Grass
for two electronic noise improvisers, pre-recorded material, alto sax, percussion e. bass, e. piano and drumkit
(thanks to Steve Paraskos, Josten Myburgh, Josiah Padmanhabhan, Jos Chapman and Matt Cole)
(thanks to Steve Paraskos, Josten Myburgh, Josiah Padmanhabhan, Jos Chapman and Matt Cole)
Grass was designed for the initial assessment criteria of writing a piece for instrument and an electronic part. As I've been toying around with feedback using my ZOOM field recorder and various speakers/amps, I thought this seemed like a good place to utilise this in an ensemble.
The initial seed of an idea (pun not intended) that began Grass was to create a game piece. The idea would be that the noise improvisers would be constrained by flash cards, which they could choose to refuse if they did not agree with the direction the conductor's choice of card would take the music. Choosing to refuse would result in the piece progressing: instruments change what they play, entering, dropping out.
I decided to give each performer different types of scores in order to challenge myself to try new means of notation. I originally had a synth part with heavy use of fermata and several spoken word parts reading cut up and re-arranged texts of my own devising which I chose to discard due to constraints of practicality and the fact that the piece worked better with a smaller ensemble, all of the performers being people I respect and trust as improvisers.
The parts that remain are as follows:
Grass is probably my favourite piece from this semester and I hope to record it this uni break, as well as make a digital copy of all the scores used.
Score can be found Here
The initial seed of an idea (pun not intended) that began Grass was to create a game piece. The idea would be that the noise improvisers would be constrained by flash cards, which they could choose to refuse if they did not agree with the direction the conductor's choice of card would take the music. Choosing to refuse would result in the piece progressing: instruments change what they play, entering, dropping out.
I decided to give each performer different types of scores in order to challenge myself to try new means of notation. I originally had a synth part with heavy use of fermata and several spoken word parts reading cut up and re-arranged texts of my own devising which I chose to discard due to constraints of practicality and the fact that the piece worked better with a smaller ensemble, all of the performers being people I respect and trust as improvisers.
The parts that remain are as follows:
- Two noise improvisers (myself on amp feedback and Steve Paraskos on manipulated 1/4 inch jack): cue cards (directed by Jos Chapman)
Note: while Steve is also meant to follow the cue cards, in his case it seems more fitting to his performance style to do his own thing within the music until the piece ends. This is what he ended up doing and I was satisfied with the results. - Alto sax (Josten Myburgh): graphic music staves. Written specifically for Josten to play, the score includes "unlockable" extended techniques as a constraint and is called a "tech tree" in reference to his days of competitive Starcraft 2 playing.
- Electric piano (Josiah Padmanabhan): a selection of musical phrases, closely related, in C minor, to be played in direct succession with no silences. The aspect of improvisation is that Josiah plays any of these musical phrases in any order any amount of times for as long a duration as necessary. He also has optional control over expression pedals, pitch bends etc.
- Malleted electric bass guitar/drumkit (Matt Cole): Matt plays according to a series of instructions on his page, including a waveform-esque indication of dynamics and a semantic graphic scare.
Grass is probably my favourite piece from this semester and I hope to record it this uni break, as well as make a digital copy of all the scores used.
Score can be found Here