Four Voice Canon #9 (“Anna Canon”) a, b, c, f

Date: 1994.

Place: Dartmouth.Sounds: Four short non-verbal samples of my daughter Anna’s voice at age 3.

Instrumentation: Tape. Elements: Duration, stereo placement, loudness, pitch.

Comments: Meant to be a kind of “public domain” music software canon, using Csound, HMSL, and Soundhack collaboratively. Grew out of efforts to teach large computer music classes outside of a studio, and an interest, at the time, in cheap or free pluralistic, but powerful, music software. HMSL wrote the piece (using the Knuth algorithm, and in the process, I developed a large “general” software library for four voice canons which, naturally, I’ve never used again), generating a score for Csound, which realized one voice using a simple soundfile playback orchestra. That voice was pitch/duration shifted by Soundhack to make the canon.

There are four versions, each with their own superparticular pitch/tempo ratios:

9a: 4:5:6:7 9b: 6:7:8:9

9c: 8:9:10:11 9d: f (golden mean).

#9b is on the Bregman Electronic Music Studio CD-ROM, and is the only one that has been “performed.” This piece is also part of a set of tape works called the Three Anna Studies (each released independently, but all three on my Artifact CD, Change). #9b also released on Cold Blue CD.