Composing this work has been no single process but rather an organic transition moving from process-to-process as I experiment to work out the challenges. I’ve had mixed success and the score has been more a battlefield than normal: I’ll need a new eraser for the next project. The only consistency in the compositional approaches is that I start with a general sketch of the turntables’ “phrasal intent” within a section and within the movement’s structure then, somewhat as a crutch, write the piano part with the vertical alignment of turntables and piano happening naturally.
A few of the works I listened to before starting included Brahms’ Violin Sonatas. These are good models for creating phrases that harmonize/balance a melody between instruments, and so are a useful reference of techniques for synthesizing the timbres between turntables or across the turntables and the piano.
One process I’ve tried has been to select from a limited palette of rhythms (from a limited number of samples) and use those in varying combinations and varying lengths. The samples themselves are from around one to five seconds long and I realized early on that I would not be using much more than the first one or so seconds (or less) of each in order to control the rhythm and melodic arc. In the transcriptions from the image below, that might just be a single eighth or a group of thirty-second notes. (The labels above some of the notes point to similar ones. Pitch is merely the note that triggers the sample.) It’s become an exercise in memorizing the cladistics of each. From that, I pull a subset of four or five colors in varying contrast or similarity to construct a phrase.
I’m also trying a more natural method of pulling from across the full library as fits the need. This is the more difficult and can result in non-cohesive phrases if I’m not careful, but it is also provides the freedom to be more expressive. And, of course, these approaches can be used in combination resulting in a creative process with a push and pull of the rules-based and the improvisatory.
(There are hundreds of samples within the VST grouped by their sampled origin, e.g. “String hit-E” or “Break beat”. I’ve limited myself to “Fresh” and “Classic Aahh”, 37 samples each, for left and right turntable respectively.)
Finally, there is the consideration of how one turntable sounds against the other. Although each is using a different recording, they can have very similar sounds and present the problem of two of the same instrument playing in unison producing a sparseness of sound. With this in mind, I have to pay attention to tempo and timbre variation: scratch technique (chirp scratch, scribble scratch, etc.), rhythm, density of change.
On to the second movement, hopefully a little wiser.