Serial Parameter Shift by Nate Trier

Members of the Distractfold ensemble selected this piece to be included on the album, "historage," which was distributed to participants at the 2016 Darmstadt summer music institute.

This composition is a response to Marta Gentilucci's piece, "Radix Ipsius." I wanted to maintain the characteristic elements of Radix Ipsius but apply them, recontextualized, to my own. In a method I could call “serial parameter shifting” (for lack of a better name!), I made a grid that analyzed each section by tone length, texture, pitch variation, density, sound source, and order. I then shifted each row of characteristics to the right or left, at first manipulating them to fulfill my desire to make a woodblock become sustained chords, and then letting the rest of the characteristics follow the pattern of the woodblock adjustments.

The tonal content comes from a frequency analysis of striking a woodblock. The frequencies matched, roughly, an augmented fourth and then a half step. up I played around with the idea of a perfect fifth that has a minor second hanging onto it like a bump. Maybe the perfect fifth is trying to brush off the minor second and flick it away?