String Sequence

Music:

Title:

String Sequence

Dates:

06-Feb-2025 (inception), 06-Feb-2025 (finalised), 07-Feb-2025 (released)

Artists:

Music composed, performed, produced by Norman Freund

Artwork by Norman Freund

Keywords: Electronic, orchestral, poly meter, experimental

Description:

Isomorphic keyboards, stringed instruments, arpeggios and patterns, all played their part for the inspiration of "String Sequence".

Isomorphic musical keyboards have the property that any one collection of notes (chord, harmony) form a pattern and that pattern remains constant regardless if all those notes are transposed by an equal amount. The bowed string instruments, like violins, violas, cellos and double basses, have their strings tuned by the same interval, a perfect fifth. So any pattern on one string can be applied to all other strings, to give the same harmony but transposed by a number of perfect fifths. So these stringed instruments have an isomorphic fret board.

Whilst noodling on my violin I came across some nice isomorphic string patterns, repeated one fifth apart.

Initially as a training aid but then developed into a self standing sequencer instrument, I built a midi sequencer in Max to accept a sequence of three notes, the user specifies the intervals between them, the sequencer then repeats this for each virtual string tuned a perfect fifth apart. The duration of the note in milliseconds and when the next note comes in are also controlled by the user, along with the initial volume or velocity. Each new note is then attenuated by a set user amount.

I used a bell instrument to try out the sequencer, rather than entering note names for each note to be played, string instrument style, once the root note is selected, it's all relative semi-tone intervals, just like on a stringed instrument fret board. I then experimented with what sequences of semi-tone intervals worked well together and the moods they gave. I wrote down the sequences that I liked, this formed the palette for this composition.

The timing of notes was specified at the millisecond level, not at a music bar or beat level. I like poly meter compositions, so thought what if I take two copes of the master sequence, but play each copy at different rates, and choose a different octave for each copy, forming three bell tracks? Here the durations between note starts for the three bells tracks was 145 ms, 171ms and 121 ms; those are not even multiples of each other, so they will only repeat a combined pattern in every 145x171x121 milliseconds = 50 minutes.

Because of this uneven timing of the bell tracks, there will be a shifting of harmonies as time progresses. The next step was to creatively modulate the volume of the three bell tracks, fading one in, whilst another was fading out. This was done live on the Ableton Live Push2 midi controller. The sound produced is perhaps reminiscent of church bells ringing out from different locations and as the listener walks through the town, different groups of bells become more prominent as others fade out.

The three sequenced bell tracks formed the back drop of harmony. For the first movement, the three sequenced bell tracks used the same harmonic sequence, a virtual string instrument plays over this with slow moving harmonies, an improvisational performance. Even though the composition was recorded in a 4/4 time signature at 120 beats per minute, no counting or click track was used, the bell sequences provided the timing. And here is the interesting bit, because there was a shifting of volume levels for each bell sequence track, there was a shifting of the perceived timing, between 145, 171 and 121 ms per beat; or some thing in-between!

For the second movement, I introduced shifting note sequence intervals and as before, a shifting of volume levels for the three sequenced bell tracks. This time, the another bell instrument took the lead melodic role, again an improvisational performance.