Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Chréode

computer generated tape piece (1983)

Chréode  is a term borrowed to Morphogenesis and Biology (from the greek 'cre' we need, and 'odos' path : necessary path). it serves here of metaphor for a cross systematic investigation of sonic materials and organizations.

Though sonic materials have been worked carefully, attention in this piece is more specially on organisation. Chréode is the first step towards a grammar of processes I want to try to elaborate.

This research on musical processes, their fields of action and their limits, has been thought of a strategy of approach of the musical territory, as it is renewed by the possibilities made accessible through the use of computer.

A very general destination of this project consisted to experiment with different types of organizations, and at a higher level to structure them in time and formally.

Compositional structures as well as scores were elaborated in the FORMES programming environment with the help of Pierre Cointe and Yves Potard. Sonic materials were chosen to allow a certain type of control over timbre, concentrated of a small number of compositionally relevant parameters. Therefore the work on timbre is essentially based on the compression and expansion of formants or spectral enveloppes, by departing from vocal types material and derivating from this models towards others, with or without references to musical families of instrumental timbres.

Sound synthesis was made with the CHANT program at IRCAM.

The piece is dedicated to the CHANT/FORMES project and to Kaija Saariaho.

Chréode won the Prix de la Musique Numérique of the Concours International de Musique Electro-acoustique of Bourges 1983.

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