In Mesotint, a composition for tuba and Hasselblad H5D-400c, we witness a bold departure from traditional ensemble logic—one that integrates the sonic gravity of the tuba with the optical acuity of a high-end medium format camera. At first glance, pairing an orchestral brass instrument with a $50,000+ imaging device may seem whimsical, if not provocatively impractical. But Mesotint is anything but playful. It is a precision-engineered collision between two modalities of registration—sound and light, resonance and exposure, each governed by different mechanics yet drawn into a shared compositional fabric.
The Title as Technique
The title Mesotint recalls the 17th-century intaglio printmaking process notable for its lush tonal gradients and labor-intensive surface modulation. This allusion is not metaphorical—it is procedural. Just as a printmaker works from a roughened plate toward clarity, the tuba in Mesotint begins in a register of static density: long tones, embouchure friction, and microtonal growls thick with harmonic debris. Gradually, definition emerges—fragmented intervals, faint motifs, and sharply juxtaposed articulations come into focus. The composition, like a mesotint print, progresses from blurred shadow to defined light.
Simultaneously, the Hasselblad H5D-400c, a 400-megapixel modular behemoth better known for ultra-high-res archival photography, is enlisted as a participant, not a documentation device. The camera performs temporal captures at intervals dictated by the tuba’s breath—its shutter cadence becomes part of the rhythmic and structural architecture of the piece.
Unconventional Hash Marks
Graphically, the score of Mesotint is dominated by asymmetric hash marks—not as metrical dividers, but as timbral interrupts, triggers for either camera exposure or extended tuba techniques. These hash marks are scrawled and tiered, sometimes overlapping, at odds with the traditional horizontal flow of music. Some marks appear to float vertically, implying velocity or register, while others intersect with text fragments such as:
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“fissure exposure”
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“lenslock drone”
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“8.5 stops, no tonality”
Rather than notating fixed rhythms or pitches, these marks and texts function as coordinate points, intermedial cues for both players (the tubist and the photographer/operator). The result is a tabular score that acts more like a shared protocol than a script, with each hash marking a junction of sonic and optical decision-making.
The Camera as Instrument
The most radical element is not the notational style but the inclusion of the Hasselblad H5D-400c as an active compositional agent. The camera, in this context, is not simply documenting the performance—it is calibrated to respond to, and in some sections, dictate the tuba’s timing. The camera’s multi-shot mode, which stacks exposures by micron-level sensor shifting, becomes analogous to extended drone technique. Each capture creates an image that maps light over time—mirroring how a drone maps pitch over breath. The shutter click—mechanical, deliberate—is integrated into the piece’s percussive vocabulary.
At times, the tubist must synchronize gestures with camera exposure settings: shifting from f/2.8 to f/11 not to affect an image per se, but to imply a sonic contrast—a broader spectral swell, a narrowed pitch band, an articulation darkened like a small aperture on overexposed film.
Furthermore, images captured during live performance are processed in real-time and projected onto translucent mylar sheets behind the performer, creating light-based spectrograms that feed back into the visual score. The composition thus becomes a feedback loop of image > sound > image—an optic-sonic recursion. The Hasselblad's famously precise color science is reimagined as a kind of compositional key, linking exposure curves to amplitude patterns.
Juxtaposed Notational Shifts
The layout of Mesotint avoids traditional staves entirely. It moves horizontally, yes, but with repeated interruptions. Between every section of hash marks lies a modal juxtaposition—a shift from open-ended improvisational texture to ultra-specific directives. For example, one section reads:
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“Embouchure leakage only. ISO 6400. Shutter hold. Breath mirrored in aperture stop.”
Another reads:
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“Guttural overblow, no pitch. Time exposure in bulb mode (3.3 sec).”
These juxtaposed moments are not arbitrary; they represent a structural schema wherein the tuba’s physicality (embouchure pressure, valve density, spit valve release) matches the camera’s temporal behaviors (long exposure, autofocus delay, dynamic range).
Thus, notation becomes not just a map for the musician, but a negotiation between two sensoriums—the ear and the lens. One hears the pressure of light; one sees the tempo of breath.
Ephemeral Archive
It’s crucial to note that Mesotint is not just a live piece—it is an archive in motion. The camera’s images, when stitched, layered, or collapsed, become scores in themselves for future interpretation. The tubist, in future performances, may be asked to “perform the image” created in a previous concert, aligning tone color and rhythm with the histogram curve or pixel density of an archival photograph. In this sense, Mesotint proposes a recursive notational paradigm, where performance generates notation, which regenerates new performance.
Refracted Modalities
Mesotint stands as a provocation against the boundaries of what constitutes instrumentation, notation, and documentation. The use of the Hasselblad H5D-400c—a camera built for hyperrealist commercial fidelity—as a score-generating and timing instrument for live brass performance is nothing short of subversive. Its inclusion breaks open not just genre conventions, but modal assumptions: that photography is passive and music is active; that cameras record and instruments perform.
Instead, Mesotint refracts these categories through hash marks and juxtaposition, through layered intervals of breath and light. The tuba and the Hasselblad do not play together—they compose each other.
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