for toy piano and harmonizing delay
Atau Tanaka 2024
(6 minutes)**
Score and software assistance: Francesco Di Maggio
Score assistance: Lara Serafin
We can shout across a valley to the mountains across to hear our own voice respond. We can clap our hands in a tunnel and hear the zinging echoes dance around us. And when we walk on snow, the ground no longer gives us the reflections that remind us how tall we are. Sonic echoes are like acoustic mirrors. This piece mirrors the soloist on the toy piano in playful counterpoint. The electronic part picks up the live sound of the piano to produce echoes in musical time. By being electronic, it also contradicts the natural decay of acoustics, providing only specific repetitions. The quadraphonic transposing delay allows a four-voice counterpoint between soloist and their own reflection, and develops from simple call and response to infernal time machine.
Commissioned by Tricia Dawn Williams with support from the Malta Arts Council