entre cuatro paredes

for piano and live electronics. Recorded by Kati Gleiser.

Kati Gleiser, the pianist for whom I wrote Blue Traces, told me about swimming in the ocean at night and marveling at the colorful glow cast from bioluminescent plankton. Moving your arm through the water disturbs the plankton, and in response they set off a bluish trail of soft light. This image gave me the idea for the piece: the piano plays, and the computer creates gently glowing traces of sound. Near the end, everyone becomes more agitated, as if the swimmer were now splashing around and the plankton reacting with more excitement.

All the computer sound comes from live sampling of the piano performance, transformed by various kinds of granulation — a technique that can take a short sound and extend it into a long sustained note.

Blue Traces

Echoes of woodblock from Peking Opera

The piece uses the single sound material, which was a wood percussion instrument in Peking opera named ‘Bang Zi’. The composer managed to keep the cultural characteristic of the sound by manipulating the samples on various levels. With the development of textures changing from simple to complex, and the groove of the rhythmic patterns become more intensive as the development of the emotion, also, it accumulates the energy for the climax. The whole development of the piece is a metaphor of the life cycle. A man from innocent to mature, when life goes to the end, it actually turns into the beginning of a new life, it is the continuation of the past.

Echoes of woodblocks from Peking Opera

Enjoy all the beautiful things and moment in the world. Make the best music from the bottom of my heart. 

Echoes of woodblocks from Peking Opera

Mengjie Maggie QI

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