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Joey BargstenUnstable Music (2008) - electronic score by Joey Bargsten

More projects by the composer • Digital Media Projects • DVDs by the composer

Unstable Music (2008) is an electronic work by Joey Bargsten. In discussing the work, the composer writes:

"The disquisition on my music focuses on the relationship of stable and unstable elements.

Stable Elements: The central, apollonian structure of all my music after 1985 is the 'Hexagrams of Trichords' matrix of 64 collections of 12 trichords. It is primarily applied to pitches and/or durations, although there have been methods of applying the structures to other parameters (dynamics, instrument groups/instruments/timbres, idiosyncratic gestures, and articulations). These further intrusions of structure generally do not interest me at this time.

Unstable Elements: Beyond parametric control, larger aspects of form are achieved through processes that involve randomness: shuffle mode in iPod based works, random events and random time interval between events in Flash-based media works, including random notation (and narrative) generation, in earlier works such as Web Symphony™' (1999-2000), Anatomy of Melancholy™' (2005), and BEEST OPERA™ (in progress).

Between Stable and Unstable lies the heterogenaity of multiple organizing tempi. making parts fiercely independent, but also making it nearly impossible to map out consistent harmonic tendencies. Hence, my ongoing antagonism with conventional printed notation, performative institutions, publication (as well as other forms of vetted musical accomplishment), and the ever morphing notion of 'musical style'.

In 'Unstable Music' , the idea of musical style usually expressed as vast, decades-long ripplings of culture (the baroque, romanticism, post-modernism, the blues, ad infinitum) is evoked as syncretically integrated microsonic, parametric, and gestural events in an electronic landscape, devoid of illustrative references. This is a look at the DNA of analog musical style through the cold, observer-less lens of digital synthesis and signal processing. In spite of that, there is a lovely vocal coda that provides a further contradictory view of the previous 30 minutes: a reminder that we are all rather fragile, biological filters of experience, unable, ultimately, to break out of limited systems of culture and perception. Those who are able to briefly glimpse the unity, rather than the variety, are often persecuted, ignored, or institutionalized (or worse, celebrated).

'Unstable Music' was my last stand-alone work before beginning another huge and unmanageable digital media opera, BEEST OPERA (in progress)."

More music from the composer can be found on archive.org here; digital media projects are all linked here , and DVDs of digital cinema projects and further documentation are available here.


This audio is part of the collection: Open Source Audio

Artist/Composer: Joey Bargsten
Keywords: unstable; music; unstable music; bargsten; Joey Bargsten; electronic; electronic music; experimental; experimental music

Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0

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