excerpt from the score Piano Squared Rob Canning 2009

My latest piece for solo or multiple pianos Piano Squared (working title) is very nearly finished so I have made a page for it. There is still a little work to be done on it but i am putting the current state of drafts online for feedback from potential performers. The piece can be performed by a soloist or by multiple piano players with or without tape and/or live electronics. The duration is variable as are many other elements of the work. The suggested duration range is between 15 minutes and <1 hour  It is part of the same series of magic square works as melencolia for string quartet which was recently giving its Finnish Premiere by the contempo string quaret. One potential goal at the moment is to collect as many different realisations from as many performs as i can and then to produce a CD/DVD of the results. For full details and to examine the documentation as it stands click this link

Kyklos has been included in the selection of the Assosciation of Irish composers for next years national entry to the ISCM 2010 World Musc Days in Sydney, Australia. The 2010 ISCM World New Music Days are taken place April 30th to May 9th 2010 in Sydney – Kyklos was composed using only FLOSS (puredata, lilypond, bash)

The selected works are:

Deirdre McKay            Commendo spiritum meum               chamber choir

John Buckley               as far as the eye can see                   ob,asax,hn,pf

Karen Power               Just one girl playin’ around                 cello+tape

Rob Canning               Kyklos                                                 string octet

Jane O’Leary               riverrun                                                sax quartet

Rhona Clarke              Two Marian Anthems                          chamber choir

12th July 2009 – Time of Music, Finland

The AIC is promoting Irish composers at the Time of Music Festival, Viitasaari, Finland. The ConTempo string quartet will perform on Sunday, July 12th 2009. This concert is part of AIC’s international exchange concert series, which is once again on this occasion assisted by Culture Ireland. The concert is part of an exchange that will include a visit to Ireland of Finnish ensemble Uusinta, in either 2009 or 2010. See www.timeofmusic.org , www.uusinta.com , www.cultureireland.gov.ie For details on ConTempo see www.galwayensemble.ie

The Venue in Viitasaari is the School Centre. Concert takes place under the title ‘Play of Shadows’ at 3pm with the following programme:

Donnacha Dennehy: Pushpulling
Jane O’Leary: Mystic Play of Shadows
Rob Canning: Melancolia I
Jennifer Walshe: Minard/nithsdale
Grainne Mulvey: Entropy
Rhona Clarke: Pas de Quatre
John McLachlan: Lament (movement IX from string 4tet No. 2)

5! for Solo Percussion is the first of a series of computer assisted composition studies which use the perl scripting language as the main tool. 5! or 5 factorial means every possible combination of 5 things in this case that means 120 different permutations of 5 elements (percussion) – an interesting study for percussion using a sequence of patterns that are never repeated, there is a health dose of indeterminacy in parameters other than duration and note order allowed – a pretty tricky piece to play….

"5! for undefined percussion" duration ~14'

this piece is based on a sequence of 5 elements which are alternated in every possible way – how many different ways can 5 things be arranged? – 5×4x3×2x1=120

this is the also know as five factorial in mathematical notation 5! hence the title.

we have 5 drums called a b c d e

element 1 = [a a]
element 2 = [b]
element 3 = [c]
element 4 = [d]
element 5 = [e e]
so the initial set is
aa b c d ee
then the first permutation is
aa b c ee d
and so on through the 120 possible variations

these 120 variations are then mapped on to a repetitative rhythmic structure which comprises the variation followed by its retrograde.(there are also some complex “kinks” in this system – which dont need to be gone into here.)

this means the piece never repeats a pattern through out its duration -this makes it tough on the brain to play…

the piece comprises three sets of such permutations mapped on to three different rhythmic structures

A constant 16th notes

B more complex rhythmic structure

A’ simple rhythmic structure

the piece has no other structural markers, such as loud queit loud structures and so on – the perfomer may impose these structures on the piece them self
- my role as a composer in this piece is to present a set a of naked mathodical
variations and a basic rhythmic outline and leave the rest up to the performer. dynamic structure could be imposed on the piece variations in accents could be improvised or composed on top of the piece at the moment there are some articulations and attacks on the piece – perhaps these should be removed and left entirely up to the perfomer/arranger/co-composer even the instrumentation is left up to the performer – its just for 5 things these could be a set of tom toms, a bunch of scrap metal.. whatever!
it could even be multiple sets of 5 things which are alternated

section 1 – 5 tom toms
section 2 – 5 pieces  of assorted scrap
section 3 – 5 pitches of a vibraphone

or the instruments could be alternated on a more free level – 12 bars of this set, 9 bars of that set, 15 bars of the next set and back to 12 bars of the first set… whatever… its completely up to the performer in this way the composition is a completly collaboative arrangement where the performer prepares a version and shares authorship of that version with the composer. The idea is to keep it as “free” as possible – that freedom also extends to the way it is copyrighted.  It is released under a copyleft licence http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/
which means any derivative version may be made from the piece so long as this is also released under the same licence.

the code is viewable here:

https://code.goto10.org/svn/rob/the-five-compositions/5forpercussion/sgen.pl

and the pdf score is downloadable here:

https://code.goto10.org/svn/rob/the-five-compositions/5forpercussion/output/score.pdf

http://linz.linuxwochen.at/en/programm/2009/kyklos

for more information on kyklos go to its webpage

kyklos web page

Melencolia I will be performed in July in The Time of Music Festival in Finland

More details can be found here: http://www.musiikinaika.org

Su/Sun 12.7. | 15.00 Koulukeskus In fretta, in vento ConTempo Quartet  12 €

more about Melencolia I on its own webpage here:

Melencolia I  webpage

radiokulturo webpage click here

Finally I have managed to stabalise the net install of my piece “radiokulturo”. It is now streaming 24/7 from an Icecast server hosted by http://dek.spc.org in Greenwich, London. You can connect and listen to it running live here: http://rob.goto10.org/radiokulturo.ogg or http://grub.spc.org:8008/radiokulturo.ogg

The net install is not complete yet as the balance and spatial location of the streams is not ideal – this will be the next step. at the moment it is a maze of mplayer and jack connections streaming to icecast via darkice – i started working in piping through ecasound to adjust balances etc but have decided it will be better running on a SC3 instance.

radiokulturo was most recently projected in concert in Winchester, UK (stereo version).

Kyklos is a piece i have been working on for quite a while now, bringing together number of different areas of research in computer assisted composition i’ve been following. I recently got together with flautist Joe O’Farrel to make a recording.

The documentation, mixes, binaural and spatialisation patches are stilll in progress but there is a stereo .ogg and a dvd .iso of the score available for download.

Again, entirely FLOSS workflow top to tail.

more to follow on this one…