Opaque Melodies: List of works based on the Rhythmicon

Fixed Music on Disc by David Mooney

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Rhythmiconic Sections and other Rhythmicon Works

Rhythmiconic Sections

Rhythmiconic Sections is a set of 24 short works realized with the virtual rhythmicon created with Kyma. My rhythmicon pages have additional samples and abundant information.

Rhythmiconic Sections 1998 - 2000: Recordings: Rhythmiconic Sections; Sections 1 - 7, expanding records evs9:01;
Section 14, Presence III; Performance: Suite. Music on the Edge: New Electroacoustic Music. University of
Pittsburgh, 2001; Broadcasts: BiP_HOp Generation. Radio Grenouville, Marseille, 2001; Selection.
     Where's the Beat? CKUT, Montreal, 2002; Selection and on air interview.
     Foldover, WOBC, Oberlin, 2002; Sections 1 - 7. Charmed Sounds,
     Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE Radio 1, 2003; Selection.
     WMUA, University of Masachusetts, Amherst, 2005 (several programs);
     Sections 4 - 10, 14, 17 - 18, 22. Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar, 2005;
     Sections 1 - 4.; (Individually recorded, performed, and broadcast sections indicated below.); The individual sections are:

The Rhythmicon in other works

In works composed after Rhythmiconic Sections, the rhythmicon is used in a less constrained manner, sometimes more as a structural or timing framework than as an "instrument." In the works listed, the sound and rhythmic qualities of the rhythmicon are more or less evident. Further abstraction has led to a purely structural use of the concept in the Ancient Chinese Enclosing Game Compositional Matrix.

Drawing Frogs 2000 3:44: Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; Mp3 archived at Kalvos & Damien. Look for the broadcast date: August
9, 2003.; Broadcast: Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar. 2003; Frog sounds (c) 2000 Cornell Laboratory of Ornothology, Library of Natural Sounds, Ithaca, New York. Used with permission. This was originally Section 16 of Rhythmiconic Sections. Just image a swamp. I'm hip deep in it trying to draw frogs. No luck.
American Lives and Property 2001 16:30: Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; This piece is the first of a series of works focusing on continuity and cycles that led to the Ancient Chinese Enclosing Game Compositional Matrix. In addition to musical continuity and cycles this work uses text that reveals a continuity of a different nature: the cycle of armed interventions. The text is a list of 85 such interventions that occurred from 1812 to 1932. The stated purpose of many of these interventions was along the line of "to protect American life and property." Questions such as why was there American life and property to protect in Shanghai in 1927 are left unasked. The list was compiled by the US State department as part of its justification for sending armed forces to Korea in 1950. When I started this piece the US and Great Britian had just bombed radar sites in Iraq. As I finished, 24 crew members of a US spy plane were released by China after making an emergency landing on Hainan. Two months after the piece was completed, terrorists attacked New York on September 11, 2001. So far, the response of the US has been primarily armed intervention with little or no attention given to rectifying the conditions that generated such deep hatred. Just another item on the list.; The rhythmicon was used in this work primarily for timing events. The rhythmicon measure is quite long, so the characteristic pattern heard in Rhythmiconic Sections is not obvious, but it is there.
Dogs Working in Respirators 20014 12:00: According to the British "Report on Work of Dogs when Wearing a Respirator," dated 18.8.44, the dogs were "...all quite comfortable in the [gas] mask and walk and sit without agitation." However, they were "[c]ompletely confused when asked to work...just walking around and unable to make sense of it." Don't you know the feeling?; The entire work is a single rhythmicon measure. At this length, the beats become melodic elements. The sounds were synthesized with additive synthesis in such away that the relative volumes of each sound's harmonics interplay with the larger scale of the rhythmicon's harmonics.
Positions of Effective Proximity 2002 6:00: RealAudio: 1:12; Though when he used the phrase "...position of effective proximity," Winston Churchill was referring to battleship maneuvers it seems an apt description of much music composed in the European tradition. Here many layers and layers within layers maneuver about each other in the choppy seas of frequency space passing through many kinds of proximity before resting at last in comfortable harmony with one another.; The Rhythmicon in this work varies in tempo over time. The space among harmonics expands and contracts so that most of the time they are in inharmonic relationships to one another.
Spin Cycle 2002 7:00: Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; Performance: International Computer Music Conference (ICMC2003). Singapore,
2003; It was recently asserted that all academic electroacoustic music sounds like a washing machine. This was meant as a put down. I'm not sure what "academic electroacoustic music" is but I've always been rather fond of the sound of washing machines, thus this piece, the sounds of which were derived from said appliance.; The rhytmicon can be heard in the rhythmic repetitions of sounds in the last section of this piece.
Final Assurances 2003 8:00: Recording: LARVA04: Life After College; The text for this piece, read by the composer and Maxine Heller, comes from an early 20th Century book of phrases suitable for letters and conversation. Respectfully yours...; The final assurances of the title repeat and fade to the end of the piece in the manner of the rhythmicon.
Catacoustics 2005 1:00: Broadcast: Martian Gardens, WMUA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst,
June 12, 2005; Catacousitcs: The branch of acoustics that studies echoes. Sounds provided by Wizard the Cat. Used with permission. Composed for Vox Novus's 60x60.; The timing of the sounds is based on the rhythmicon.
Pivot Seal and Gasket 2006 6:47: Depending on how you punctuate it, the title refers to some sort of machine component, a variety act (Gasket’s the dog), or instructions for a hot new dance step. Field recordings of crowd sounds are supplemented with recordings of The Incredible Space Phone (http://www.damert.com/gizmos/gizmos.html), and a wind chime constructed from nine pound window sash weights.; Timing and some pitch relationships are based on the rhythmicon.

Usage note

The sound clips on this page are protected by copyright. If you want to use them as they are, or wish to hear the complete works from which they come, please contact me. However, if you want to sample from these sound clips and mutate, permute and mutilate bits and scraps for your own creative purposes, I encourage you to do so. In the end, it's all one big project.

"Opaque melodies that would bug most people."
Don "Captain Beefheart" Van Vliet