There are two important aspects to this work: the expressive content and the integration of the live and pre-prepared materials. The expressive content is a subject difficult to describe from the composer's point of view, but hopefully in part, is evoked by the titles. The opening material suggests the 'nature' of the 'charm', which attempts to maintain 'buoyant' throughout the composition, even through extreme musical transformations.
On a technical level, 'Buoyant Charm' explores the relationship of instrumental timbre and acousmatic sound-worlds, and how the structural co-ordination between acousmatic and live parts effect the global musical structure. Combining live performance and acousmatic material can be problematic. Acousmatic material is fixed in its musical parameters and can inhibit the performer's natural expressive phrasing, where fixed timing imposes the biggest restriction. 'Buoyant Charm' is the third work in which I have explored a malleable performance method, enabling the performer and acousmatic sound to synchronise accurately, as opposed to achieving a general textural co-ordination. Flexibility in the acousmatic material is approached by a method of segmenting the conventional tape part into separate chunks of material which overlap like flexible joints. The performers 'trigger' the sound material with a degree of timing freedom and in this way, the pre-prepared material is controlled by the composer, while the 'joints', which occur at points of low structural importance or where rubato would normally be inhibited by an inflexible tape part, allow the performers to achieve significant timing freedom effective on a global structural level. Furthermore, the spatial aspect of acousmatic music rarely connects to the stationary instrumental source. Although live spatialisation effects can be used to overcome this difference by relocating the visually produced sound away from the performer and furthering musical possibilities of association and counterpoint, in 'Buoyant Charm', characteristics of the ensemble itself facilitated the link between visual source and acousmatic sound.
Here, the number of performers and the sizes of their instruments result in a relatively large spatial occupation, and subsequently a natural spatialisation of the acoustic sound-world. Performance requirements: Power Macintosh Computer with high quality analogue outputs, MAX software, MIDI pedal, microphones for instrument amplification, signal processing effects unit, (sound diffusion system preferable).
Recording performed by Steve Nobel: percussion; Phil Durrant: violin; Alexander Franenheim: double bass; Ben Harlan: clarinets; Chris Burns: piano; Jim Denly: saxophones and bass flute. Engineered by Natasha Barrett, City University recording studios, 1997.