“One-sided LP in an edition of 345 copies. “The new Ben Patterson piece, issued on Alga Marghen’s VocSon series, is based on the basic principles of the polyphonic music of the Bantu tribes of West and Central Africa. First principle: the practice of interlocking individual pitches or tones performed by one person into spaces between other pitches or tones performed by another person, thus alternating pitches or tones of one part with those of another part to create a whole. Second principle: use of cyclical and open-ended forms involving one or more ostinato melodic/rhythmic pattern as a foundation. Third principle: community participation…non-specialists are encouraged to join in long performances with much repetition. Fourth principle: rhythmic complexity with the juxtaposition of double and triple patterns, multiple layering of different patterns, and interaction between a core foundation and improvised parts. And, most important, the family ‘ownership’ of a specific tone: in the musical culture of these tribes, each ancestral family ‘owns’ and is responsible for one or more specific tones, which must be sounded at specific points, sequencing with the many other specific tones ‘owned’ by other families, to create a seamless melody. Ben Patterson made a music based on this information by taking the initials of artists listed in Fluxus: The Most Radical and Experimental Art Movement of the Sixties and encoding them in basic International Morse Code. These ‘dots and dashes’ were then performed on a Yamaha DJX keyboard (voice pattern setting), connected to a Digitech JamMan Looper (over-dub setting), connected to an Eurorack MX 602A mixer. Front cover reproducing the original score.”
Really engaging listening. I like the way Ben Patterson assigns sounds in his Sound Art pieces. The timbre of the low bitrate quality voice pattern settings on the Yamaha DJX Keyboard. Using the rhythm of morse code to turn these samples into a language. I am not sure how the audience participation would work for this specific piece. But in Pond (1966), audience participants place wind up frogs in a grid and repeat chosen phrases based on the gradient of their frogs. Which results in a playful polyphony which reflects the individual voice of each participant in a controlled manner.
In this example, not participants chosen words are English. I love how such a simple piece can cause such complexity when the human beings are introduced. This mixture of rules with room for creativity is brilliantly struck. A strong theme in both works is a type of polyphony. Here is a video which does a great job of rounding up the rules of the piece with the late composer and pioneering sound artist.
Here is the score to Paper Piece
There is something very chaotic about this video and its visually very interesting to me. Sensory experience, mixed with participation. Taking a rudimentary object from everyday life and maximising its sound into this ocean of susurrations.
In a strange way it brings to mind this viral video from a few years back…
Here are a few sounds I enjoy and would like to incorporate into some kind of Patterson inspired performance. Key phrases from my notebook: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, AUTO-GENERATED SOUND, AMBIANCE???, MOVEMENT, ACTION, VISUAL, OBJECTS???, PERFORMANCE, SPACE, MUZAK, BACKGROUND, ARTEFACTS, UNINTENTIONAL MUSIC.