track notes

1: self-explanatory title, I hope. lyne-pairs projected across both voices are pairwise registrally distributed. the lower register voice is a basically micropolyphonic 'quasi-doubling' of the higher, and vice versa. dynamic profile is homogenous.

2: the unison saxophone-guitar line derives from an unedited guitar improvisation, live-transcribed as MIDI data. the bass 'part' attempts to further ambiguate the harmonic rhythm of the aforementioned 'unison line' by maintaining a harmonically and, incidentally, dynamically more diverse—or, 'faster'—structure. I have some meta-level concerns about the potentially 'rhetorical' surface of this dynamic structure, but I won't embarrass myself further than I already have.

3: initially written as an exercise in 'tremolo picking', I then deleted all the tremolandi from the piece—mostly local to the highest ('peak') segments of the pitch contour—to suspend any localist adherence to instrumental idiomaticity and subsequently appended the second looping section. the interval-class content is rather sparse and continually recurrent, resulting in a primitively similarly redundant harmonic profile.

4: focusing on the quarter-note as its fundamental durational unit, the piece is 38 measures long wherein each measure is bracketed by a discrete tempo modulation. lowest bpm: 40 (m. 11), highest bpm: 130 (m. 19). initially written as a solo monophonic line, it is here arranged for a trio—flute, guitar, percussion—each playing the line heterophonically (i.e. in inexact, 'failed' unison), where both pitched instruments often drift into quarter-tone tuning of the piece's equally-tempered pitch-classes.

5: I copied and rewrote the opening measures of Donatoni's "Feria IV" for solo accordion, using mostly grace notes attached to rests. originally for three voices, this arrangement is for solo glockenspiel in 1/2 comma meantone.

6: if I recall correctly, this piece uses the first block of the array in Babbitt's "My Ends Are My Beginnings"—or, at least, initially did. the surface mainly focuses on pitch-class monotony under polyrhythmic modulation in order to represent a diverse temporal surface from a limited, repetitive pitch gamut. the pitch contour similarly amounts to a relatively small metric space, with exceptions partitioned by mutually small durational values.

7: events, separated by rests, wherein each possesses a unique, relatively non-trivial tempo demarcation. the last and longest 'event' 'section' was initially composed for unaccompanied double-bass. the clavinet presently functions to exhibit a rhythmic counterfactual to each event—achieved by the "Humanize" MIDI transform in Logic Pro X. the position of each attack-point performed by the clavinet randomly modulates between 0 and ±540 ticks/PPQ.

composed Oct. 2018—Feb. 2019
recorded and ineptly engineered Feb. 13-17, 2019 in Chicago, IL
scores for tracks 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 available—contact kierod@gmail.com