barbara jansen - BADA

experiments
rhythm exercise_part 5
“Erwacht Ihr Schläfer drinnen”
Rhythm exercise_part 5 is based on 11 voices.
The Arduino board has been replaced through the DMX Replay Unit, and the
braid is playing only with 11 voices.
This experiment is exploring the rhythmic structure of the old German
canon “Erwacht Ihr Schläfer drinnen” (“Awake you sleepers inside”, melody
by Giacomo G. Ferrari, 1763-1842). The canon is based on three parts and
each part is repeated once before the melody moves on to the next part (see
notes below).
In an attend to understand something about rhythmic structures in music,
this simple melody was chosen, with the original aim of later playing the
three canon voices on three braids.
First, it has been explored how to transfer the traditional note notation
into a more graphical notation. Each ton in the pitch range has been given
a colour. The pitch range spans two octaves from C – F` (every pitch height
triggering one voice/LED). Thereby the pitches from the lover octave were
represented in darker colours and from the higher octave by lighter colours,
for example D = dark brown, D`= light brown, F = dark green, F`= light
green (see illustration below right).
In the previous notation system, the length of a line represented a specific
time duration. The notes below have been transferred into rectangles and the
horizontal length of the rectangle represents the time duration of the note.
The height of a line represents the light intensity value and the height
position of a square corresponds to the height position of the notation of an
individual pitch. Together, colour and height position of a square represent a
specific pitch and therewith a specific voice/LED inside the braid.
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