The concept behind my piece Random Notes Shuffled Hopes was triggered by the following statement from Daniel Bernard Roumain:
The iPod is the greatest musical instrument and musical invention of the twenty-first century… You make it your own. By shuffling your ideas, or allowing them to be randomized, you are participating in a compositional idea, a compositional technique, an aleatoric procedure (Bernard 2008, p. 358).
Drawing random notes from a hat I assigned each note a length of time. The time was specified by roll of a dice (1-2 = 1 second, 3-4 = 2 seconds, 5-6 = 3 seconds). The timed notes were then loaded into an iPod playlist. I then shuffle played/recorded several versions into the DAW. The ‘sifting process’ allowed me to select the elements that worked well together (audio media 8).
The artist using chance techniques benefits from delving deep into the ocean of the unconscious. The deep-sea diver explores the chasms of “what would happen if I tried this?” This can of course lead to success, and as I mentioned earlier, the trash. Dive too deep and you may just get the bends. Space and Light is concerned with unique aesthetic qualities. Eno (in Nyman 1999, p. xi) expresses his early involvement in experimental music became more concerned with its constructive elements than its aesthetic outputs. My work has a focus on all compositional elements with chance and intent at the forefront of my processes.
