The Sensational Arrow: Notation as Performing Verb

A Sensational Arrow is not a pointer. It is a performing verb. On the page it looks like a vector, but in the body it behaves like a circuit that closes the moment a player touches breath, bow, or skin to it. Each arrow compresses an instruction stack into one graphic unit: where to aim the sound, how to enter, what energy to carry, when to release, and the exact physiology required along the way. I do not draw for description. I draw to cause.

The score becomes a field of forces when these arrows appear. Barlines still exist where useful, yet trajectory governs time more than the grid does. I compose by laying arrow-fields across parts and letting their vectors do the counterpoint. Alignment builds consonance, crossing builds frictive harmony, and parallel drift builds timbral chorus. Ensemble form is not a chain of measures. It is a weave of directed motions that share checkpoints and thresholds.

This is why the arrows sit at the center of my pages rather than at the margins like mere cues. They carry the architecture.

I argue for coercion as an ethical stance in composition. Notation should not plead. It should demand. The Sensational Arrow functions as a coercive device that transforms free agency into calibrated labor. The body is pressed into a vector, and the vector is the work. This is closer to engineering than to poetry, although the surface shines.

The system also clarifies responsibility. When the arrow is heavy, the player is bound. When the arrow is light, the player is trusted. That clarity produces better ensembles because contracts replace hunches. No mystical “feel” has to be negotiated in real time.

I do not draw arrows to point. I draw them to act. Each Sensational Arrow on my score page is a machine that converts sight into behavior, a tiny grammar that binds breath, muscle, and time. I am not looking for decoration. I am engineering compulsion, with kindness when I can manage it.

I borrowed the foundations for this from linguistics, not from music theory. In the Minimalist Program, features drive operations. Merge applies because a feature requires it, and movement happens because a higher probe seeks a goal. My arrows work the same way. The modules carry features that trigger operations: split, hold, fricativize, shadow, detune. The performer is the parser. The bodily syntax is executed in real time. Ambiguity is tolerated only when I draw a thin outline, which functions like optionality. A heavy contour, by contrast, is the fat feature bundle that admits no negotiation.

Semantic content appears as timbre and effort. Syntax appears as gesture order. The score is not a picture of future sound. It is a derivation tree, flattened and made beautiful so that the hands will obey without sulking.

Why I prefer coercion to suggestion

I do not want notation to plead for a result. I want it to produce one. Suggestion invites diplomacy, which eats rehearsal time and replaces rigor with charm. Coercion, administered transparently and with boundaries, gives us time to care for the beautiful parts. The arrow carries the boring argument, so we can listen.

There is also a politics here. The old scaffold of notation pretends to neutrality while smuggling in a narrow idea of correct bodies and correct breaths. My system states its power on the page. Heavy means I rule. Light means you rule. Everyone knows where the line is. That clarity cools the room.

The language of the page, the body as grammar

Chabon taught me to love surfaces that sparkle, and to pack narrative into an object that seems simple until it opens. The arrow is my candy wrapper, but it is also the candy, chewy and caloric. 

Chomsky taught me to respect mechanisms that generate infinitely from finite parts. My modules are finite, the combinations proliferate, and the resulting behavior remains legible because the grammar is consistent.

In the end I write arrows because they let me be generous and strict at the same time. The shapes seduce the eye, while the law inside the shape keeps the music honest. The body learns to parse the vectors, then the vectors redesign the body. That transformation is the piece. I do not decorate scores. I draft contracts. When the page is full of these contracts, players come away tired and pleased, and the room carries a new kind of silence that feels earned.

I will keep drawing. I will keep testing the balance of outline weight and license, the number of modules a lung can swallow, the distance between a gallery print and a studio take. The arrows continue to teach me what music can be when the picture truly commands, and when the command is understood as a shared grammar rather than a hidden hierarchy. This is not a phase. This is my literacy.