Earle Brown - December 1952

A project I undertook in the second date of my doctorate at Stony Brook University to realize Earle Brown's Decemeber 1952 electronically (through Max/MSP). The score contains horizontal and vertical lines of varying thicknesses, the horizontal ones I took to represent found metal sounds and the vertical ones electronic. The thickness represents loudness, the X position represents the sound's place in time, and the Y position represents the sound's relative pitch (playback speed in the electronic sounds). In the score, I keep scanning through all the possible X positions (0-32) and starting with the thinnest lines, I gradually add thicker and thicker lines in layers. Each time through, the sounds of each activated dynamic layer are either selected to be on or off. Once this process completes, I do the reverse. The electronic sounds are samples of radio broadcasts from December 1952 and there are additional radio disortion sounds that have random playback times throughout each layer.

dec52-maxmsp