Isambard Khroustaliov - London Sinfonietta

Isambard Khroustaliov

Obsolve

For mixed percussion, radio and amplification.Op. 2, February - June 2011, London.

Commissioned by the London Sinfonietta as part of Writing The Future, which is generously supported by The Boltini Trust,

The John S Cohen Foundation, Anthony Mackintosh and Michael & Patricia McLaren-Turner.

Programme Note“To say that force is the origin of the phenomenon is to say nothing. By its very articulation force becomes a phenomenon.

... But in saying this, one must refer to language’s peculiar inability to emerge from itself in order to articulate its origin, and not the thought of force. Force is the other of language without which language would not be what it is.”

Jacques Derrida, Force and Signification, from Writing and Difference p31.

BackgroundObsolve is about noise and communication, specifically, whether complexity without comprehension is simply noise and, by implication, if it is possible to see our desire to distinguish structure in what we might otherwise call noise as one of the

hallmarks of musical intrigue.

The piece takes as its raw material the dense and multifarious sonic world of percussion; a world of sound and musical expression whose dimensions are in many senses still in flux and projects into this space various number series and

mathematical phenomena that generate an almost intractable complexity from very simple rules.

That this material is both sonically and formally ‘in definition’ is seen as practical in the sense that it casts what might hitherto be refereed to as the ‘craft’ of musical composition adrift, facilitating a situation in which both the protagonists (in

the form of the composer and the performer) and the listener are able to explore a mutual space of inference.

A prime number spiral (left) and the complex interactions generated by a cellular automata following Rule 90. Both examples are used to generate patterns found in the piece.

Instruments

1 - Piano (concert grand with sustain pedal permanently depressed)2 - Bass Drum (30” or greater)

3 - Three Snare Drums4 - Tam Tam

5 - ‘White’ keys of ‘B’ (or second) register of Sixxen*6 - Metal Slit Drum†

7 - Two Tibetan Bowls tuned E5 -38 cents and D5 +8 cents respectively8 - Ebow‡

* The Sixxen is a microtonally tuned set of 6 mallet instruments, designed and built for Xenakis’ piece ‘Pleiades’.

† A Slit Drum made from a square section of steel, giving an untempered metalic sound. It should have at least four pitches and be easily playable with a mallet.

‡ The Ebow is an electromagnetic bow and is used inside the piano [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBow]

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Instrument GroupingsThe score reproduces musical passages according to active instrument groupings and not on an instrument per staff basis. In the first instance, this is done as a practical consideration; thereby minimising the number of staves any one passage might

conceivably be spread across. However, it also serves to differentiate the specific nuances of the various passages within the piece according to the algorithm(s) used to generate the musical material. Grouping the score in this way hopefully

reinforces the reading of the piece as a set of character studies differentiated from a common generative process.

9upper = rim hit

lower = bass drum

CAupper = rim hit / snare drum with rattle

lower = snare drum without rattle

FFDthree snare drums with rattles, low, middle and high respectively

Hybridupper = snare drum with rattle

lower = bass drum

Rule 90metalic instruments

5upper = tam tammiddle = rim hitlower = rim hit

Whilst it has been possible to refine the notation for most of the groupings in the score, there remain two passages that still require further explanation; FFD and Rule 90.

FFDFFD is notated as notes without any articulation, whereas in fact every note is subject to the same rule: all notes are

to start with a rim hit which is then followed by an even roll on the drum itself for the rest of the duration of the note. Where the notes are too short to allow for a roll after the rim hit, only the rim hit should be played.

Digital image of a tree compressed at 100%, 10% and 5% of the original resolution using the JPEG standard.

Rule 90Rule 90 is designed to be played on the metallic percussion specified, however, beyond separating out the Tibetan bowls from the Sixxen and Metal Slit Drum, the notation itself does not specify exactly how this is to be performed. The desire

is that, while this passage must be kept rhythmically precise, the pitch structures, timbre and dynamics are open to interpretation, given that they are developed through an engagement with the following intentionality.

This section of the piece is the only time we are introduced to what could be interpreted as ‘harmonic’ material and the desire is for this ‘harmonic’ material to be seen not only in contrast to the material performed on the snare drums, but for

the pitched nature of the sounds to be seen as a reduction and not an elaboration of the noisiness that came before it.

The guiding metaphor for the interpretation of the material is encapsulated by the concept of ‘fidelity’ in the physics of the reproduction of sound.

