BG: A 12-tone row of F-G#-F#-A-C-B-Bb-E-C#-Eb-D-G was played into a looper pedal which was fed into a Digitech Trio. From this a bass track and a drum track were produced. The arrangement follows the row forward, then reversed, oscillating between the two states over 1 minute. Using a Mooer Shimverb, tracks of the bass transposed up a fifth and using a Rowin Octpus, up 2 octaves were created. Tracks were bounced to individual .WAV files and sent to SDF.

SDF: Started just by getting the samples available playing and focusing in on the bass notes. Going very slowly through and looping two notes at a time I wrote the pitches on paper, building up the context on graph paper, spotting patterns and speculation about what’s next, music in slow motion, taking an hour or two to crawl through a minute of sound.

At the point where the bass audio file ends I noticed that the next four notes of the repeated 12-tone row match the last four notes of the bass part in reverse, so Audacity was used to chop that bit of audio and place it backwards on the end.

Using the new bass file playing with the others (gtr*8, drms, fifths, octave) I moved to create a realtime and automatic version of the slow motion scrubbing that I had done to learn the notes. I decided to process the octave pedal part and took the time position from the gtr not continuously but as separate samples using the rhythmic pulse from the drums, and then modulated the length of a small (c. 100 ms) loop in the octave sound file. Once had this going, I made two more copies of the same and changed the first the modulation parameters, then also the speed of playing the little loops (2x and 0.5x =octaves up and down).

Having settled on two enjoyable four note sections from within the 12-tone row, i moved to writing these on graph paper and looking for who they might play concurrently. The first four-note section was E-C#-Eb-D which I played on keyboard whilst alternating the notes on the lowest two octaves: so it becomes E1-C#2-Eb1-D2 as crotchet/quarter-notes in a single bar/measure of common time. The second section taken from the original row was, when played in octaves two and three, F#2-A2-C3-B2; this being played as quaver/eighth-notes starting after a quaver rest letting the A2 onset at the same time as the C#2, and then the B2 along with the D#2. Having taken out these two sets of four, at first look the remaining four notes seemed to be spread out: F and G at the start of the row, Bb in the middle and G at the end - but, of course, the end joins on to the start so a native sequence of G3-F3-G#3 was taken. Keeping with crotchet rhythm, and letting these three notes follow in time from the previous four, the full bar is now satisfied: (rest 1) + (those 4) + (these 3) = 8. Wanting to keep the sections of tone-row intact, as far as sequentiality goes, the A# was given as an addendum to the second section, to follow after the B, but rather than have it sound at the same time as the G3, it is moved to sound in time with the D and F, thus introducing a pleasing triad at that point.

I mused on there being 1 note started, then another 1, then 2 together, then 1 again making the full pattern: 11212131 seeing the first five digits of this I recognised it as the start of the 1 12 123 1234 sequence (which for me comes from the Pythagorean Tetractys. I don’t know why but it was a surprise to see that the sum of digits in 11212131 = 12. Having added up the x-axis on the page, I thought it diligent to count the y-axis too. By now I knew this would also add up to twelve, but the grouping of 4+5+3 stood out in retrospect as being that of the smallest integer measured right-angle triangle often used to prove Pythagoras’ Theorem. (BG: The intervals within the two diads and the triad can be seen to represent major thirds in A, then B, and a A# major triad, respectively.)

So there we have it, oh, final step, reconstruction of the audio parts plus these notes via midi in Reaper using ReaSynth and a wave shaper plugin.

Artwork: a digital composite of a depiction of Caswell Bay, Gower; June 2016