list of works | home

program note:
This piece was commissioned by and written for the pianist Yoshiko Shibuya, for piano and electronic sound. The electronics part is programmed and performed with a Macintosh computer and Max/MSP software, and interactive expansion of musical materials which made full use of real-time digital signal processing technique is realized.
____The piano sound performed on the stage is taken into the computer through microphones and analog-to-digital converter in an instant. By adding mathematical processing to this digital signal data, the tone of piano is changed variously. Then it is converted to voice signal again, and is output from loud speakers in real-time. Moreover, the sound quantity, dynamics and spectrum ingredient of piano performance are also simultaneously analyzed by the computer. The electronics part is programmed as that the result of analysis affects the kind and degree of signal processing. That means, the electronics part has plasticity and will change with a pianist’s performance nuance each time. On the other hand, some of the electronic sound which require such complicated processing that it is unrealizable in real-time, or obbligato materials are made and edited based on sampling materials from the piano part performed in advance. These prepared sounds are stored on the computer’s memory and played synchronically with the piano performance.
____The relation between piano and electronics is compared to one indivisible new musical instrument, and also independent parts in an ensemble. The pianist goes back and forth these two poles such expanded solo and duo, and creates “new sound space”.
____The whole sound = cluster which contains small particles of sound which vibrates at high speed, is drawn as a motif of the piece. It moves gently macroscopically, and shows keen contrast sometimes. In the notation of the piano part, a filter processing was applied for the elements, such as a specific pitch and quantity. Thus, the piano part as the main axis which constitutes the cluster takes on various colors by which the piece is characterized. Moreover, the electronics part is designed on the time-axis according to filter processing in frequency domain.