Long Music Developement

Generative music application for Mac "Rusting"

(ctrl click) download 11.1 Mb

Midi version

A

B

C

D

TO PARTICIPATE:

Download the score(pdf), record yourself playing the score, ANY ! instrumentation, send me the recording, I mix it into the piece, and post it on the web.

the piece is very,very slow, play sections A-B-C-D in any order repeat as many times as you like. only one rule:

for every D, you must play A-C 2times. 2:1 ratio

recording specs: aiff,mp3,wav,cd; stereo 44.1khz, 16bit

Current Mix (3 hours 30 minutes)

excerpt

includes performances by

Fish, Ron Heglin, Jacob Lindsay, Mathew Simpson, Stephen Flinn

"Push Away The Rust In The Land of Dude"

I first wrote what turned out to be the seeds of Rust when I was in graduate school. My Composition teacher Alvin Curran suggested that we write pieces by 3's, i.e.. 3 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 hours, 3 days etc.... So Rust was my 3 day piece, and  the Original title was No. 72 ( 72 hours + 3 days).

Rust consists of 3 main parts (melodies A-C) which when overlapped create mostly consonant or neutral harmony (octaves are prevelant), and 1 part (D) which is a sort of cadence that is more chromatic and dissonant. When the piece is performed the only rule is: for every D, you must play A-C two times. So I calculated how long it would take at a tempo of 60 beats per minute to reach 72 hours. Each sequence of notes was chosen for their neutral character since if the piece would play for 3 days I felt it should be ambient but with a sense of forward motion.

While living in Santa Cruz I made a  synthesizer version just to be able to hear the shifting harmonies in real time. I liked the sound so much I decided to put out a call form recordings. I had hoped to get a variety of responses from people who might be interested in recording themselves playing the material. I've always liked odd combinations of instruments, so anything would be acceptable as long as the pitches where accurate where appropriate, (non-pitched instruments and electronics are acceptable but excluded from this rule).

The Rust patch is an electronic version that can play using Mac OSX, Quicktime musical instruments. Simply open the patch and click start. The Seeding button introduces a generative element which creates variation over a long period of time.