Black Recorder (2017)

Black Recorder

This piece is another example of my fascination with electronic music, and of my attempts to reproduce an electronic sound acoustically, in particular: with recorders. The title “Black Recorder”, for those in the know, is a play on the genre of “Black Midi”. This is sequenced music that tries to cram as many notes into a short composition as possible.

So here is a piece that has about 15000 notes: an average of 5 notes a second in each of the parts. Of course, that’s an average, so runs regularly fly by at more than 10 notes a second.

Harmonically, this is a fairly simple piece in G minor, though there is an interesting section where a middle voice plays an ascending chromatic scale over a full octave.

Black Recorder is scored for 12 recorders (SnSSAATTBBGGC), though it might be a good idea to double the contra part to give it a littlemore heft. As happens often in my compositions, the contra part is a true bass part, while the greats are part of the higher texture.

This piece was originally given out to my supporters on Patreon. Currently it is for sale on Score Exchange.