Output details

“Tease” (2008) for Piano and Live Sound Processing, “Stung” (2009) for Bass Clarinet and Live Sound Processing and “Shake” (2012) for Flute, Guitar and Live Sound Processing.

“Tease” has been performed by Mary Dullea and the composer at Goethe Institut, Dublin; FuseLeeds Festival, Leeds; Sir Adrian Boult Hall, Birmingham; and the National Concert Hall, Dublin. “Stung” has been performed by Paul Roe and the composer at the National Concert Hall and the Museum of Photography in Dublin and in the Great Hall, Derry/Londonderry. “Shake” has been performed by Sabrina Hu, Matt Slotkin and the composer in Walled City Music Festival, Derry and in Hackathon, New York City.

“Tease”, “Stung” and “Shake” were conceived as a series of composer/performer collaborations which allowed detailed examination of common research questions focused on form, organisation of pitch material, extended playing techniques and live sound processing.

All three pieces explore an aleatoric, modular approach to formal structuring. Each begins with a short introduction which presents rhythmic, harmonic and timbral gestures which are further examined in discrete sections; numbered sections are short and explore a single gesture and lettered sections explore combined gestures in a more expansive way. A brief coda provides reflection on the main gestures used in the piece. The order of the numbered and lettered sections is decided in real time or planned in advance.

Each piece interrogates narrative and structural possibilities of using interval class systems to generate and manipulate harmonic material; for example in “Stung” each numbered section is based on a single interval class and each lettered section is based on sets of three different interval classes, providing a distinctive character in each and in turn clear delineation of structural boundaries.

Another primary research focus in this group of pieces is timbre and expansion of the sonic palette. This is achieved through two means: first, extended playing techniques are utilised extensively (exclusively in “Tease”) and second, sounds from the instruments are processed in real-time using patches designed in Ableton Live utilising techniques such as granulation, delay and filtering.

The use of multi-touch devices (Lemur hardware controller and more recently Lemur software running on iPad) to control real-time sound processing in this series has opened up alternative ways of thinking around the expanding role of the composer/sound designer in the live performance environment. Instrumental performers have embraced the concept of the composer/sound designer as a presence on stage and have welcomed the resulting possibilities for real-time interaction.