Gymnopedie Number 1

Gymnopedie Number 1

by Richard Bettis

Composed by: Eric Satie

This is a straight transcription of a piano score into AMPLE, converted to three parts, which are inherent in the music itself - a simple bass line, a chordal backing and the single line melody. I have used a couple of techniques which may be of use elsewhere.

The bass part is "double voiced", with an "Upright" and a new voice, "lowend" to add a bit of "buzz" to the bass notes. I could have written this into a single 4 CHANS voice, but have used a very short Echo to thicken up the voice. This makes up for the lower level of the "lowend" voice, and adds body.

The melody line moves much faster than the other parts - though the whole piece is hardly "up-tempo"!! - and it would cut off the end of the "Upright" envelope if a single voice was used. Consequently, I used two voices and alternated the voice which sounded. The slight overlap between notes does seem to add to the atmosphere created.

I did all this by hand once the melody part had been transcribed - by adding "/( )" around every second note and being very grateful for the fact that a "non-mention" of a chord VOICE is interpreted as a hold. I have since discovered a much better method using the ACT command. (Editor's note - a feature on this will appear in the next issue of AMPLINEX.)

<"|"> A Yoftunes Project

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Implementation & Text: (C) Richard Bettis, Dec. 1987