This piece sort of just came to me.  I notated 16, one measure phrases in 5/4 and labeled them 1-16.  I then created six staves for six pianos (although frankly the instrument doesn't matter I suppose it could be performed on a combination of things as long as they have the appropriate range).  I grouped my 16 phrases or cells as they are often called in three groupings.  A grouping of 6 Alto ranged cells, 6 tenor/bass ranged cells, and 4 soprano ranged cells.  I then assigned each group a number of 1,2,or 3.  I rolled a dice until it landed on 1,2,3,or six with six indicating a blank cell.  I would then again roll a dice and pick it's corresponding cell (the soprano ranged cells i simply rolled until i got a number 1-4).  I would then roll the dice one final time to measure duration.  Logic would arrive to the conclusion that each cell or empty cell would last no longer than 6 measures and no shorter than 1 measure.  I wanted my imagination to sort of trump chance at times to adjust parameters.  Sometimes I would roll the dice and create a sort of equation for "skipping patterns."  I rolled the dice twice for one duration measurement to fulfill the following equation, "cell (x) will occur every (1st roll number of) measures for the next (second roll ) number of measures.  I also would opt to roll the dice twice to fulfill the following duration requirement every now and then (it's art it isn't exact!) "Empty cells will last for (first roll) multiplied by (the second rolls).

I

Just Go With It

This short piano prelude is intended to be an impressionistic work depicting sea gulls.  I was listening to Debussy's Preludes book I, Voiles (sails) as I looked at my sister's photos of sea gulls, she snapped while on a North Carolina beach, when I got the urge to try this thing.  I used a whole tone 0 scale and harmonic relationships of chromatic mediants to paint an image of birds discovering food.  A single bird finds food in the sand and calls his flock.  The birds respond distantly and they chatter for a while until they land with a chaotic flutter.  The birds quickly devour whatever morsel of food was once there and disappear as quickly as they came.

The photos can be found here. http://photos.yellowrubberball.com/

If you didn't think I was insane before, you do now.

W. Art Benedetto

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