"Sound Morphology" (Bil Smith Composer): March 2023

Thursday, March 30, 2023

The Jubal Project: Creating a New Musical Lexicon

The world of music is constantly evolving, with new technologies and techniques enabling musicians and composers to create innovative and exciting sounds. However, few projects are as ambitious as "The Jubal Project," a new musical lexicon that promises to change the way we think about notation and sound.

At the heart of The Jubal Project is the circle - a universal symbol with profound meaning. This new lexicon uses circles as a core element, allowing composers and performers to create complex patterns of sound that are both immersive and sensual.

So why the circle? The circle represents wholeness, totality, and original perfection, making it the ideal symbol for this new musical language. By using circles to represent sound, The Jubal Project offers a new way of thinking about musical notation, one that is both flexible and dynamic.

But the real power of The Jubal Project lies in its ability to generate multiple transformations and variants of sound creation. By creating a notation system that can oscillate between indexical registrations, symbols of forces in flux, and sensory stimuli, composers and performers are able to create a continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities. This notational archetype empowers the composer and performer, offering them a specific type of experience that is both paradoxically immersive and partial.

The Jubal Project offers a new way of thinking about music, one that is rooted in the power of form and pattern. As composers, we have the ability to craft and exploit form to create new sounds that were previously unimaginable. With The Jubal Project, we are able to establish a domain of sensibility for the performer, opening up new realms of musical expression.

In conclusion, The Jubal Project is a groundbreaking new musical lexicon that promises to change the way we think about notation and sound. By using circles as a core element, it offers composers and performers a powerful new tool for creating complex patterns of sound that are both immersive and sensual.

Friday, March 24, 2023

"Similar Monomania" For Orchestra and Seven Pianos. Bil Smith Composer

"Similar Monomania" For Orchestra and Seven Pianos.

Bil Smith Composer

THE RECORDING: on SoundCloud

https://soundcloud.com/bil-smith/similar-monomania-for

"Remarkably comfortable with causation, he seems to be moving through some ritual process that explodes into life threatening chaos at any moment.

It's tempting to talk about shamanic journeys. The absence of a prevailing stylistic orthodoxy is striking"

- Clive Bell on Bil Smith's "Similar Monomania" for Wire

"Personico Antiqua" For Percussion Ensemble and Live Electronics.

"Personico Antiqua"

For Percussion Ensemble and Live Electronics.

Bil Smith Composer

On Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/bil-smith/personico-antiqua-for

Thursday, March 23, 2023

"Her Turpentine Sweet as Angelic Ichor" for Solo Cello

"Her Turpentine Sweet as Angelic Ichor"

for Solo Cello

Bil Smith Composer

Published by LNM Editions

PDF Link To Full Score:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pt8tngJbKB4Lalp6_S0JVQ_QIxYSqnj2/view?usp=sharing

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

The Trumpet Fanfares. Bil Smith Composer

"Mirador" A Fanfare for B Flat Trumpet

"Nabokov's Wearisome Cleverness" For C Trumpet

"Picador" For B Flat Trumpet

"Fanfare Labor" For B Flat Trumpet

Tuesday, March 21, 2023

"Thrones De Los Cantares". A Micro-Opera. The New Recording

"Thrones De Los Cantares" (A Micro-Opera)

for 27 Voices (inclusive of Coloratura Soprano, Lyric Soprano, Heldentenor, Contralto, Baryton-Noble, Basso Buffo, Dugazon Soprano), Grapheticist*, and Chamber Ensemble. (Synthesis by Transient Drawing and Particle Cloning).

*Grapheticists are practitioners of Graphetics which is a branch of linguistics concerned with the analysis of the physical properties of shapes used in writing. It is an etic study, meaning that it has an outsider's perspective and is not concerned with any particular writing system. It is contrasted with the related emic field of graphemics, the study of the relation between different shapes in particular writing systems. Graphetics is analogous to phonetics; graphetics is to the study of writing as phonetics is to the study of spoken language.

As such, it can be divided into two areas, visual graphetics and mechanical graphetics, which are analogous to auditory and articulatory phonetics, respectively. Both printed and handwritten language can be the subject of graphetic study.

The recording:

https://soundcloud.com/bil-smith/thrones-de-los-cantares-a

Every semiotic segment produced by the contemporary composer must meet and match innumerable other semiotic segments in order to form the combinatory frame of the sonic commodity, musico-capital.

Musico-capital puts neuro-psychic energies to work, submitting them to mechanistic speed, compelling cognitive activity to follow the rhythm of networked performance. As a result, the emotional sphere linked with aural comprehension is stressed to its limit.

Sunday, March 19, 2023

Project Jubal: Teleological Tablature

Saturday, March 18, 2023

Part Three: "The Jubal Project" - A New Notational Lexicon for Composition and Performance

As I have written in two previous posts, "The Jubal Project" is a radical new music compositional lexicon which redefines the rules of interpretation and performance. Through its use of indexical registrations, symbols of forces in flux, and sensory stimuli, "The Jubal Project" offers performers a truly dynamic set of tools for multiple applications within a broad range of genres and formats.

This dynamic notation system promises to have a profound effect on the way music is both written and performed, while offering unlimited possibilities for creative exploration through a visualization system of over 600 signifying icons.

In developing this system of musical documentation, my inspiration for this unconventional notational system also embraces the work of Enrico Castellani and Morton Feldman's affinity for the irregularities in Persian rugs.

Castellani surface structures, and Castellani's work in general, can be seen to represent a shift in the way we think about visualization and how we can contextualize this in a compositional (musical) ontology.

By implementing his radical form of repetition and dynamicism (A cognitive composition model that sees cognition as a complex dynamic interaction between the agent and its environment) to explore the complexities of surface-level music composition I have opened up a world of creative possibilities.

The intent is that this new musical lexicon works as an example of how science, art, and sound can be woven together to create something truly unique.

In interpreting this new notational vernacular, the performer is charged with adapting patterns to fluctuating desires and contingencies which can be an ongoing process with the performance becoming a method of directing change in the musical interpretation; a way of guiding them through different configurations.

This relies on making and using patterns found within the notation that are more responsive than their modernist predecessors. This form of notation opens the door for a more radical approach to composition.

Composers are now able to create music that has the potential to be emotionally intense, embody expanded notions of structure and draw in complex layers of symbolism.

The score itself can become a fluid document, transforming throughout the music’s evolution and providing an opportunity to break away from traditional form.

My belief is that with the Jubal Project's realization, composition can reach new levels of complexity, beauty and emotion that would have never been possible before.

...more to come.