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 --Piano Encore with Visualization |
The Aesthetic Components of Edge
The edges in this piece are physical, aural, visual and conceptual.
For example, the piano has an edge….a physical edge. If you extend your hands to the extreme ends of the keyboard, they come to an edge, beyond which, they fall off the piano. This piece of music gradually pushes the hands to the extreme edges of the piano. The best place to watch a performance of this piece would be directly above the pianist, where the placement of the hands will define the edges established by the music. From the overhead position it would be possible to observe the gradual extension of those edges during the course of the piece.
Each phrase of music has an edge. At the beginning of this piece, the edges are very close, barely a note apart, first as a hammered grace note, then as a trill. Those edges gradually expand … to the left, to the right, outward, then collapsing back, and outward again.
Certain sounds on the piano can have a distinctive edge to their quality. The very first notes in this piece are so close together they produce a sharp edge, which in musical terminology is called dissonance. As the piece progresses, this dissonance abates, and the edges becomes less sharp and more mellow.
The shapes of notes on the score have an edge. In music, this is called a “phrase” or a “line.” The edges of the phrase, as manifested in the printed notes on the score, form an arc, or a straight line (horizontal or vertical), or a jagged line composed of leaps from note to note.
With the addition of the visual component, the manifestation of the "edge concept" includes the physical sides of the screen and the shape and placement of the images.
The first image -- disregarding the title placed at the edge of the screen --is a straight line, the simplest edge. The first notes of the piece are placed towards the middle of the keyboard and are so close together they form a very distinct edge, both physically and aurally. As the notes expand the aural edges, the images move outward from the single, vertical line, thereby extending the visual edge. Within the first few moments of the piece, the visual edges change orientation from horizontal to vertical, and the surrounding braces place an artificial edge on an area of the screen that is defined only for a moment. The visual edge is in flux.
Visual edges can also be found in the horizontal and vertical striations of colors. For example, in the middle of the piece there is a large, moon-shaped background that is graded in to multiple shades of the same color. The edges of each shade are clearly visible.
Where one thing begins and another ends, there is an edge.
Live Performance with Visualization
This music is designed for live performance with accompanying graphics. The imagery responds in real time to live piano sounds via a computer visualization program called G-Force. The Platinum version of G-Force is available for both Mac and PC users and can be downloaded for $30 at http://www.sounddspectrum.com.
The G-Force software serves as graphic engine into which customized components are loaded.
The custom components containing all of the shapes and timing cues for Edge are provided with the purchase of the printed score. The user installs the basic G-Force engine on their computer, connects a microphone to the computer to activate the visual components, loads the custom scripts we provide into the G-Force engine, and plays the piano to which the visuals will respond in real time. In other words, the visuals respond to the music input while the music is being played. If there is no sound, there is no visual output from the software program. The imagery can be seen on a computer monitor or projected onto a larger screen.
A complete tutorial demonstrating the use of the visualization program can be found on this website.
Performance time for Edge is approximately 3 minutes 25 seconds.
Watch Edge
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QuickTime (.mov) format Flash Movie (.mp4) format Real Player (.rm) format Windows Media Player (.wmv) format |
Excerpts from the score for Edge can be seen using the links below.
Excerpt 1
Score - Measures 1-23 - PDF format
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3
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Edge
Piano Score with Visualization Files... $9.95
(Does not include the visualization software program G-Force. The G-Force program is sold separately from the Sound Spectrum website at http://www.soundspectrum.com)
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Piano Implications. Includes Edge and 5 other scores for Piano.
Scores with CD... $11.95
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