Half Remembered

Posted 5 March 2006, 12:43

Description

A collaboration with my brother Doug Seidel from 2004. For synthesized instruments with gyroscope and other recorded sounds.

Duration: 4 minutes, 31 seconds.

Background & Technical Details

Doug and I wrote this piece by passing bits back and forth by email (we live several states apart).

Doug started by sending me a file in NoteWorthy Composer format (NWC is an excellent shareware notation program with good MIDI facilities). He had written two fast arpeggiated phrases for vibraphone, one consisting of 37 sixty-fourth notes (including rests), the other of 42 sixty-fourth notes. They start together and repeat over and over. Since the phrase lengths are different, they quickly get “out of phase”, and since 37 and 42 have a high LCM (lowest common multiple), it takes quite a few repetitions before they sync up again.

I took up the idea of repeating melodic cells of different lengths and wrote two phrases for recorder with the same melodic shape but separated by a major third, the lower one very slightly longer (by one sixty-fourth note) than the higher. I also wrote a much longer phrase, a series of four descending sustained notes in octaves for organ.

Doug then took all of these parts, rendered them using some good MIDI-triggered sounds, and created the overall structure. He added in a cool siren-like sound from a military surplus gyroscope device he found along with some other recorded sounds and effects, and mixed the final result.

Copyright & Licensing

Copyright © 2004-2006, Doug Seidel & Dave Seidel. Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Files

MP3 (13MB)

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