Carla Rees - alto flute

Sheet music available from Tetractys Publishing (versions for alto flute or C flute/bass flute available)

http://www.tetractys.co.uk/photo_10010205.html - alto flute version
http://www.tetractys.co.uk/photo_11820983.html - bass flute version


JS Bach arr. Carla Rees - Sarabande from Cello Suite No 2

Making up for a little lost time over the weekend. This was a simple Little Bits groove recorded into my phone. I thought I could use my Zoom recorder but it ran out of batteries!

Jamuary12

Threads was inspired by simple Renaissance melodic imitation techniques, specifically “stretto fuga.” I learned about the technique from the YouTube channel Early Music Sources and decided to play with it a little and see what I could make. The end result also draws on my influence from the dissonant counterpoint found in mid-20th Century American symphonists such as William Schuman. I am honored that I was asked to compose this work for the CMU flute studio!

Threads

Based on a story told on The Great Eastern. Created for my RPM Challenge in February 2025.

Four Diamonds

This sentence from the book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism has stuck with me for several years.

We Tend to Live in the Future

A sparkly and spacious quasi-improvised prelude for piano

Prelude

A piano prelude I recorded and then expanded with toy pianos and drones

Prelude (Expanded)

String quartet for French group Page Blanche, Vl, Va, Vcl, Db

Espirt Submergé - sample

Timecode-Supported Polytemporal Music and Obsessive Self-Borrowing

Marc Yeats' compositional methodology, timecode-supported polytemporal music, proposes a radical departure from traditional ensemble coordination by replacing conductors, click tracks and unified scores with embedded timecodes referenced individually by performers via mobile stopwatches. Each player follows a fully notated, through-composed part at an independent tempo, resulting in decoupled, unsynchronised layers of sound. The method embraces and manages temporal indeterminacy—termed sonic flux—by containing it within local details to preserve global structural coherence. This innovative framework supports unfolding complex, polytemporal musical environments while allowing a high degree of performative flexibility.

Central to Yeats' process is a systematic and deliberate practice of obsessive self-borrowing. This involves the constant reuse and transformation of materials from earlier works, subjected to cycles of manipulation including tempo alteration, pitch restructuring through algorithmic methods, and rhythmic splicing. Tempo transformations, often realised as controlled reductions, allow for real-time time-stretching without disturbing rhythmic proportion, enabling multiple temporalities to coexist meaningfully. While rhythm remains a fixed, autonomous framework, pitch is freely mutable, creating harmonic openness akin to isorhythmic techniques.

These transformed materials are assembled into a digital compositional model, serving as a generative source for audio and instrumental parts. The resulting structures are intentionally flexible, designed to adapt to performance contexts without sacrificing coherence. Yeats positions his work as highly subjective yet systematically developed, with each performance offering a valid realisation, even as some are preferred over others based on the alignment with his compositional expectations.

This audio is an AI-generated podcast-style, 2-host discussion of the issues above based on several sources written by Marc Yeats including from his book, Music, Painting, Landscape and Me (Vision Edition 2024) and his forthcoming book, Timecode-Supported Polytemporal Music, What it is and How to write it (Vision Edition October 2025). 


Timecode-Supported Polytemporal Composition and Obsessive Self-Borrowing

Dedicated to my dear friend and composer, Sadie Harrison

This is a timecode-supported polytemporal composition

Duration circa: 16 minutes

World premiere in Berlin of 'but rather it stems from a complex interplay' (2023) for Treble Recorder, Cor anglais, Viola, and Double Bass with XelmYa (Sylvia Hinz, Blockflöten, Freddi Börnchen, Cor Anglais, Aleksandra Demowska-Madejska, Viola, and Georgios Kokkinaris, Kontrabass) at ‘Breakdown’, Unerhörte Musik Mehringdamm 34, 10961 Berlin, Germany.



but rather it stems from a complex interplay

rarescale is a flexible-instrumentation contemporary chamber music ensemble, which since its formation by Carla Rees in 2003 has gained an international reputation for its work promoting and creating new repertoire for alto and bass flute. 

The group performs regularly in the UK and abroad and has international links with several composers. Since its formation, rarescale has premiered several hundred new works, including many written specifically for the ensemble.

rarescale runs an annual masterclass course for composers and instrumentalists, and records for its own label, with five discs currently available. Many of the pieces composed for rarescale are published by Tetractys Publishing