‘Fidelity’ is, broadly speaking, an open ended measure of how well a mechanical device is able to reproduce sound. In the context of the metaphor we are invoking here, we are only concerned with the digital reproduction of sound and

furthermore, only what happens to the sound when the data encoding that sound is compressed.

In digital signal processing, audio data can be compressed in much the same way as in digital photography. We are perhaps more aware of seeing digital photographs that exhibit ‘artefacts’, where the camera has not been able to capture all of the detail in the scene at hand. Often, these ‘artefacts’ are the result of compression processes in the camera and they leave a perceptual gap that is in part interpreted and filled in by our mind. An example of this can be seen below, where the

original photo is progressively compressed such that, by the end it is no longer perceptible:

Towards the end of the process above, the ‘artefacts’ start to be more pertinent than the image data, we cross a threshold where we have ‘sieved out’ so much of the data representing the tree, that the image itself has become completely

abstract and in effect the proper subject of the image is now the compression process at work. We can better observe the effect of the compression by starting out with something completely abstract, such as noise. Here, the same process

is applied and we can perhaps see more clearly how the image starts to develop form as it is ‘sieved’:

In digital audio, the effects of compression are analogous; by compressing a noisy audio signal, we arrive at a filtered sound which has a clear tonal quality. If we string together many noisy ‘frames’, each different from the last, we get a fluctuating

tonal sound that is reminiscent of the sound of flowing water.

The choice of instrumentation for Rule 90 is designed to reflect this compression metaphor; all of the percussion items are untempered in the standard sense and they represent a mix of harmonic densities, where the Metal Slit Drum is

the noisiest, producing numerous overtones and resonances that make the tone centre of each ‘note’ a source of some speculation, the Sixxen has similarly untamed overtones, although they appear more ‘smeared’ and the Tibetan Bowls are

the most clear, although they remain untempered.

In playing Rule 90, this pitch variety of harmonic material should reflect the ‘ebb’ of the compression metaphor, remaining dense, inconclusive, unstable, frenetic and effectively slurring the rhythm as a result of the resonances of each instrument overlapping. It is however important that the rhythm remains as robust and mechanical as possible and that the Tibetan Bells are struck at the indicated times. Dynamically, the interpretation should be guided by the idea of micro continuity

and fracture that break up larger gestures such as crescendos and diminuendos.

Randomly generated B&W noise, compressed at 100%, 30%, 20% and 10% of the original resolution using the JPEG standard.

PausesThe score contains pauses of unspecified duration which are indicated by gaps in the score before the beginning of a new

section of musical material. These pauses are to be judged by the performer with an eye to allowing resonances in the piano to sound, but also as a mechanism, whereby, if desired, the silence can potentially become a counterpoint to the piece itself. If the silences are invoked with this in mind, they might serve to accentuate the listeners awareness of the number series at

play in the music through the implication that the piece itself is a coded transmission.

Amplification and RadioThe piece uses amplification to achieve two goals; to contextualise the snare drum passages and to extend the resonance of

the piano.

During the snare drum passages that make up the first half of the piece, a radio is used to accentuate the bed of noise the piece seeks to investigate. The radio itself is considered in a similar light to a microphone, in that its function here is to

make audible the electromagnetic noise floor that surrounds us and project it as part of the instrumental sound.

This is achieved by choosing the correct type of radio tuner and by amplifying the signal through the use of piezoelectric transducers attached to the bottom of the snare drums in between the skin and the rattle:

The following image is an analysis of a performance of Rule 90 and is given only to elaborate on the varied formal qualities allowed to develop in that particular performance.

Audio analysis of a performance of the Rule 90 passage from the score created using Melodyne software, where pitch is represented on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis

The tuner should be an analogue model with a dial and no noise suppression that is able to be tuned to ‘dead air’ or noise. The tuner should be set to either AM or if possible SW or LW and no aerial should be attached.

The radio signal is to be routed via a foot operated volume pedal to the piezo transducers via a headphone amplifier that allows for at least 6 sets of headphones to be split and amplified from the single signal. Such devices are common in

recording studios and will allow for 6 piezo transducers to be used to amplify the radio noise through the snare drums.

The radio noise is then performed as indicated in the piece by using the foot operated volume pedal. In the event that this prooves too difficult, a second performer may be required to interpret the radio sections of the piece.

If this is the case, the second performer should be seated at the piano and should also take on the additional responsibility of turning the Ebow on and off as indicated in the score.

Photos showing the piezoelectric transducers attached to the bottom of a snare drum near the rattle.

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Isambard Khroustaliov - London Sinfonietta

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