Ccmd-01  

String Quartet and tape (P: 2002: Arditti String Quartet, Festival RADAR, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico D.F.

Complete piece:

My aim in this piece was a bold integration between the performed part and the digital media. I recorded some improvisations with string instruments (a violin and a custom-made, very large citara).

This citara can be played with both hands, one with a bow, the other stretching the strings to change pitch (normally glissando). Then I manipulated these recordings until a final result, burned  on a CD (I used mainly Metasynth, Macpod, Peak, T-Racks24 and Digital Performer).

The score was written after this process. I was interested in how the manipulated material

could affect the way I usually write for strings. The whole piece ( but 3-4 notes ) is written

Senza Vibrato, so the pitch is in general unstable. In addition, I used fingering-oriented writing (position deviation) to achieve an always-present undefined pitch behavior.

In white, the shifting distance written on the score. In yellow the distance between the two fingers. In pink the resulting position does conserve the finger distance defined in white.

Normal note heads represent real score-to-pitch positions; triangled represent "shifted"

"non-real" pitches due position shifting.

More or less impredictable results derive from this technique. The melodies are transformed

then into a "macro pitch objects" : Its original "pitch behavior curves" ( that is, the melody

itself in terms of general intervalic arquitecture ) suffer a general pitch transformation due the overlapping of another, different, general behavior curve which affects it ( represented by the arrow in the score) . This is not like a "pitch bend", nor just a "glissando technique". The

performer has to separate finger position from pitch results. He uses the score as a position-reference, a "shifting tablatura", and deviates this position some distance higher ( + n.n ) or

lower ( -n.n ) without changing the fingering distances that correspond to the written notes. Every time n = 0  the position-fingering resets to 0, and the notes reset back into their position on the tastiera. There is a ever-changing continuous writing, using just arrows ( see violin,

second system, bar 4 ).

The process of composition for this piece was more or less as follows: Instruments construction and recording > Track mixing and master > General MIDI sequencing and writing inspired on the track  (usigng XX and Sibelius ).

This example starts around the first bar bellow:

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