One-Page Score Project – Marilyn Browning (score), Sundar Subramanian (music)

One-Page Score Project – Marilyn Browning (score), Sundar Subramanian (music)

Would you open this door?

Premiered 19 March 2021 as part of Painting Music – One-Page Score Project presented by Vancouver New Music and Laboratorio.

Notes from Sundar Subramanian:
This was a solo improvisation on electric guitar. Marilyn was quite open about how the score could be read but described affective characters and images: demonic faces, running men, mysterious numbers, and, above all, the titular question. I gazed at the image on full screen while playing and let my eyes find a path through it that guided the musical narrative.

For the technically inclined, I tuned the strings (from the sixth to the first) to: E, Ab, C, Gb, Bb, D. This allows for any note to resonate sympathetically with a harmonic at the octave or the fifth on at least one string; I aimed for a resonant sound. I used harmonics at many phrase endings, often having them ring alongside similar pitches on other strings that are just slightly different in intonation (because of the discrepancies between equally tempered stopped pitches and the fifth or seventh harmonics), in order to explore the resonances and beat frequencies that could be produced.
http://sundarsubramanianmusic.com/