for string quartet and viola (or 5-string violin) with laptop
2003 ⤥ 8′
I don’t usually get technical in program notes, but here goes… Traps is a delicate exploration of a simple process I call “traps.” A trap is a way of forcing whatever note I play to be transposed to a single pitch (or set of pitches); while I play, the computer remembers that last couple seconds of what I have played and then, depending on the note that I play, transposes it’s memory to the “trap” pitch. So, for instance, when the trap is a high F, if I play an A below that, the “trap” will, some short time later, transpose my remembered A up a minor-sixth, so it sounds a high-F. The only “problem” is that sometimes the trap’s memory might be long enough to remember other pitches I had played prior to the A, say, a low open D-string, so that D will also get transposed up a minor-sixth, to B-flat, yielding a not-quite-simultaneous sonority D-Bflat-A-F. This is precisely how Traps begins, and it continues slowly through a series of ascending traps, some of which are single notes, others two-note traps.
Traps was written in the opening days of the 2nd Gulf War; March 2003. Shocked and awed, indeed. Traps was premiered in the Fall of 2003 with the Brentano String Quartet and recorded with the Daedalus String Quartet.
As performed by the Daedelus Quartet and Dan Trueman:
Score and Performance Materials
score
parts
software (standalone and source)
materials are ©2003 Many Arrows Music, All Rights Reserved
software released under a GNU Public License (GPL)
Performance Rights licensed by ASCAP
for Synch and Mechanical licensing information: email.