January 15, 2024
Twelve Years Project
Released three years ago today. For a while now, whenever looking back on the things that I have done in the past, I feel at least glad for just doing them, leaving behind a trail of either – hopefully – bits of beauty or mass destruction (depending on how you look at it). I hope that in hindsight things will make more sense and as it goes for these writings as well; I hope that in hindsight all things will make better sense. Here are a few words regarding the “Twelve Years, Three Months And Ten Days” project:
A 37 minute long piece of music that I composed on the beautiful Yamaha SY77 from 1989. The SY/TG series were released after the famous DX-Series but added “Advanced Wave Memory” to its synthesis engine that combined with “Advanced Frequency modulation” was called Realtime Convolution and Modulation Synthesis (RCM). Also, other features were added to the system and this merge of components gave the SY/TG series their unique character. Before I started this composition, I decided that it had to meet a small amount of conditions. First, I felt the desire to limit myself to a single instrument. Another important condition was that – although I initiated its range of possibilities – (for example the key of the piece) ; the music would partly generate itself. I knew that the envelope generator on the SY series were capable of creating loops and changing the envelope rates plus doing some experimentation resulted in an on-going and randomized output of sound when holding down the sustain pedal. I had put down some books on my pedal and started doing something else in the meantime. AWM cannot be looped by the envelope generator within the system and partly because of this; only FM-sounds are being processed in this piece of music. I added some external delay, reverb (I bypassed the internal effects) and added some automation to the tracks. The soundscape for this piece was played in the early morning on the day after I recorded the looping sequences. It was done in one take as I sat down through the whole piece and tried to respond to what I heard with some chord progressions in the key of Eb Major.
DG
