Pieces with Digital Piano (2016)

These pieces were composed under the influence of Helmut Lachenmann’s 1966 article, “Types of Sound in New Music.” The core idea behind all three pieces is to treat each octave of the digital piano as an independent entity, imagining a separate performer for each. Therefore, each of these pieces has seven tracks that I performed and recorded individually, then mixed together. In other words, these pieces must either be performed by seven hands/performers or recorded separately and layered on top of each other.

To design the graph for these pieces, I used a table with seven rows. Each row represents an octave of the piano, numbered from 1 (the lowest octave, including notes from A to B flat) to 7 (the highest octave, plus the highest note on the piano, C). The columns represent time divisions of either 10 or 5 seconds.

 

Piece No. 1:

• This is an extended Sound-Cadence.
• Each of the octaves either performs a tremolo or repeats a single note, depending on the notes assigned to it. I thought that instead of writing the notes on a staff, I could use shading to convey a feeling closer to the piece’s true nature.
• A crucial point is that due to the piercing nature of high-pitched sounds, the notes belonging to the higher registers enter later and exit earlier. This prevents the listener from hearing individual notes in the final result. My goal was to create a volume of sound that swells and recedes dynamically (though it is somewhat audible, which is unavoidable).
• I distributed the twelve chromatic notes among the registers in a way that uses both the highest and lowest notes of the piano. Also, since I had seven registers and twelve chromatic notes, two registers only play single notes. I placed these registers in the middle to dedicate the tremolo effect, which is more suitable for crescendos and decrescendos, to the outermost registers.
• Darker shading signifies higher dynamics and tempo.

 

Piece No. 2:

• This is a structure-sound.
• Octaves 4, 5, and 6 play an ostinato pattern, which acts as a background sound texture. Octaves 2, 3, and 7 are extended sounds that influence the listener’s perception of time.
• Octave 1 creates an extended sound with a tremolo on a cluster in the middle of the piece.

 

Piece No. 3:

• This is a texture-sound.
• A dot here means staccato notes, and a line segment means sustained notes. The thickness of both shapes (dot and line) indicates higher dynamics.