Singing in the Bath

Copies of this CD are available by sending email explaining your desire. It is distributed at production cost.

Track List

1. For Fabienne, John ffitch, 1964, 2m 10s
2. Phase Music, Peter Cooke, 1987, 7m 29s
3. Collage, various, arr ffitch, 1994, 1m 49s
4. Drums&Different Canons#1 (Prelude, Henon), John ffitch, 1996, 3m 36s
5. Drums&Different Canons#1 (Gruneberg),John ffitch, 1996, 1m 31s
6. Drums&Different Canons#1 (Distance, Prelude), John ffitch, 1996, 1m 47s
7. Sing the World, John ffitch, 1997, 16m 11s
8. Half a Beast, John ffitch, 1996, 1m
9. Rhythm, Jeremy Leach, 1994, 1m 10s
10. Waves of Rhythm, Jeremy Leach, 1995, 1m
11. Spaceworlds'95, Jeremy Leach, 1995, 1m
12. Galoshaplopagos, John ffitch, 1997, 4m
13. Robur, John ffitch, 1998, 10m 40s
14. Phase Music II, Peter Cooke, 1987/98, 3m 55s

Record engineered and produced by John ffitch and Codemist Ltd.

Composers can be reached via

• Peter Cooke
• John ffitch
• Jeremy Leach

Notes on Tracks

1. Piano solo; (re-)created with Csound and Rosegarden
   Written in 1964, this short piano prelude was written as a present for Fabienne Thain. The main theme is taken from the letters of her name. With the use of Rosegarden and Csound it was revised in 1994 and is performed here with a set of Bosendorfer piano samples.
2. Music500 computer synth/BBC micro
   The first music undergraduate project at the University of Bath in 1987, was to create a composing environment for Acorn Computers/Hybrid Technology Music 500 synthesiser. This example of phase music was created as a demonstration of the software, and is based on a simple riff, the two copies of which gradually change phase, thereby revealing inner patterns. It was preserved on cassette tape, and transferred to the digital domain for this CD. The piece is dedicated to Peter's brother James, also a student at the University of Bath, who died in an accident while doing his industrial training year in 1993. He was a keen keyboard player whom we expected to do a music project.
3. CDP, csound and SGI sound editor
   A 1994 community course on synthesis produced a collection of sounds created by the students. This collage was created from the fragments left on the disk after the course had finished.
4. Csound and C-generated score
   The initial idea from which this work spread was a short sequence of notes taken from a mapping of the Henon (chaos) differential equation onto pitch and duration. Certain themes in it suggested to me a piece, which developed into the current manifestation, although it has changed a great deal. The title is an echo of the well known quotation from Thoreau and the repetitive canon-like structure of this differential equation. The work is in three movements,with an introductory and closing fanfare.
   The first movement, the longest, is subtitled Henon, and is a slow statement of the main musical material, derived from the Henon equation. It is played mainly on a marimba-like instrument, with injections from other timbres, triggered by certain events, and taking material from the Torus chaos function. An arbitrary limit of 500 events was chosen, the 500th event being marked by a different sound.
5. Csound and C-generated score
   The second movement was conceived on a mountain in Austria called Gruneberg, above the town of Gmunden, which I climbed on a rainy day in September, while listening to some Xenakis on a walkman. The score is actually the same events as the first movement, but the instruments are drums, played at about twice the speed, with much stereo modification, and there are other unstable motions of timbre.
6. Csound and C-generated score
   The same score is used for the last movement, but the introduction of glissandi changes the mood to a distant memory of Gruneberg. The inspiration was a distant view of hills, both from Gruneberg and from my house. It is quieter, and I hope more reflective.
   The pitches are in 100ET and the music was realised in Csound in 1996.
7. Csound-treated voice
   The material comes entirely from the initial quotation from Ritsos - For we never sing in order to distinguish ourselves from the world, my brother; we sing in order to unify the world, spoken by Flower Desborough. The speech is treated mainly to time stretching and a little pitch shifting. The original words are heard at the start, and in truncated form at the end. It was written in 1997.
8. Csound
   The magic of the number 666 must be treated with care. In this one minute work dating from 1996 the composer only aspires to half that level, with a signal of 333Hz, which both dominates and is the inspiration for the work.
9. Algorithmic, csound timbres
   An early 1994 example of algorithmically determined rhythm patterns, generated by a program created by Jeremy Leach.. The instrumentation and speed were chosen by John ffitch.
10. Csound with Gamelan samples
    Waves of Rhythm is the result of a purely algorithmic system. Designed as an experiment to see how random numbers can be transformed into a model of rhythmically pulsating differential equations, this particular work takes the listener on a journey into a slow, changing wave of rhythmic ideas. The piece was realised with gamelan instrument samples and is almost hypnotic in its motion.
11. Custom software
    Spaceworlds'95 is an attempt to capture the concept of travelling through a new and strange land in a piece of futuristic music. Composed of three parts, it attempts to retain the traditional form of contrasting the second part with the first, followed by a recapitulation of the first. The piece was realised with custom-built software and is the first output of this prototype for a semi-algorithmic polyphonic composition system.
12. Csound, with CDP and Csound fragments
    Using the same basic material as the Voices in the Machine collage, this work from 1997 tells a story, which is not written down, of a world which we might inhabit, or from which we might have escaped, or to which we are heading. Listen! Can we survive the tragi-comedy? Was it someone else? Perhaps you can just swim away from it, or will you croak?
13. Voice and Csound
    The Oak Lives Long; Long Live the Oak is the opening line of the school song of Minchenden Grammar School in Southgate, North London, now closed; it is spoken by Patricia Luxford. The oak to which it refers is the Minchenden Oak which still survives (just) despite the many changes in North London since it was an acorn, and may well continue to exist beyond our insignificant lives. This is not he original tune used at the school, but dates from 1998 and draws attention to the sounds of the wind, and the enduring oak tree, whatever happens in its environment.
14. As trk2 with Cool edit
    As a tribute to Conlon Nancarrow this alternative version of the Phase Music (track 2) is presented. The original track is layered with a double-speed version of the same riff and phase-shifting, producing a sound world which reminds one of the driving force of some of the player-piano studies of Nancarrow.