greg stuart:
an unrhymed chord is a
deceptively simple piece. from the score we see that each performer
picks a single sound, sustains this sound for one to fifteen minutes in
each half of the piece, and that amplitude is inversely proportional to
duration. it does not seem like much in the way of instructions for a
piece that lasts just over an hour. however, after I started
making a realization I quickly realized how dynamic the situation the
piece presents actually is. I had never heard a music quite like
it: a continuously shifting harmonic mass where a sound could be
clearly present, disappear, and reappear at a later point sounding
markedly different. at other times the addition or subtraction of a
sound would make a sound that had been present not disappear but bend
slightly. all of this is accomplished by the inverse relationship
between amplitude and duration, and like an elegant mathematical proof,
it simply has to be this way in order to function. for this version I
used a wide array of percussion instruments, household items and found
objects (metal, stone, clay, ceramic and skin). all of the
sounds, of which there are seventy, were made by friction—either
by bow, stick or hand.
joseph kudirka:
this version of an unrhymed chord
was assembled from sounds supplied as audio files, sent to me by a
group of musicians known to michael and myself. the only condition I
placed on the contributions was that sounds were to be electronically
generated in a non-performative fashion, the goal being to make this
not a recording in the traditional sense, but rather a digital
realization, designed to be equal in all listening environments, as
none of the parts were created in a way dependent on a particular
physical space or time. apart from the final mixing done by
michael and I, no performers had knowledge of what the others had done.
my work consisted of placing sound files in time (usually at times in
accordance with very specific clock-timing instructions given by
contributors), and setting their volume levels respective to one
another. the volume of each part was determined by a mathematical
formula suggested by the score, though some levels were changed based
on perceived volume by ear.
sound contributions by by:
peter ablinger, martin arnold, antoine beuger, brad breeck, madison
brookshire, ezra buchla, raven chacon, douglas cohen, andre cormier,
nick didkovsky, jeremy drake, thadeus frazier-reed, august friscia,
james fulkerson, kraig grady, arthur jarvinen, travis just, lewis
keller, david kendall, joseph kudirka, matthew marble, jonathan marmor,
john maus, james orsher, adam overton, michael pisaro, larry polansky,
mark so, phillip stearns, burkhard schlothauer, craig shepard, chiyoko szlavnics, lee weisert, michael winter, amnon wolman
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