Wildkat for electronic percussion and live electronics
- Submitting institution
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University of Keele
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 788
- Type
- J - Composition
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This work, for electronic keyboard percussion, was composed for Freiburg-based percussionist Lee Ferguson and was premiered at the Aberdeen and North-East Scotland’s Festival of Science, Engineering and Mathematics in 2019. The composition is part of an ongoing project to explore and promote the musical and technological potential of the Malletkat in the form of a practical performance handbook-cum-manual for the instrument, based on original compositions - a kind of Malletkat-Übung.
The compositional aims of the work were inspired by the MalleKat’s ‘aftertouch’ function (changing the parameters of a tone, after it is played on the instrument with physical touch).
The piece evolved from exploring ‘source-cause’ interactions, as discussed by Smalley (1997). Visual cues of striking and touching the instrument were investigated for their role in expressing a relationship between the sounding body and the cause of the sound. Further to this, the construction of a soundworld solely derived from a single sound sample of a piano string was investigated together with the harmonic variation possibilities for sustaining a piece in its entirety.
The work’s conception gives rise to a modern-day sampler, extended the use of a single piano sample into an array of musical material through the after-touch functionality of the MalletKat. As a relatively new instrument, this contribution to the repertoire reveals new possibilities for handling the harmonic world of the work via the decomposition of a sound object in two senses: firstly, the spectral components give rise to harmonic structures and secondly the sound source is treated as an objet sonore, negating its origins and used for its intrinsic characteristics, to construct the instrument. The pitch organisation uses a tuning layout, expressing the spectral components of the sound world, not subject to an equal or non- equal tempered scale, but on microtonality derived from the source’s properties.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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