“Scherzo; Dance.” was composed as part of a suite of music and sound for a performance of Heiner Müller’s play “Die Hamletmaschine, ” for a dance by Ophelia. My goal was to match the play’s abstract postmodern style with haunting music and sound that was slightly off-putting for a traditional listener’s ear. For several of the pieces, I experimented with microtonal software, trying to find interesting ways to warp the sound of a conventional sampled piano. However, in addition to the microtonal effects, I found that the software generated pitch bends as a side effect, altering the piano’s sustained overtones in an incredible way that could never be achieved in an analog or acoustic realm. Through these digital techniques, I was able to achieve a truly bizarre and hypnotizing effect that suited the production perfectly, and made a beguiling piece of music.
Briefly, the microtonal processing works by outputting a specific MIDI pitch bend value whenever a note is triggered, thereby retuning the note. Because pitch bend is a global parameter (i.e., applies to all notes played by an instrument), if note X is sustained, subsequent note Y triggers not only itself in its retuned state, but also retunes the sustain of note X by Y’s pitch bend value. The piece makes extensive use of this effect via pedal sustain. This piece is scored for live performance for two sampled pianos, with playback, microtonal and spatialization processing achieved via laptop.

Howard Kenty (US) is a composer, sound designer, orchestrator, engineer, and performer based in New York City. His pieces have been performed at the Re:New Digital Arts Forum (2008), the International Computer Music Conference (2006, 2007), the Extensible Toy Piano Festival (2005, 2007), and the Electronic Rainbow Coalition Festival (2003), and appear on the Composers’ Compilation CDs “Clairaudience“ and the upcoming “Questions“, released by Bohn Media. Howard has worked creatively with clients such as Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky, The Dresden Dolls, composer Anthony De Ritis, conductor Jung-Ho Pak, and pipa virtuoso Min Xiao-Fen. He is a co-founder of Badbox Music and part of the sound art collective EVAC!.