Year composed: 1993
Duration: 9′
Instrumentation: pianist and interactive Yamaha Disklavier
Notes:
Realized at the Center for New Music and Audio Technology with a grant from the Committee on Research, UCB. Premiered by Cindy Cox at San Jose State University, November 1993.
Darsana I is an interactive composition which makes use of MAX’s score following capabilities. MIDI events, triggered by the pianist and sent out by the Yamaha Disklavier, are continuously compared with note lists which are stored in teh explode MAX external object. Whan an incoming pitch played by the pianist is matched to one stored in explode, it is considered a trigger, and its corresponding event number is sent to a qlist MAX external containing a list of commands for each trigger (e.g. commands to play single notes, chords, or sequences, turn on the tempo tracking, etc.). In a few cases, dummy triggers were inserted to prevent the score following program from jumping ahead; this tendency to jump is due in part to a built-in tolerance for wrong notes.