Arpeggiator from Buoy by Matt McBane
With ‘Arpeggiator’, I imagined an intersection of the classical minimalism of Philip Glass and the minimalist techno of Robert Hood. The result is a continuous flow of repeated arpeggios on the violin and synthesizer over drum machine patterns. These all follow strict additive and subtractive processes, moving from patterns of 3 to 4 to 5, etc and back again. The name ‘Arpeggiator’ is a reference to a standard function of synthesizers to automatically arpeggiate held chords — an easy way to create a seemingly virtuosic cascade of notes. In my piece, these arpeggios are played on the violin (in addition to synthesizer) for an actual virtuosic (for me) feat of stamina and concentration imitating the machine-generated notes.
Matt McBane is a composer, electronic musician and violinist whose music draws on classical minimalism and studio production; analog synthesizers and fiddle music; orchestras and found percussion; complex patterns and emotional nuance.