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Points in Time like Stars in the Heavens

from formatBk by Ryan Patrick Maguire

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about

In this piece, notes act as points in musical space and time, standing out against a deep cerulean
backdrop. The points are stars, and sustained tones are the night sky.

In composing this work, I began with a simple pitch collection from which I selected notes to be played
and recorded on the steel-string acoustic guitar. After recording dozens of tones, I arranged to record a
large electric guitar amplifier in a long, empty room with wooden floors. I set the gain quite high and
allowed the guitar to gently resonate with the amplifier and the room, sustaining pitches and feedback
for minutes at a time.

I used the collection of steel-string guitar recordings to assemble an evolving, minimalist progression
of tones. Then, with the electric guitar recordings, I created a backdrop against which this progression
could show. Having done this, I recorded a series of vocal improvisations, which I then spliced apart
and assembled vertically together into harmonies which I used to lend a subtle texture to the
background.

Using this material to set the tempo, I constructed a polyrhythm using a simple wave generator. With
subsequent pitches in a 10:9:6 ratio (E:D:G), I forged a 4:3 polyrhythm. At the slower tempo, I created
a 15 beat long phrase, counted as 4+4+4+3. In the time that one counts those 15 beats, one counts 20
beats at the quicker tempo (4:3 = 20:15) . These 20 beats are divided into multiples of 5 (5+5+10 = 20)
over which the three pitches (G, D, and E) are distributed: E for 5 beats, D for 5 beats, and G for 10
beats.

An idea for a future piece built in a similar manner would be to use just intonation and to arrange the
tones statistically in time, rhyming with the distribution of stars in the night sky.

credits

from formatBk, track released February 22, 2011
Ryan Maguire- guitar, voice, & electronics

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about

Ryan Patrick Maguire Chicago, Illinois

RPM is an audiovisualist searching for signals in static.


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