There & Back is a set of images designed as a visual counterpart
to Two Hockets, a piece for two recorders and maracas. The images are
to be triggered from a MIDI keyboard and beamed onto a screen placed
behind the musicians.
The examples on the left are from a fixed version in which both images and sounds have been triggered from MIDI files and saved as a QuickTime movie.
Two Hockets
The technique of hocketing presupposes equality on the part of the participants. Unlike a melody and its accompaniment the one cannot exist independently of the other.
The alteration of left and right feet that is used to enable some of the more complicated rhythms that accompany Nyanga panpipe music prompted me to consider replacing the more or less regular alternation that occurs in Medieval hockets with one that is less predictable and that, while not making actual use of cross rhythms, incorporates something of the peculiar feeling that is associated with the rhythmical ambiguity of the panpipe dances.
The Nyanga panpipe players also alternate cycles of playing with ones in which they remain silent while the accompanying dances continue. A lack of such 'breathing space', while effective in the case of Zimbabwean Mbira music (in which the aim of the music is to induce a state of trance and evoke ancestral spirits), often leaves the ear bombarded, as is the case with much minimalist music in which the use of continuous processes demand an uninterrupted texture.
In the 'Two Hockets' I have thus introduced 'breathing points', at gradually decreasing time intervals in the first and gradually increasing ones in the second, to textures that combine the predictability of simple pitch patterns with a constantly shifting and therefore less predictable rhythmic structure.
The examples on the left are from a fixed version in which both images and sounds have been triggered from MIDI files and saved as a QuickTime movie.
Two Hockets
The technique of hocketing presupposes equality on the part of the participants. Unlike a melody and its accompaniment the one cannot exist independently of the other.
The alteration of left and right feet that is used to enable some of the more complicated rhythms that accompany Nyanga panpipe music prompted me to consider replacing the more or less regular alternation that occurs in Medieval hockets with one that is less predictable and that, while not making actual use of cross rhythms, incorporates something of the peculiar feeling that is associated with the rhythmical ambiguity of the panpipe dances.
The Nyanga panpipe players also alternate cycles of playing with ones in which they remain silent while the accompanying dances continue. A lack of such 'breathing space', while effective in the case of Zimbabwean Mbira music (in which the aim of the music is to induce a state of trance and evoke ancestral spirits), often leaves the ear bombarded, as is the case with much minimalist music in which the use of continuous processes demand an uninterrupted texture.
In the 'Two Hockets' I have thus introduced 'breathing points', at gradually decreasing time intervals in the first and gradually increasing ones in the second, to textures that combine the predictability of simple pitch patterns with a constantly shifting and therefore less predictable rhythmic structure.