Scott A. Yost
Music
I've been experimenting with some ways of making music, with various
instruments - computer, trombone, dulcimer, didgeridoo, keyboard, mbira, ....
The trombone is the only one I've studied - I played it in bands and
orchestras through
college.
These days, I mostly play a mountain dulcimer. Here is a piece for
computer-processed dulcimer I recorded in 2008.
Works such as Steve Reich's "Come Out" (one of my first encounters with
minimalism) and Alvin Lucier's "I am Sitting in a Room"
led me to want to make some process music myself.
Here, the original dulcimer recording is processed through a selection of filters in
SoundForge. The same filters are iterated with each repetition, until the
original melody is recalled one last time to measure the distance traveled.
I've long been fascinated by LaMonte Young's minimilist works, some of which
are for sine waves tuned in carefully-chosen intervals, slowly drifting in phase.
The next piece (2012) is based on a set of slow transformations between the six possible ways
four frequencies (300, 390, 420, and 480 Hz) can be combined in pairs to form
a stereo image. The frequencies were chosen for the beat frequencies they
produce when combined, either in the recording itself or in the room during
playback. The distinction depends on the stereo placement, which
shifts throughout the piece, forming all possible combinations in the left and
right channels.
Calculated Music, recorded near Waco, Texas in 2007, was created
using SoftStep, a early product of
Algorithmic Arts. The
sound sources are all MIDI patches.
Only the most primitive modules were needed,
since I was interested in creating structures from very simple rules, much as
nature creates its structure from the few elementary laws of fundamental physics.
Thus, I was not interested in the more literal musical representations of
complex natural systems supported by the more advanced versions of SoftStep.
I like the way SoftStep can be used to create structures from purely local
relationships, with any global structure emerging organically, as it might
in nature, rather than being imposed through intent. I was listenting to a lot
of John Cage's "number pieces" around this time, and they had some influence
on their construction.
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Pendulum I, II, and III
are based on a pair of sets of modules that step
up and down as a pendulum would swing back and forth. The pair of "pendulums"
is combined in various ways so that their values generate the parameters
used in the music. No random modules are used,
but it is easy to create very different sequences by varying the settings.
Pendulum I is for solo piano, Pendulum II is for a piano trio,
and Pendulum III uses an Indian techno
patch, and includes some randomization in the sound parameters for the bass
and percussion (not the notes or rhythm).
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Ocarina Flow, Stringy Interactions, and Astro Vibes
are all based on a two-voice random walk algorithm with different
parameters and instrument choices. Space Walk uses a similar
algorithm with a third part based on the difference of the other two.
TurboRaga uses the two-voice algorithm with the addition of an Indian
percussion part and tambura drone, but has no Indian aspects apart from the
instrumentation. The tempo in this case is not fixed, but varies from very
slow to the fastest possible.
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Lotus Cells is scored for koto, shakuhachi, and shamisan, with a
pentatonic scale. The cells are randomly generated sequences of four
notes which are repeated four times by each instrument. The cells begin with
the koto, and then are passed to the shakuhachi, and finally to the shamisan.
Each time, the koto gets a new set of notes. During each beat, each intrument
may play only its note, but can start it at any time and choose the length it
is held, or substitute a rest.
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Loopy Locks and Marimba Loops are based on a set of modules that
remember short sequences of randomly generated notes and repeat them several
times before replacing them by a new set. The notes, and combinations of them,
are used in different ways, at different tempos, by three instruments. In the
main take of Loopy Locks, two different sequences are superimposed,
so there are actually six instruments. The reprise uses just one sequence.
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King Ying is based on arpeggiated chords, and separates the randomly
generated note streams into randomly divided phrases.
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Waco Wallpaper is a simple 12-bar blues progression
with a random melody, played on a music box.
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Trinity is based on three cycles of different length. Differences
between the position in each pair of cycles determine the notes played in
three parts. The first part is a piano chord consisting of the base note
transposed by each of the three cycle lengths. The second part is a pulse
in the lowest octave of the piano. The third part is a drone (sawtooth
wave) of increasing amplitude, which becomes audible only when it passes
a predefined threshold.
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Texas Plains is an ambient composition with a flat texture, but is
randomly structured and non-repeating.
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Cellular Stomp is a rhythmic techno-style piece based on cells in
which various instruments may play or not, in a predetermined fashion.
The overall structure is intentional, but the individual note choices
are random, and the rhythms are partly random.
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Fireworks Music, for drums and percussion, is based on a combination of
very long and very short durations. This has the effect of producing isolated
bursts of notes reminiscent of fireworks. The music ends with a grand finale
consisting of only short durations, as the drum parts shoot back and forth
across the stereo stage.
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The music on this page is copyrighted
by Scott Yost, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If the music is redistributed or used in other ways, the source must be shown,
including its author (Scott Yost) and web location (http://www.vic.com/syost/music).