David Evan Jones

3 Percussionists and Fixed Media

Composer's Note:

The pitched staff of the tape part represents a family of sounds designed and synthesized by the composer at L 'Insitut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique using the CHANT system designed by Xavier Rodet et al. These sounds convey the quality both of vowels and diphthongs and the quality of families of percussion instruments (metal vowels, wood vowels, etc.).

One goal of Still Life Dancing is to persuade listeners to focus on the speech sounds as timbres, pitches durations (rather than as encoded speech) and to focus on the percussion sounds in a "speech mode". Thus some of the percussion gestures (such as the guiro leading to a temple-block are designed to be speech-like in various ways or to integrate with and extend the speech and percussion/ speech sounds on the tape. The effect is intended to be funny at times, but it should not be made slap-stick.