Vinyl: Mono Metal Space - "Messing - Eisen"

Special for the Vinyl release a mono metal space version has been composed and recorded at Atelier Algorythmics in 2018, using a iron and a brass plate.

Release Concert at ECHORAUM Wien: 4.12.2018 20h

Within "metal space", a series I started in 1996 that utilizes metal plates as musical instruments, "Mono Metal Space" was a new approach for solo performances, playable as a computer controlled system:

In this system, a 2x1m metal plate hung on a stand or frame is stimulated by amplifier driven modified motors used as strong transducers, and sensored by pickups. The computer controlled feedback uses digital filters and dynamics effects as signal processing to try to resonate the plates within their individual overtones. These playable feedback filters are controlled as notes by playing increasing and decreasing sounds near the composed frequencies of the notes which evokes speech and “singing-like” musical phrases in a wide range of frequencies typical of the chosen material. As a result of this arrangement, normally barely detectable resonances are produced in the musical space and create metallic-sounding multi-tonal clusters, whereby, due to the formation of formants and noise between the shifts, fast phrases and extremely slow polyphonic chords emerge from the sound plate. What initially appears as chaotic movements can soon be experienced as structured recurring patterns.

In terms of experimental music, the composition was applied without much live interventions, applied on the chosen materials, brass and iron. The plates were recorded with condenser microphones and pressed on the vinyl as is.

The composition

The purely algorithmic compositions, made up of a permutation of a 12 tone-series, are played as phrases from the computer to form a strict composition which at times seems to dissolve again through interventions of the permuted series through exaggerated resonances of the sound plates. The computer control of this "machine-like” arrangement enables the control of feedback from the sound panels by means of digital signal processing. Each side uses the same musical score, from the point of composition, interpreted with the two different metal spaces, Messing (brass) and Eisen (iron) performed by computer, where applied on Eisen the self-similar projection depth was increased.