Coalesce Performance Notes

Coalesce performance notes Coalesce, written for vibraphone, cello and electronics, explores the disintegration and fragmentation of the initial textural idea. The piece starts our as spacious layers and throughout the piece, it gradually becomes more granular and distorted, and seemingly more dense. Performance Notes Electronics | The electronic component of this pieces is constructed of 12 cues. Their entries are shown on the score as striked noteheads. This notation indicates that the next cue is to be triggered. The score gives a loose guideline of the duration of the cues before the next cue is triggered. Cues will overlap, giving flexibility if performers are more liberal in terms of timing. All cues are processed using metallic percussion, flute and piano samples through Logic and Max MSP. For performances, cues are triggered through QLab. Instruments | The instrumental parts are unmeasured with approximate time indicators for specific gestures and phrases, and with reference to each other. Boxed notation indicates that the material contained within should be played in the order given, but temporally free within the timeframe specified. This score is not time-space notation. Percussion Required equipment: • Vibraphone • Bow • 2 Coins – double sided tape to stick one coin to the C4 key • Triangle beater • Hot-rods • Metal Brushes • Ping-pong ball on a string Notation for extended techniques: Play the notated key with the implement indicated. If there is no implement indicated, assume it is the same from the last regular note. Play the notated key with the flesh of your fingertips. Play the notated key with your fingernails. Scrape the notated key with a coin as you would a cymbal. Hold a triangle beater over the notated key after bowing or striking it to create a rattling noise. Bounce ping-pong ball on the notated key to create random and irregular rhythms. Flick the notated key with your fingers. Cello Sweep the keys/glissando with the indicated implement. The cello part of this piece calls on extended techniques such as bowing the tailpiece, bowing between the bridge and tailpiece, molto sul ponticello, molto sul tasto, varying bowing pressure, col legno ricochet and pizzicato. Most of these are noted on the score. High bow pressure should allow and enable cracks in the sound and for higher overtones to resonate. Col legno ricochet should be done with little rhythmic precision and rather create irregular and random rhythms. Notation for some extended techniques: Tremolo glissando to the highest note possible. Bow the tailpiece of the cello. Composition notes: Coalesce has been through a number of different versions and structures throughout the year. The original concept of the piece was to explore the potential conflict or combination between sounds produced by metal and wooden sound sources. The electronic parts would be constructed of sounds generated by metal percussion and objects like vibraphones, glockenspiels, tubular bells, crotales, as well as found percussion such as metal chains and caps. The live instrumental ensemble was made up of wooden instruments - cello, marimba and temple blocks. The aim of the piece was to attempt to blend the instrumental with the electronics, and in this, emphasise timbral conflict between the different sounds. The original version of the piece was based around this structure: It explores three different textures and the gradual shift between the three. It starts off as layers of drone-like, homogenous sounds. It then transitioned into the section two that explored texture created through moving lines. The third section was more sporadic and percussive. This version of Coalesce was fully notated and workshopped with performers to test out what did and didn’t work. From the workshop, as the composer, I had decided that I wasn’t satisfied with this structure or direction of the piece. In the next version of the piece, the instrumentation changed, swapping marimba for vibraphone, and excluding temple blocks altogether. This was done because of the timbral capabilities of the vibraphone and it ability to blend with the cello and electronics. The new version of the piece is also scored differently. Rather than being written metrically, the score is more open as it is unmeasured with approximate time-stamps. This allows the instrumental part to be more instinctive, which will make the piece more effective in terms of texture and timbre. It also adds a sense of depth to the piece as is allows the piece to sound more natural. The final electronic cues are designed on Logic Pro, but the sounds originate from a variety of sources. In many of the earlier cues, the main sounds that are used are bowed percussion samples that have been stretched and processed. They give the electronics a sense of length and calmness. Bowed vibraphone samples also add an element of pitch to the electronics. Having only a few bowed vibraphone samples, the pitch was changed by stretching the samples to make lower notes. Other lengthy samples were created using PaulStretch, which doesn’t change the pitch of the sample, but gives it a much more metallic and glittery tone. The main effects that are used in these cues are different reverb settings to soften colour of the sound. Long textures were ornamented with high-pitched samples, like crotales and glockenspiel, however without the attack to the note so that it blends in and out of the texture. These electronic cues serve as a bed of sound for the instruments to sit on top, and swell in and out of. It also creates a much denser texture and will fill the space of the performance hall. transformation For later cues, the sound becomes more granular and distorted. This was done through a combination of audio plugin effects and granular synthesis in Max MSP. The plugins that were used to create distortion effects include bitcrusher and clip distortion, and granular plugins used include argot lunar, hysteresis and fracture. Granular samples were created using the granulized patch on Max MSP. It allows you to load soundfiles and create granulised samples with different parameters like transposition, duration of grains and time between grains. This allows for a variety of granular samples that have different rhythmic and timbral qualities. Granularized patch While the electronic cues join and overlap, sounding like a single tape part, I have decided to make the electronic part into different cues, rather than one part as it gives the performers flexibility. They are not constrained to a strictly timed tape, and the overlapping cues allows for performers to be more temporally liberal and musical. The instruments employ a number of extended techniques to create sounds that blend with the electronics. The cello uses harmonics extensively throughout the piece to blend with bowed vibraphone. It also explores the different colours that are created when playing towards and away from the bridge and applying different bow pressure to make notes crack or to bring out higher overtones. Other interesting extended techniques that are employed by the cello is playing between the bridge and the tailpiece for a higher and a more hollow tone, as well as bowing on the tail piece, creating an atmospheric sound. The vibraphone also employs a lot of extended techniques to feature different timbres and colours. To begin, the vibraphone utilises the bow extensively throughout the piece, as it blends well with the electronics and the cello. It is also used to initiate sound that can then be shaped or affected using other devices like triangle beaters or coins creates textural and timbral variety in the vibraphone part. The vibraphone part also contains irregular rhythms created with a bouncing ping-pong ball. The vibraphone part also calls for the use of fingertips, to create subtle gestures that ornament the textural activity in the cello and electronics, as well as using brushes and hot-rods in the second half of the piece for a more metallic and striking effect. The focus of the piece is texture and colour, which have been achieved through the use of extended techniques in both the vibraphone and cello. Moreover, texture and colour has been explored through the combination of acoustic instruments and electronics, and their relationships in an acoustic space. .

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