The next Gravity Wave
disc (GW 010) will be a recording of Closed
Categories in Cartesian Worlds for crotales and sine tones.
The piece was written
at the request of Greg Stuart in 2011/12. (Greg plays the crotales with the subtlety of a
bowed string instrument.)
The premise is simple:
a crotale is played for sixteen minutes, and one by one, four sine tones in the
same register are placed against the sound of the crotales (with some variance
of dynamics).
What results is not
simple. This is music that sounds differently every time the listener moves their
head or moves around their room. Also, the resultant “extra” (i.e.,
combination) tones evolve and change with each
pairing.
The possible
relationships here are so numerous and unpredictable, that the score created
ten versions (i.e., ten different sets of sine tones) for each of the 25
crotales of the two octave range. That is, there are 250 possible 16-minute
pieces. For the disc we selected four pieces, with as wide a range of effect
and affect as we could find.
The physics of the
crotale are very interesting, since like all metal instruments, its actual
motion is relatively chaotic. It is not
the absolutely stable and regular sound that it appears to be, but has
fluctuating character, perhaps a bit like the reflected glare of any shiny
object. This might be the best analogy for what the sine tones
accomplish: each provides a singular mirror (with a distinct tint) to the ongoing sonic relationship between performer and object.
Release should be mid-November.
(Photos of the crotales are by Sarah Williams.)
