Two Chaconnes by Scott William Perry

These two pieces are entirely governed by a sequence of subharmonic ratios. This sequence is: 4/3, 16/11, 8/5, 16/13, 8/7, 32/17. The large scale structure consists of chords that proceed in that sequence. The chords are said intervals stacked up to the comma for each interval. I have also placed feint sine waves in each chord section that anticipate the next chord. So, while the 4/3 chord is running, there is a 16/11 chord underneath.

These pieces even makes use of the sequence in the microsonic time scale. For each chord, there are 1,296 ca. 2-3.5" variations in each voice of the chord. I only made use of four parameters in Emission Control 2; Grain Rate, Playback Rate, FM applied to Playback Rate, and Grain Duration. The mechanics of the variation are akin to a briefcase combination lock. For each position in the lock the sequence is run. In other words, Grain Rate is changed 6 times for each chord, Playback Rate is changed 36 times, Frequency Modulation is changed 216 times, and Grain Duration 1,296 times.

While the generation of the material for the piece is very algorithmic, the organization of it was not so much. I placed each voice in the piece according to my own tastes and most of the outside time composition of the piece was also done according to taste.

These two Chaconnes are made of the same source sounds and procedures. The main difference between the two pieces is that in the second, the parameter changes are continuous between variations. These very long continuous changes, as far as I can tell, are not possible in Emission Control 2. So, I enlisted help from Windsurf to create custom granular synthesis software. The results from the custom software have a slightly different sound than the results from Emission Control 2.

AI was also used in the generation of sounds in the first Chaconne. I used it to control parameter changes in Emission Control 2 through OSC. It should be well noted that while I used Windsurf to write code for me, it was not used to make any creative decisions for me.

Scott Perry earned his PhD in music composition from UCSB in 2019. He holds a BA from UCSB (CCS), a MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a MA from UC Davis. His teachers include Beverly Grigsby, Jeremy Haladyna, Kurt Rohde, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Ulrich Krieger, Pablo Ortiz, Mika Pelo, David Rosenboom, Curtis Roads and Clarence Barlow.

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