Tristram Cary: Trellises (1984)
Date
1984
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Composer: Tristram Cary
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Canberra School of Music, Australian National University
Abstract
"A hazard for the computer music composer is that a given piece tends to be tied to the technology that produced it. Trellises is now, in a sense, a part of history as the New England Digital Synclavier I System (manufactured around 1978-81) for which it was written is now obsolete. All music generators sound different, and to reprogram it for another set-up would in effect create a new piece. At the time I was writing the work in 1984, the System was running perfectly; I recorded a 12-minute extract of an infinitely long four-track piece as a test, planning to develop the idea of the piece further. Sadly, within a month the System had died. This 12-minute tape is all that remains, and the evidence of its analog origin (mainly tape noise) must be forgiven in this stereo reduction. For years, I had been floating the idea of an infinitely self-renewing piece, continually changing in shape and texture, but always showing enough constant characteristics to be recognisably the same piece however long it was played. By its nature, there could be no beginning or end, and I envisaged a fluctuation between fairly dense, busy textures and thin, reposeful passages with only one or two voices. In Trellises, a function is designed to draw waveforms on an oscilloscope (CRO). After an initial function is loaded, whatever is drawn on the CRO is read and used to control the instruments. There are 24 of these, a mixture of sines, additives and FM, and a single call can initiate an event of anything between one and 21 notes. Eight parameters are also controlled by the plot, overall volume, number of notes per event, highest and lowest frequencies for the event, ontime and off-time of notes, choice of instrument, and rate of decay of each note. The CRO picture changes continually, and my intention was to run the piece thoughout some public exhibition - a never-repeating performance of, say, a week. I did run it for about 15 hours on one occasion and this recording is a small part of that run. In its full form, Trellises is not intended to be listened to in the normal way, but visited a few minutes at a time, to see, so to speak, how it's getting on. In certain respects, it is always the same, but the chances of exact repetition, even if it ran for years, are very remote indeed." -- Tristram Cary
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Classical Music
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Sound recording
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