Live Recording of the second diagram (of five) by Talea Ensemble, 2016.

Exploded Views was written for Talea Ensemble in 2016.

Most people are familiar with exploded views from putting together Ikea furniture: they are the diagrams that display all the individual parts separated out, showing how they may be assembled, usually via dotted lines connecting the parts. A musical phrase may be understood as a set of connected parts and an exploded view diagram can easily take on a musical quality, as the construction of an object becomes a metaphor for the construction of a musical phrase or sound object. Time and space are splayed out and this deconstruction musical phrase shows the complex inner workings that make it whole.

The idea of basing a piece of music on exploded views came from a theatrical production of How to Get Into Buildings, a play written by Trish Harnetiaux and directed by my sister, Katherine Brook. In this play, the temporal ordering of the narrative was inspired by exploded views - individual moments were spaced out in such a way as a gradual understanding of the story and characters happens gradually, and the connections of the happenings onstage emerges over time.

In extending the exploded view idea to music, I selected five diagrams, one permovement, and decided upon a few approaches on interpreting these diagrams musically. The first approach follows the basic premise of an exploded view diagram: a set of interconnecting parts that show the complete combination as well as allows for the viewing of each individual part. In musical terms, this meant separating out a “complete” musical phrase into parts that could be used like building blocks, their bare forms revealed.

A second approach is similar to transcription, where short musical objects represent this and that screw or cog in a diagram and the exploded view is composed out as if reading the diagram from left to right. The interest in this approach lay in the desire to represent the same object at different sizes and suggest connections between musician gestures that aren’t explicit.
	 The final approach is more vague and freely interpretive: a translation of the affect of the diagram as something that evokes movement through the interconnecting parts and gears. To express this mechanical nature, certain referential performance techniques, harmonies, and rhythms were called upon.

Exploded Views (Excerpt: Diagram 2)

All audio in this track is from 12 slide whistles played by 12 small electric blowers. The blowers are programmed to carefully oscillate at a flow rate close to that at which the whistles overblows. These sounds are pretty quiet in real life even though they sometimes sound intense.

No electronics were added and I made minimal adjustments to the original sounds, mostly moving things around a bit.

12 Whistles Playing the Break, for 12 mechanically controlled slidewhistles

Electronic Music in 37-limit Just Intonation (3.5.7.11.13.23.37)

created in SuperCollider 3.9.3
April-December, 2020

dedicated to Marcus Pal

large scale modulation down a fourth ("I-V")
3:4  -->  6:8:9  -->  8:11:12

PORT (Rondo for Marcus Pal)(2020)

2-channel electronic, fixed-media.
Loíza, Puerto Rico, December 25, 2020 - January 2, 2021.
"drink rain from the pulse at my throat" - text excerpted from Kim Addonizio's "Muse".

drink rain (2021)

Physically modelled performance (NotePerformer) 
Orchestral music in 13-limit just intonation
(3.3.3.3/4.3.3.1/bd.timp.harp/strings)

N.B. The very last chord is to be played "as long and accurate as possible", with multiple asynchronous reattacks in the brass and strings (in this version, there is a simple fade out due to the limitations of physical modelling etc.)

PER (2018-20)

In this week's episode, Brad Garton interviews composer Taylor Brook and multi-media artist Lara Lewison about Star Maker Fragments, the new album from TAK Ensemble, out 3/3/2021.

Lara Lewison creates audiovisual art for the web and for live performance, with a focus in networking, language, and creating live works that are dependent on exchanges between “performer" and “audience." She works with combinations of software and programming languages and has given unity workshops and lessons at Harvestworks, CUNY Tech, and Columbia. She holds a bachelors of arts in music from Columbia University and was the 2020 recipient of the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts.

Taylor Brook writes music for the concert stage, electronic music, music for robotic instruments, as well as music for video, theatre, and dance. He has worked with Ensemble Ascolta, JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Quatuor Bozzini, Talea Ensemble, and others. He has won numerous SOCAN Young Composers awards, including two first-place prizes and the grand prize in 2016 for Song, for solo cello.

Brad Garton is an American composer and computer musician who is professor of music at Columbia University. He has written, or helped to write, a number of computer music applications, including Real-Time Cmix, music synthesis and signal processing language for real time composition.

Star Maker Fragments: takensemble.bandcamp.com/album/star-m…er-fragments

Star Maker World: laar.world/starmaker/

Lara Lewison: laar.world

Taylor Brook: Taylorbrook.info

Brad Garton: sites.music.columbia.edu/brad

016. Star Maker with Taylor Brook, Lara Lewison, and Brad Garton

Excerpt from:
OUTSIDE ONLY SOUND 
The String Orchestra of Brooklyn
Fort Greene Park
Brooklyn, NY
October, 17, 2020

Complete performance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPzrgbAA--w&t=574s

Exploded Views (Excerpt: Diagram 2)

brookt

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