Commissioned by: Ensemble LOOS (LOOS Electronic Acoustic Media Orchestra), with financial support from the Netherlands Fund for the Performing Arts
First Performance: LEAMO, March 15 2008, Festival Dag in de Branding, The Hague
Instrumentation: 3 treble instruments (flute, clarinet, violin), bass guitar, percussion & Ebow Piano
Duration: ca.18’
Special Features: Performance requires stopwatch monitor on stage, sound engineer and amplification for all musicians. Piano part requires 3 Ebows.

Score samples

Listen/Buy: Ensemble Klang on Bandcamp

Info/Program note:
Written in 2008, Waves 11-13 is the first piece I wrote to include a composed, obbligato part for sine waves as well as being the first to be ascribe uniform time-lengths to each separate section. Scored for ‘Treble instruments’, Ebow Piano, percussion and bass-guitar, the piece limits itself to a narrow range of operation and an accordingly ‘clean’ interaction between the instruments. Each section explores one interval in one register, which is then microtonally scanned by the treble instruments. The form of each section is symmetrical, initially shrinking the size of each interval to half of its original size and then expanding outward again. As the piece progresses, the basic interval expands and the entries of the instruments increase accordingly.

Ebow piano, percussion and bass guitar have freer roles, either generating sympathetic vibration or ‘ghost harmonies’ (slightly unpredictable overtones based on Ebow combinations), or through providing clear attacks or incidental ‘subsonic’ entries from the bass guitar; opening up a void and creating what I like to call sudden ‘sound chasms’.