Terasonic, Sound and Music by Nicholas Hender

Anomalous Divergences in the Course of Fate

Inharmonic timbres are those in which the component frequencies that constitute the timbre are not integer multiples of the frequency of the timbre's fundamental pitch. Examples are drums or metal bars. I like to work with such timbres for their aesthetic qualities. This work explores a variety of these timbres, in which the relationship between the comprised frequencies has been stretched or shrunk, or what I call shrenched, away from being harmonic. When the texture of music involves chords or simultaneously sounding intervals, conventional pitch tunings don't match such timbres, so the tunings in this work are also "shrenched".

Essentially then, this work is an experiment in timbre and tuning, and the relationships between them. Both the tuning and the frequency content of the timbre are independently active, or dynamic. This results in periods of complete consonance when the tuning and timbre are matched, extreme dissonance when they're not matched, and anticipation and suspension as they transition towards or away from each other. Each scene begins with the same shrench values of timbre and tuning that the previous scene concluded with, so they crossfade neatly into each other.

Melodic and rhythmic characteristics come from stochastic algorithms seeded by user input. Execution of this work required specifically customised software. Details of the program constructed for this work are rather verbose for publication in HTML, so here is a PDF file as a more detailed explanation of shrenching, and of what the program does and how it works.

This work is also, to some level, programmatic; not in that it functions as a literal narrative, but certainly in that it has expressive purpose and intended meaning. Specific aspects of the work's structure reference the psychological states that could act as responses to possible and imaginary situations and circumstances. Again, full detail of the work's intended meaning would be cumbersome as HTML, so here's another PDF file as a description of the work's expressive purpose.

Act 2 is currently in production, and is intended to include more textural variation, more subtle and less predictable relative motion between the timbre and tuning, and extended possibilities in the generation of varied melodic material.

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