Scaffolding Sketches: Algorithmically Disrupting the Empty Staff

The manner in which composers overcome the agony of the blank slate in notation-based music composition is conditioned by many factors. The size of the staff on the page, the number of line breaks, and the means of note entry (handwritten, dictated, point-and-click, markup) are just a few visual elements that effect the choices that a composer will make when writing visual marks that will be translated into sound. This paper presents a method of scaffolding sketches by algorithmically projecting bits of music onto an otherwise empty staff, thereby imposing compositional constraints both on the sound result and on the written medium whose interpretation leads to this result. The presentation will survey five pieces from the projet Sit Ozfårs Wysr, showing how algorithmic scaffolding acted as a disruptive element in the composition process. The ensemble 101 will present live extracts of these works.