall (see Figure 1). I mixed the four from the centre of the auditorium. This mixing was, apart from the initial 'click', the only part of the performance directly under human control. The 'piece' they would perform was not in any completely determined format. Indeed, apart from at five or six moments in the piece, I could not be entirely sure what programme's output would be.
The Copenhagen Interpretation is named in honour of the work undertaken on quantum mechanics by Neils Bohn et alia during the first part of the century. Weirdly, and after the name had been chosen, I discovered that physicists refer to the quantum state of a system by the greek letter psi (psi).
As a composer of acoustic music, when it came to experimenting with the electro-acoustic environment, I was worried about the idea of something being finalised in a static way, such as a single, definitive version petrified on a compact disc or digital tape. Once it was done, that was that - apart from differences in audio mixing and in environmental acoustics there could be no further development without re-writing or re-constructing the entire piece. This is generally either extremely inconvenient or impossible. The idea was to build diversity into the very construction of the piece, so that the result would be different according to the settings of the programme each time it was played. More than this, the piece was not to have a formalised, final version. By its very construction, the programme/piece has no precise version 'written' anywhere, in the code or the settings.
There were several and diverse practical and technical challenges posed by the project. Over the years standard acoustic instruments have developed beyond any single person's or group's ownership. Individually or in often pre-defined groups, they carry with them a cultural heritage which can belong to anyone should they choose to learn about and understand them - these are basic 'tools' of music and beyond their standard limitations, composers can make them more or less their own as countless others have done before. This may be the case with some electronic instruments (the moog, the EMS), although arguably for a number of reasons none have even approached the status and tradition of even comparatively recently developed acoustic instruments (for instance the saxophone). It is most definitely not the case with computer software - surely another 'tool' although maybe not precisely equivalent in nature.
http://rhoadley.net/tci
__________________________________________________________________________ Ambience
October 2002
Automatic Music for four computer-controlled synthesisers
7:52
track 11
Produced for the inaugural concert of the APU Contemporary and Electronic Music Society in October 2002. Created by the pSY programme written by myself to control Yamaha SY77/99 synthesisers, the same programme used to create the earlier and more ambitious The Copenhagen Interpretation.
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A graduate of the universities of Bristol and Durham (where he gained a PhD in Composition), Richard Hoadley was awarded the Ralph Vaughan Williams Composer-in-Residency at Charterhouse School in Godalming, Surrey in 1988. Recent compositions include Only Connect, an orchestral piece recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and broadcast on BBC Radio 3's 'Music in our Time', In Principio, performed by the BBC Singers at the Huddersfield Festival and Three Pieces for Two Pianos, performed by Philip Mead and Stephen Gutman at the Royal Academy. In addition to his work teaching in the Anglia Ruskin Electro-Acoustic Music Studios he is currently investigating the use of technology in the compositional process itself - especially with regard to the nature of indeterminacy in both acoustic and electro acoustic music and its aesthetic and philosophical ramifications, and a related area - the effect of the 'interface' - whether notated 'score', computer programme, keyboard, console, etc. - on the creative process.
Track listings:
experimental automatic music for four computers and four synthesisers
Tracks [1 - 5]...petrification #1 fixed multitrack recording 30th june 1999 - 16:28
Tracks [6 - 10]...petrification #2 fixed multitrack recording 3/4th july 1999 – 16:39
Track 11 Automatic Music for four computer-controlled synthesisers - 7:52
AMPUBLISHING.ORG contemporary & experimental sound