Through the use of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) input and playback, computers are capable of musical experiences previously impossible. A computer reading MIDI commands is able to jump multiple octaves with little effort, play thousands of notes at a time spanning the entire hearable sonic spectrum, all with perfect intonation and perfect rhythm. These sorts of features are very natural to computers, yet other elements like phrasing, dynamics, and articulation which are instinctual to living musicians are foreign to a computer. These new norms create a new set of guidelines for writing music, hence the idea of “computerpoint” was born. For these pieces, I did not allow any changes in dynamics, tempo, or articulation, but placed no limit on number of voices, tonality, range, or meter. While dynamics are against the rules, the increase in volume due to an increase in texture and voices is perfectly acceptable; any illusion of dynamics is achieved through this. Likewise, the illusion of accents is achieved through the doubling of notes on the same pitch (a concept fairly foreign to acoustic instruments, but wholly natural to a computer.)

WAVES

This minimalist movement features the saw wave. I was at a bit of a loss of how to write this movement for a good long while; saw waves are inherently aggressive and can be tiring to listen to for extended periods of time. But I had been wanting to write some heavily-minimalistic music for a good while, so I decided to use this piece to that end. The interest of this piece comes from its polyrhythmic nature; after firmly establishing 3 as the primary rhythm at the beginning, a few minutes in, a new pattern comes in accenting 2. Next, a bass rhythm comes in accenting 4. Slowly the patterns expand; at one point the arpeggios grow to four note groups and everything lines up nicely with 4 and 2 rhythms, but then the arpeggios grow to five notes and we have 5 over 4. At the end, there is 2 over 6 over 7 over 16. The neat thing is that your ear can only really understand one rhythm at a time, so if you find yourself getting bored, trying latching your ear onto a different grouping, it’s fun! The name is a visual pun because of the way the URL prefix WWW resembles a saw wave.

Waves

WWW.

This joyful movement features the square wave. The piece is written in a large binary form with each A divided into three thematic sections. The tonality is very folk-based with lots of open chords, 4ths, and 5ths. Of the three, this piece was written with the least attention to style and is the most organically “Caleb” of the suite. The name of the movement is a pun: Felicity Squared

Felicity^2

This baroque-esque movement features the sine wave. Interestingly, I began this piece before college, but did not finish it till senior year. I have always thought that sine waves sounded similar to pipe organs; in that train of thought, this piece was written to mimic a baroque contrapuntal style. But since tuning is no issue with computer generated sound, the use of parallel perfect intervals is perfectly acceptable. The piece features a large ternary form (ABA) beginning with a theme, transitioning to a large development section, then recapping the main theme. Be sure to listen for the return of the A theme towards the end! Seeing as this movement is the most contrapuntal of the three, this movement is named after the style: ComputerPoint

ComputerPoint

A celebration of tonic, I hope these make you smile :)

WAVES

WavePunk