Late Night

trumpet, trombone, double bass, drumset, electronic sounds, video

ensemble

trumpet Felix Riedel
trombone Paul Lüpfert
double bass Bela Bluche
drumset Jonathan Schierhorn
performance Leonard Prandini
performance Gaia Pellegrini
performance Andreas Fischer
performance Louisa Ostermann
performance Meret König

› watch on youtube
› download score

One night as I was sleeping, LAPTOP witnessed a very obscure sequence of events. It allowed me to share it with you in form of this piece. Thank you, LAPTOP!

Simon Bahr

composer

Mixtape

flute, violin, keyboard, double bass

ensemble

flute Aaron Wolharn
violin Claudia Fuller
keyboard Moena Katsufuji
double bass Bela Bluche

› watch on youtube
› download score

“Mixtape” was composed around various snippets of existing music, trying to rethink and combine them in a fluid musical continuum. They were selected by the members of the ensemble and myself and found their way into the score – in the form of very radically transformed rhythmic and melodic fragments – as well as into the electronic beats played on the keyboard – in the form of very short and unidentifiable sonic particles. Central to the composition are notated loops: They usually include an approximate instruction for each player, e.g. “increase density”, “single notes only” or “pick 1 each cycle”. Events in those loops are chosen to be played or not played by each musician in each respective cycle according to those instructions, culminating in a semi-improvised section at the end of the piece.

Well-Planned Theft

fixed audio

fixed sound

› listen on soundcloud
› download score

The piece Well-Planned Theft for stolen and synthesised sounds deals with productive piracy and looks for aesthetic potentials in the notation – in this case in itself not necessary – of electronic music. It is a stereo composition consisting mainly of sounds taken from various pop songs. These more or less short sound particles are all chosen in such a way that they do not allow any conclusion to be drawn about a specific song in terms of sound. Instead, they stand for certain sound topoi. The theft is artificial in that it is only revealed in the score – as an assertion, so to speak – but cannot be heard from the sound itself.

The initial sounds were initially described relatively precisely in a production score in the style of a bibliography. Reproducing the piece with some interpretive fuzziness would thus be possible. The temporal organisation of the sounds is then established by means of a traditional rhythm notation. The stolen sounds are augmented by some synthesis sounds.

Well-planned Theft proposes a way of notating complex electronic sounds very accurately and yet very easily by considering the entire corpus of published music as a repository of musical material that can be referenced by means of citation. Here, notation is understood less as a medium of communication and more as a compositional tool.

Well-Planned Theft was premiered at KONTAKTE Festival, Akademy of Arts Berlin, 24.09.2022.