"New Tablatures: Why Five Lines?" Lecture at University of Texas, Austin.

"New Tablatures: Why Five Lines?"  Lecture at University of Texas, Austin.

Intuitively, these definitions (notes distinguished in a useful manner) all make sense, but does the evacuated or unmarked notation at issue in the present collection put enough pressure on the concept to open some fissures in this tiny surface, revealing it to be far less stable than the typically unexamined use implies.

I am not interested in policing the music's usage in any way (it is mine), but I do want to call attention to some of the assumptions that attend it.

- Bil Smith Composer

"Rigid Designator " 

"One that denotes the same thing in all possible worlds; or in all possible (assailable) worlds in which content exists."

In the case of the blank measures; "Compensatory Time/Notational Lengthening"

- Bil Smith Composer

"Compositional Multimodality"

... in the broadest sense, composition which contain a multitude of semiotic modes. Multimodal scores call for new systems of analysis proficient in realizing and describing the rapport between expressive modes." 


"I am thrown back to the way/ways in which notation is used as quantifiers of information and activity, entities to be weighed and sorted."-- Bil Smith Composer