Etude: "Chance a Choice"

We're going to create a piece in the style of Lou Harrison, who once said (re: Cage) "I'd rather chance a choice than choose a chance." You're going to pick a homogenous sounding set of instruments (metals, woods, skins, or ceramics, etc.) and incorporate ideas from Harrison's Music Primer to develop 'melodicles' (short melodic gestures).

Decide which part you want to make (fast, medium, slow) and follow the instructions accordingly. You only need to prepare one of these, but feel free to do more if you like.

Fast

  • Choose a set of 3-5 short-sounding, homogeneous instruments.

  • Use Duo (or RNG) to generate a 6-digit number

  • Develop a fast rhythmic pattern (8ths and 16th note rhythms) in correlation to each digit. For example, if one of your digits is a 4, your pattern could be one 8th note followed by three 16ths.

  • Assign the pattern out to your instruments to create a melodicle.

  • Record each melodicle at 100 bpm and submit them individually

Medium

  • Choose a set of 3-5 somewhat resonant, homogeneous instruments.

  • Use Duo (or RNG) to generate a 6-digit number

  • Develop a medium-speed rhythmic pattern (quarter and 8th note rhythms), where each digit fits into 1 measure of 4/4. For example, if your digit is 4, your pattern could be 8th, quarter, 8th, quarter rest, quarter.

  • Assign the pattern out to your instruments to create a melodicle.

  • Record each melodicle at 100 bpm and submit them individually

Slow

  • Choose a set of 1-3 very resonant or sustaining, homogeneous instruments.

  • Use Duo (or RNG) to generate a 6-digit number

  • Develop one slow-speed pattern (long tones), where each digit = how many beats (in quarter notes) a note will sustain. If you have a 0, treat that as a 4-beat rest. For example if my first three numbers were 420, I would sustain a note for 4 beats, then sustain a note for 2 beats, then rest for 4 beats.

  • Assign the pattern out to your instruments to create one very slow melodicle.

  • Record your entire melodicle from start to finish at 100 bpm and submit.

To the director:

  • Use the slow melodicle as an underlying pattern and organize the others as you see fit