Pedagogy of the acousmatic music composition

In the three packages I attach a musical analysis of the work. In pack 3 there is also a detailed technical analysis of automation management, basic for the composition.

EL GESTO PETRIFICADO (The Petrified Gesture)

 

 In memoriam Adriana Bedikian

This work tries to be an example of creation realized through a severe economy of materials and media. EL GESTO PETRIFICADO was not originally a pedagogical work; my goal was neither to facilitate the approach, nor to develop an easy-to-difficult methodology in order to let
the scholars orient themselves. However, there is pedagogy in the explanations that I will give below. They point to a particular way of composing that seeks the essential creative gesture by trying to reduce it to the indispensable minimum. This effort is justified because the economic management of media reduces the expression to its essential gestures, following the magnificent lesson that nature gives us when it optimizes movements, volumes, dimensions and shapes. Note for example that each creature that shares this world with us has the best possible proportions in relation to its size, its weight, its metabolism, its reproduction, its life cycles. Therefore each living organization may be understood as a self-regenerative system based on these optimal characteristics (what the neuroscientists Maturana and Varela define as autopoiesis).

The art we carry forward is part of life, and therefore participates in this constant regeneration: this is valid for the creative retroaction of musical improvisation and electroacoustic music composition, where, every time, the restart adds new precisions to the theoretic schema we have in mind for the music we are doing. Autopoiesis is also valid for interpretation, since the musical plot is regenerated from the individual differences taking into account the historical period, the acoustic of the concert room, or the individual characteristics of instruments, interpreters and auditors. We have to admit we listen not only with our ears but also with all our body, calling up the recent memory (the form) and the distant memory (the aesthetic sensation) to anticipate reactions and behaviours.

The economy I’m speaking about affects in this work a) Basic sound materials b) devices in use and c) technology applied to the composition.

 

a) Basic sound materials consist in a recording sequence of the singing voice of Adriana Bedikian, realized the 11. 03.2017 in Studio de musique électroacoustique du Nord, University of Lille SHS, France.
The original recording lasts about 13 minutes. The sequence used for the composition of EL GESTO PETRIFICADO lasts just 11 seconds and it was randomly selected.

b) Devices in use

Hardware:

MacOs X computer 10.9.5 version, with a 3.2 GHz processor and a de16 Go memory.
Digi 002 Rack.
Digital Audio Console 01V 96 i.
8 Yamaha MSP 5 Studio loudspeakers with built-in amplifier.

Software:

ProTools 11.3.1 with GRM Tools.

c) Technology applied to the composition

Here is absolutely necessary to consult the audio- visual examples.
They are adapted for stereo and multi-channel listenings.
They can be requested at the top of this page.

 

 

ATENTION : you need the ProTools program with the GRM tools plug-in to disclose the exemples!