1980 Computer Symphony is inspired by synthesizers from the 1980s and the way electronic music tended to sound at the time. I wanted to make a series of pieces that utilizes laptop performance and tells a sort of progression, going from peaceful to gradually more intense and experimental, even though I would consider the piece pretty experimental in general (what do you think)?
The first movement is made to create tranquility and peacefulness and very much influenced by Yoko Ono and Morton Subotnick. I created a synthesizer in pd-l2ork that can be manually controlled with mouse and keyboard and trigger the synth to play a sequence of notes, altering the speed of the sequence, the timbre of the instrument, and other digital signal processing like reverb and filtering on the fly to create a cohesive piece. Although the piece may seem improvised (even though certain elements may change performance to performance), the piece is structured through a score of text suggestions that I follow while performing. This movement is super fun to perform and it has small room for error compared to the rest of the movements, as long as you have a solid idea of what the structure of the piece will be.
The full score of the mvt. 1 is below. This is what I was reading off of while performing it, and while it is not notated traditionally, I feel this is the best kind of score for an open improvisatory piece like this. The score, even though it only has instructions, is detailed enough for one to understand how the piece’s structure should be. I would be interested in seeing someone else perform this piece as well, as the interpretation would make it a completely different piece.
I highly recommend composing a piece like this if you have not before.
1980 Computer Symphony Mvt. 1 Score
Stay tuned for more of the movements to come!
