Günther Rabl - Werke 9
€6.00 - €12.00
Günther Rabl - Werke 9
€6.00 - €12.00
ccr 409
miscellanous tape music and computer music (1989-95)
1-4 4 SKIZZEN / 4 sketches 11:58
5 STEINBUTT-VARIATIONEN / variations on a poem by Laszlo Steinbutt 9:50
6 IMPS 4:28
7 DER ARME SPIELMANN / the poor gleeman 11:20
8 VON ANDEREN SONNEN / by other suns 7:37
9 PHANTASIE ÜBER DEN GOLDENEN SCHNITT / fantasy on the Golden Mean 4:41
total 50:25
4 SKIZZEN (4 sketches)
Schwellungen / Gestade / Kaskaden / Schlauch und Rohr
(swellings / surge / cascades / hose and tube)
source: analog tape 1/2" 15ips mono (1990)
basic material: speedups of various recordings [1-3], recordings of iron tubes and a garden hose [4]
methods: analog transformation, tape-editing
tools: analog devices designed by Georg Danczul
When one finishes a larger work, there is always something left over: material, attempts, splinters …
In my way of working it was tape reels full of sounds, motifs, developments of motifs, series of transformations and all kinds of in-between material. There is a lot that didn’t find its way in this form into the actual composition. Many fragments recall possible side lines, stand for the lost part of decisions, are reminders of a ‘lost music.’
In 1989 I began a long-term project in which I not only go back to such material, but also to the ideas and an attitude to life that is connected to them that is repeatedly awakened when I listen to the old tapes: ‘memories of a lost music.’
Four sketches have been created since then, all of them put on tape with simple but fundamentally analogous means, and, corresponding to the spirit of the music, that create their own space: mono!
SCHWELLUNGEN (SWELLINGS)
A dull, unlocatable sound swells up and down four times, and is dissolved in the intermittent phases into pattering – an archaic signal.
GESTADE (SHORE)
Inexorably rolling waves. In the middle they suddenly open a ‘view’ into an inclusion: the transformation of an instrumental improvisation in eight-fold speed. Like from great heights one listens to the distant goings on.
KASKADEN (CASCADES)
Aggressive, organ-like sounds, which continually rushing cascades plunge downward from, soon fill the whole sound space. In the middle again an inclusion, this time, a street scene in multiple speed.
SCHLAUCH UND ROHR (HOSE AND PIPE)
A rhythmic motif drummed on a garden hose in different overlays (odd-numbered polyrhythmic proportions) creates a furious atmosphere right from the beginning. Heavy beats from the sound of iron pipes banged together shift the rhythmic pattern until only a unison of the rhythm with its inverted time remains.
STEINBUTT-VARIATIONEN (variations on a poem by Laszlo Steinbutt)
source: analog tape 1/2" 15ips stereo (1993)
basic material: extempore by Dieter Feichtner 1978
methods: digital transformation and editing
tools: NMS4
IMPS
source: analog tape 1/2" 15ips 4-ch (1991),
stereo-mix 2004
basic material: computer-simulation of a sqare membran (at 8khz sampling rate);
methods: controlled random;
tools: NMS4
The title stands for ‘Impulse Synthesis,’ but also literally means ‘imps’ – was a composition commissioned for the soundmobile of the Salzburg architect Otto Beck: 4 bicycles equipped with speakers, amplifiers and a playing device.
The piece is thus conceptualized for a performance in the open, strictly speaking, in the streets of a city, and accordingly crudely wrought. This crudeness is to be understood as sculptural; no technical flaw, but rather as a precondition for an unfolding of the sound in such spatial relationships. (It will eternally remain uncomprehensible to brainwashed hi-fi sound technology).
The synchronization of the four components also has a large scope which tolerates the different durations of the sounds of the arbitrarily spatially distant soundmobile.
Archaic drumming begins by and by from all four sides, interrupted by long-drawn arcs of sound, which, in contrast to the scattered drum sounds, meld into an entity. They build an almost static cupola of sound in the middle, which, in the end, is again dissolved by the initial drumming.
All of the sounds originate from an impulse generator according to the frequential scheme of a rectangular membrane that I developed at the end of the eighties – one of the first modules of my composition software NMS4.
DER ARME SPIELMANN (the poor gleeman)
source: analog tape 1" 15ips dbx 5-ch (1995), stereo-mix 2004
basic material: recording of a waterfall in the mountains of Salzburg
methods: digital resonances and distortions
tools: FFTBOX, NMS4
"… what he played was an incoherent sequence of tones, without measures and melody.
He was totally absorbed in his work: the lips trembled, the eyes were fixedly aimed at the sheet of music in front of him – yes, a true sheet of music! ..."
(from Franz Grillparzer: Der Arme Spielmann)
The piece is indeed an idyll. An introductory chord dissolves over the course of ten minutes into a peaceful rippling. Against this background the 'poor gleeman' goes about his self-absorbed activity.
Here we are dealing with a virtual string instrument that is 'played' by the rhythmic aspects of the rippling in the background.
THE POOR FIDDLER is a sideline of the work on KATHARSIS and can also be used as an alternative last part instead of the GREAT FUGUE.
VON ANDEREN SONNEN / by other suns
is the music to the eponymous slide series by Renate Porstendorfer (together with music by Dieter Feichtner, Wolfgang Musil, Gottfried Martin, Martina Cizek and Guy Fleming).
The images are landscape shots, for the most part on special films. It is my first musical work with the computer, mainly sounds that were generated with my string model.
PHANTASIE ÜBER DEN GOLDENEN SCHNITT / fantasy on the Golden Mean
source: analog tape 1/2" 15ips mono (1989)
basic material: computer-simulation of a resonating string (at 8/16khz sampling rate)
is the second part of it, likewise to a slide series (“Kothores”) by Renate Porstendorfer. All the parameters of a virtually prepared string (string tension, initiation, volume, rhythm) are designed according to proportions in the golden mean.