- Year of composition: 1981, 2000
- Duration: 14:55
- Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
- Publisher(s): Ymx média
- Commission: GMEB
- ISWC: T0707669815
Stereo
ISRC CAD500114370
- 44,1 kHz, 16 bits
(The Scale) April 1981. The Charybde Studio (IMEB, Bourges, France) has become my refuge. I am surrounded by electronic equipment. All these electron twisters make me feel a little dizzy. I open the window for some fresh air.
From the courtyard, faint sounds from the adjoining music school come to me. Rising and descending scales, slow and meticulous, fast, restless, hesitant, naïve, virtuosic. The sounds mingle, overlap, and yet are drawn together by a single desire: order.
A stranger, so to speak, to the ‘electronic’ tradition, I first tackled this complex apparatus of analog synthesis at the Charybde Studio with the naïveté of a child practicing scales. Invited to this studio by the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB, now IMEB), I was fascinated and awestruck by the rich raw sound produced by these machines. I took the oscillators at their word: I made these little producers of ‘pure’ sound sing, groan, scream, and mostly spin in a sort of staggering and frenetic dance of electronic scales and arpeggios: techno music before its time…
The present version does not constitute an actual re-writing of the work, but rather a revision of the ‘orchestration’ by the addition here and there of supplemental colours and a reworking of the mix.
La gamme was realized at the Charybde studio of the Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB — now the IMEB — France) in 1981 and premiered on June 1981 during Synthèse, the Festival international de musique expérimentale de Bourges (France, 1981). La gamme was commissioned by GMEB (now IMEB). The current version was revised in 2000.
Composition
- 1981-04, Charybde — Groupe de musique expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB), Bourges (Cher, France)
Revision
- 2000, Personal studio, Montréal (Québec)
Premiere
- June 1981, Synthèse 1981: Concert, Bourges (Cher, France)