"Total Fantasy". A Fanfare (V) for Echo Cornet

'The Notebooks'. Colaboratorie (Spectrum Series).

"A Westbound Party Of Mannequins"

"A Westbound Party Of Mannequins"

2012-2015

harpe

piano 1

piano 2

cb

vcelle. 1

vcelle 2

alto 2

alto 1

vl. 1

vl. 2

vibr. 1

vibr. 2

tuba

trb.sord. sèche

trp. picc. en ré. sord. sèche

cor en fa

bsn

clar. b. ben Si

cor de b. en fa

htb. d’a

picc.

Short Etude for Piano

"Bouncing and Bouncing On City Equipment" For Ensemble

"Bouncing and Bouncing On City Equipment"

For Ensemble

Bil Smith Composer

A Commission From T. Rowe Price Group

Recording: "My Allusion of Course, Was to Botany". A Compaction Music

"My Allusion of Course, Was to Botany" 

A Compaction Piece based on a text score for Small Chamber Ensemble, BATA-2 Baseball Pitching Machine, Sund Birsta KN Delta - Wire Binding Machine and Reflected Acoustical Heterodyning Loudspeakers.

Listen on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/bil-smith/my-allusion-of-course-was-to

On Compaction Music...

In philosophy, reduction (compaction music) is the process by which one object, property, concept, theory, etc., is shown to be explicable in terms of another, lower level, entity.

In particular, a concern of philosophy is as to the scope of physical theory, and whether, for example, all events are ultimately physical events, a discussion closely related to the topic of causal closure.In music, such reduction is generally desirable, because it explains why and how the work which is being reduced exists, and because it promotes conceptual and theoretical economy.

Reducing musical properties to properties of sonic particles thus explains these properties and integrates them into a single explanatory framework, that of aural structure.

Thus we might also describe reduction as a process analogous to compaction, by which one theory (or concept, or property, and so on) is wholly subsumed under another.

Compactionism can be divided into three general areas – methodological, theoretical, and ontological – and reduction (the process) into two – theoretical and ontological.

Methodological reductionism is the attempt to reduce explanations to the smallest possible entities. In science, methodological reductionism would result in the atomic explanation of a substance’s boiling point, and perhaps in an explanation based on even smaller particles (quarks, perhaps).

Theoretical reductionism is reductionism applied to hypothetical theories, the goal of reducing the present multiplicity of theories to a single super-theory through the process of theoretical reduction, the theory of everything.

Finally, ontological reductionism is the belief that reality is composed of a minimum number of kinds of entities or substances. This claim is usually metaphysical, and is most commonly a form of monism, in effect claiming that all objects, properties and events are reducible to a single substance. 

(A dualist who is an ontological reductionist would presumably believe that everything is reducible to one of two substances.)

Compaction Music amplifies and mystifies, with an element of gamification:

part Oulipian, Arte Povera and Scelsiesque.

There are Laws of Randomness...

Randomness has been a big process in music, but randomness means laws. It’s a way of calculating.​There are laws of randomness...calculations of randomness. 

And so it’s just a particular form of the occurrence of physical laws. It’s a way of anticipating, and it is completely normal. 

In certain compositional structures, if you break laws which are fundamentally random, you can’t find yourself again in randomness, it is not the same incident. 

"Pixar's Carrit. An Annunciation of a Trans-Literate Pudenda"

"Pixar's Carrit. An Annunciation of a Trans-Literate Pudenda" 

Bill Smith Composer (2011-2012). 

For String Orchestra and String Quartet.

This work was realized with a generous commission from Kuwait Airways, a new partner of Laboratorie New Music. 

We are thankful for their support and contribution to this project.

SoundCloud Recording:

https://soundcloud.com/bil-smith/pixars-carrit-an-annunciation 

Murray Gell-Mann (Nobel Prize Winner for his works on quarks) has suspected that many measurements for complexity have been an expressive currency deliberately unproductive, however, Bil Smith’s “Pixar’s Carrit…et al” fulfills a central role of identifiable parallels.

There is a certain degree of rejection; misperception; interpolation; superfluous gesture.“In terms of this work; it returns to the question (necessarily) avoided by formal negation of the work.It’s material…interpolation is taken from others and cultivates the ideals of integral styles.Smith rebels against the orientation towards negation, which at times’s can restrict the complexity of life’s thoughts.

“Centrism” is a helicopter soared overhead; this work makes him uneasily aware that his long delayed confrontation of musical musculature would soon take place.

This work is the manifestation of his neural drama that at last had arrived…but it’s fun too.

- Thom Carter for The Guardian

"Dark Matter Facticity." For Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Sax and Percussion.

"Dark Matter Facticity"

For Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Sax and Percussion

2012, 2015

The ‘orchestration of futurity’ that will allow ‘the future of composition to be thought of

as a game of chance’ brings into play a set of assumptions whose provenance is a bizarre mix of stereotyped curves, flying bombs, and kicking horses. 

Here probability figures not as incomplete knowledge, but as a supplementary construction that requires a ‘leap of faith’—a ‘cocktail’ of knowledge and generic idealization that is necessary in order to make indeterminacy go ‘live’ as an effective machine-part. 

A Reformulation of Brian Ferneyhough's String Quartet Number Six (excerpt)

A Reformulation of Brian Ferneyhough's String Quartet Number Six 

(excerpts)

Bil Smith: Reformulator

2017-2018

Glucose Tablet.

"Glucose Tablet"

For Solo Baritone Sax

2015

Bil Smith Composer

"Fortuitous Situations" for Soprano. The Score.