VÍTR. A media work for marching bands and wind instruments.

Gívan Belá for Time Inventors' Kabinet

Date 29 October 2011. 14H.
Place Hranice u Malče (CZ)
GPS_ 49.763727,15.691675

Vítr is a piece for 4 Marching Bands with wind instruments. Invited are 3 local bands and a fourth experimental consort with artists, children, amateurs.

The general idea is to play music with wind instruments, based on wind clocks.
A wind clock provides a timing possibility based on measuring the current or calculated non-linear wind dynamics. For the current piece we will use a local clock at hand at the place of performance, and information about clocks elsewhere, within a distributed worldwide-system.
A wind instrument is an object that produces sound with or without human interference. The human presence controls the object in an instrumental way, so it is rhythmically and tonewise manipulated.
The piece works with existing and new compositions. It positions the work in a local rural environment, part of people's folk memories in the form of popular melodies. It ends with a related new piece showing the beauty of natural wind processes, sonified by musicians.
The idea is to march from four different wind directions, from 4 different localities to Stary Kravín. There the bands interconnect after a final round around Kravín, in tune with the rhythm of wind clocks…

The following existing marching bands will perform:
- Golčovanka Tomáše Kotěry from Golčův Jeníkov (CZ) golcovanka.svet-stranek.cz/
- Vysočanka – Malá dechová hudba z Brtnice (CZ) www.vysocanka.eu/
- Dechový orchestr mladých ZUŠ Chotěboř www.dom.zuschot.cz/
- Ad hoc, a new marching band based on new instruments, made by artists and children, is formed, under direction of Michal Delia.

While walking from each locality, each band will play their own repertoire. Arriving in Hranice, they will circle around the old Kravín till all other bands have arrived. Finally they will meet in the middle of the area, and play a special hymn to the winds, performed in 2 sections:
- one half of the musicians is following the local time indications, or local wind clock time.
- another half of the musicians is following the world wide wind dynamics, or european wind clock time.

An important issue in the history of marching bands is the mobility and the aesthetical forms that can take. We tend to leave the long march (from the surrounding localities) open to the participants. When arriving at Kravín though, an algorithm has to be executed, while walking around the yard:

group 1 = in clockwise direction, marking entry a, facing entry a
group 2 = in counterclockwise direction, marking entry b, facing entry b
group 3 = in clockwise direction, marking entry c, facing entry c
group 4 = in counterclockwise direction, marking entry d, facing entry d

When the last group has arrived, all bands continue and enter via their own marked entry the central field. Then the directors of the bands get ready for the performing of the final wind piece. [the bands will be divided in 2 to cope with the 2 wind clock rhythms as explained before]. So, director 1 is following local wind clock time, director 2 european wind clock time, etc…

On the picture you can see the path around the Kravín farmstead (A on the map).

Art on the popular level stands for any creativity that is taking itself seriously. So we combine the best of creative possibilities and for a special marching band with children and artists, or creative people of all kinds. Michal Delia will work out the instrument setup, the marching and the repertoire in a workshop the days before (Tuesday 26 -Friday 28).
For more specific but also practical information and requests for participation, please email xgz {tap at} societyofalgorithm.org. All kinds of artists, instant composers, musicians, children… with an affinity for wind and sound are welcome!

An example from elsewhere: www.steim.org/STEIMBLOG/?p=2153
But be in for pleasant surprises…

The whole event is being recorded by a mobile crew of media artists. Afterwards a spatial evocation of the day will be composed by Gívan Belá and Michal Kindernay.

We are working on a scenario for the preparations and the event on the day itself.

We made a short piece “Fan Far” for performing in double wind time. Some of you may recognize the historical hunting calls that are masked in it. Why? The week afterwards there is Svaty Hubert, patron of the hunt (better play music than shooting animals though).

Fan Far will be performed on the 29th by all invited musicians together. See above about the tempo which is set by a wind clock. One guideline for performing the piece is important: it is not so much the pitch that is important. Rather the timings and tempos. This way, any possible wind instrument (new or existing or imaginary) can be added to it, to intensify and augment the timbre (barva) instead.

We have made some arrangements for the more common wind instruments. You can download a version of the score and the several instrumental parts in different common formats (pdf, midi, mscz - but let us know if you need another format, for instance MusicXml, or Lilypond) as a compressed zip archive: vi_tr-fanfar-score_parts.zip. We also made an ogg-compressed audio rendering to give an idea how it could sound… FanFar.ogg.

Using an open source editor - like musescore, available for most platforms and the wonderful nted for linux - you can edit and rearrange the scores for your own favorite wind instruments. Feel free to make your own transcription of Fan Far, and if you let us know we can provide it here as well. If you are doing so, make sure the original rhythms are preserved, but you can play around with variations in the melodies and keysettings.

Visit the webpages of the participating bands, or follow the bottom link on: yo-yo-yo.org/en/vitr-vetrne-nastroje-a-pochodove-kapely/