Paula Matthusen · Composer

Commissioned as part of composer and percussionist extraordinaire Al Cerulo’s project Amplified Perception, the multi-channel feedback-based piece for these things that can be told / until mystery becomes elegy plays with different spatial patterns of exciting feedback.

The score for the piece exists as a series of cues embedded in a Max/MSP patch (image excerpt right) for improvisation and exploration of the feedback. The processing is triggered by the performer, and cues are followed using Mira.

For these things that can be told… was recorded by Al Cerulo, produced by Traxler Studios in the summer of 2020, and will be released in 2021 as a part along with all the other commissioned works for his project, Amplified Perception.

Commissioned as part of composer and percussionist extraordinaire Al Cerulo’s project Amplified Perception, the multi-channel feedback-based piece for these things that can be told / until mystery becomes elegy, plays with different spatial patterns of exciting feedback.

The feedback network created involves the placement of condenser microphones in the resonators of selected pitches on the vibraphone, the use of transducers, and the routing of the audio to the surround sound speaker array. In this way, the sound is excited locally on the vibraphone between the transducers and the microphones. Routing between the different channels in the speaker array are gated on and off, creating a strong percussive edge to the otherwise continuous tones of the feedback.

The piece title references a poem by Peter Gizzi in the collection Archeophonics.

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