Experiments in Minimal Notation


Above you will see the original idea for this piece. The things that make it interesting are the notation techniques used. The goal is to let the artist have the most possible say in how the end result sounds. By removing all unnecessary information and communicating the idea in the simplest terms possible, I hope to allow the performer space to experience the piece in. The breath marks throughout the piece actually go against this premise and were removed going forward.

As I began notating this digitally and exploring some further ideas, the piece took on some more complicated elements. It is certainly amusing to have a piece that starts with one staff of piano music in order to provide the minimal amount of information, but then later splits to three staves. What I would like to do eventually is take this concept and write it at five different levels. The first level would probably look most like the image above, and level five would resemble the work below, maybe with some tweaks.

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