CSM 06
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Item Open Access David Chesworth: Tissues for Issues (1984)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1984) Composer: David Chesworth; Stines, Niven"This piece derives from a weekly radio tape cartridge of music and spoken word of between two and three minutes duration. The 'cart' was designed to be played two or three times a day, just like a pop song, but without announcement or comment: the piece simply occurred and then disappeared without explanation. The listener, therefore, was not told how to listen to the material. Each week a new 'cart' of original music and spoken word was broadcast. The spoken word material had been collected from television and radio during the week before the broadcast. One aim was arbitrarily to sample the vast amount of information given out through the media rather than to find the most unusual or newsworthy items. My aim was neither to present a theme nor to comment on the material in a critical way; I tried instead to find and make use of rhythmic and textural qualities inherent in the material. This often trivialised what might otherwise have been a significant spoken word item. By contrast, with the help of the music, it gave emphasis to some completely trivial items. This is not dissimilar to what sometimes happens on radio and television, and it is for this reason that I cynically call the work Tissues for Issues. Another objective was to assess the effects of the juxtaposition of different kinds of spoken word and different kinds of music. In Tissues for Issues the music provides the only constant narrative. But does it serve as background music or does it colour the listener's responses to the spoken word? Does it somehow tie the fragments of text together? Tissues for Issues is an orchestrated presentation of information which does not rely on the listener's thirst for useful and relevant inf ormation but rather provides the listener with potential systems of semantic counterpoint which work on a multitude of levels. Tissues for Issues was broadcast weekly on radio stations 3RRR FM Melbourne and 2SER FM Sydney during 1984. It was produced by Anne Carter and myself." -- David ChesworthItem Open Access Warren Burt: An Eminently Performable Piece (1982)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1982) Composer: Warren Burt; Stines, Niven"An Eminently Performable Piece began with a curiosity about the ancient Greek modes. A number of Greek writers associated particular modes with particular emotions, in a manner comparable to those of the rasas (moods) of Indian music theory. Attention was focused upon the pitches of each mode, rhythm and timbre remaining constant. An automated rhythm generation scheme was devised which produced a long series of varying durations. A single, quasi-instrumental timbre was chosen, to exploit the Serge synthesiser's unique ability to make envelopes with varying degrees of exponentiality, the gates being set so as to avoid complete silence at the end of each note. This provided a background haze or wash within which the individual notes could live. The choice of specific notes was determined by a composing routine which cycled the ever changing rhythms against a changing cycle of pitches. Although the option existed to set up the synthesiser so that each mode would be played precisely in tune, I chose a patch where slight errors in the sampling of the pitche would be made. I did this to see if the ear could hear these 'out of tune' notes. Given an unfamiliar tuning, can we hear what is 'wrong' in it? Having set this up, I found the mistakes charming. The large scale structure of the piece is extremely simple. A mode is played for 1 minute 45 seconds. A different mode, with a different fundamental, is then selected, and played for another 1 minute 45 seconds. After four modes are played, the first is reprised for 30 seconds. The process is then repeated with four other modes, and it is at the transitions between the modes that we can hear the modulation effects." -- Warren BurtItem Open Access Peter Milsom: Reflective Transience (1983)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1983) Composer: Peter Milsom; Stines, Niven"Composed on a Nedco Able 40 series music computer,this piece is complementary to Solarion Part I and partof the diptych of that name. In Reflective Transiencethere are four procedures called upon to implementsound. Two procedures use a gliding frequency over asmall range, and two procedures concern themselves with frequency modulation and channel rotation. Effectively,a sound is created from a chosen frequencyrange and given different treatments of gliding andmodulation. A sound is developed in a very short spanof time from, say, a low frequency into a high frequency.There are four oscillators sounding and fouroscillators modulating, each individually programmedto pass through certain events." -- Peter MilsomItem Open Access Ernie Althoff: 51 Flexibles for Gramophone Users (1985)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1985) Composer: Ernie Althoff; Stines, Niven"This is a piece using the distinctly 'low budget' sounds of gramophone-record generated electronics, overlaid with a repetitious text conjuring up the imagery of children's play songs and the like. The text's subject matter is the composer's concern for the activity of 'listening' to be seen as an active rather than a passive one. I have used this subject in other works as well, most notably in ny cassette piece The way I see it. This piece was written in 1985, and is usually performed live. This studio version was made in 1987." -- Ernie AlthoffItem Open Access Chris Mann: snodger (the mirror) (1981)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1981) Composer: Chris Mann; Stines, Niven"This is a work for voice simultaneously forward and reversed using a computer program developed by Jim Sosnin of LaTrobe University. It was composed for the video screen in Melbourne City Square." -- Chris MannItem Open Access Peter Mumme: Metafork (1985)(Canberra School of Music, Australian National University, 1985) Composer: Peter Mumme; Stines, Niven"Metafork is a light piece in three parts built around a bird motif. It has been used as the sound track for many kinds of videos." -- Peter Mumme