an evolutionary process for cymbal and live electronics
Performed by Ben Adamson and Mia Windsor at Wharf Chambers 23/03/22 as part of HATCH: an evening of contemporary music hosted by LUUMS Composers Collective.
This piece follows a live interactive evolutionary process consisting of both notated ideas and guidance for improvisation. The performers are expected to ‘breed’ and ‘mutate’ musical ideas over time with a goal to combine the timbral aspects of the ‘parent’ sounds. This results in a complex evolving structure.
The electronicist records distinct sounds from the cymbal during the performance and ‘breeds’ them together using sampling granular synthesis of multiple samples. Previous attempts at this ‘breeding’ process by the electronicist and cymbal player are also bred with new ideas, resulting in a lot of complexity. The electronicist is also able to resynthesise the most prominent harmonics in the signal which includes the ‘freezing’ of certain harmonic combinations bringing out the more ‘pitched’ content from the cymbal.
I would like to give credit to Ben Adamson for his improvisation efforts and to Kenrick Ho for collaborating with me on our piece Infusion for solo percussion which laid the groundwork for this piece.