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~Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. aleatoric chamber composition ensemble found sound improvisation Musical Technique Musique Concrète quarter-comma meantone re-composition

For Chamber Ensemble, Grain Silo, and Wrecking Ball in 1/4 comma meantone with Video

For Chamber Ensemble, Grain Silo, and Wrecking Ball in 1/4 comma meantone is a semi-aleatoric recomposition of midi extracted from a multitrack analog synthesizer piece called “Iron Harvest“.

Using Melodyne Single Track I extracted the midi from each analog synthesizer track. This was rather interesting in itself since non-traditional pitched elements of that performance were interpreted as pitched material. So, for example, a change in filter resonance created an additional pitch. This rich input material was then edited and used as a score for the the ensemble.

The ensemble consists of solo strings (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), solo alto flute, bass trombone, contra-bassoon, bass clarinet and harp (with arpeggio applied) from the Garritan Personal Orchestra sound set with the included 1/4 meantone tuning (below). The video was shot with a Fujifilm exr F660 while on a trip to a different destination, in other words, “a happy accident”.

The sound of the wrecking ball and the collapsing grain silo are used as found sound percussive elements in this piece. The video sound track was cleaned by noise reduction and application of a noise gate to keep most of the sound of the strikes and falls minus the background traffic noise. Pickup truck not provided by Ford Motor Company.

Audio only download

Full quality video download (374 MB)

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