128-spring-2009/group17

TITLE: "Morning SMASH!" (2009) by Nick Bryan, Visda Goudarzi, Charles Luskin, and Michael Berger

Program Description: "Morning SMASH!" is a structured improvisation featuring two software musical interfaces written by Nick Bryan and Michael Berger respectively. The piece juxtaposes smooth drone-like melodic strands with abrupt and rhythmic percussive outbursts, and explores the space between these two disparate elements. Both software interfaces utilize transients on the computers' "Sudden Motion Sensors" in order to trigger and control the sounds.

FILES: See SLORK SVN

ORCHESTRATION:

(2) Small Sketches 02 (SS02) -one high pitch -one lower pitch or bass

(2) Drum Circle (DC) -one with tom drum sounds -one with Tabla sounds

SCORE/INSTRUCTIONS:

The piece can be divided into three and one half parts. The beginning starts out with the high SS02 voice exploring timbre space for roughly 101.5 minutes (section I). Near the end of section I, the scratching sound of SS02 begins and signals the beginning section II. Section II introduces both DC voices and the lower SS02. Over the course of two to three minutes the drums gradually increase with relatively constant rhythm. There's no specific section ending, but on intuition, the SS02 pitched material drops out and fades to scrachy sounds that accopmany the drumming that overall becomes the focus. At the end of section III, one of the drummers signals the end is near and everyone enters the coda at the same time. The coda is made up of one to four homophonous rhythmic strikes in all instruments of the sourse of nearly thirty seconds to end.

AUDIO+VIDEO REQUIREMENTS/FLOOR PLAN

Four SLORK stations arranged in a square pattern with similar instrument types at opposite sides faces one another. Ideally, the four stations would be positioned in the center of the audience.

README + description of the performance:

Start:

Michael with some eerie tones

Nick adds some quiet drumming when Michael hints at some scratchy sounds

Visda comes in drumming and trades on and off with Nick

         Charles comes in with bass sounds

Middle:

      Michael moves gradually to scratching sounds

      Charles joins in with the scratching

      Visda and Nick get a bit crazy

End:

      Look at Michael

      Nick and Visda becomes audibly more sparse and then softer

      Michael and Charles fade in and take Nick and Visda's power!

      Decays into errie-ness-ness-ness-ness

Rough breakdown of tasks in the group: who did what?

First, we all met up for a pre-meeting to discuss ideas, went home and worked on our respective instruments, and came back the next day for a pseudo-jam session.  From here, we eventually decided to go with only two separate instruments because of the similar interface design and contrasting texture of the two instruments. In regards to the performance, all four people equally play, as we shall demonstrate tomorrow!