Drama lies at the heart of 'Scherzo' by Italian composer and Mathematics major, Daniele Sciolla. Like the descent of a spirit, a god, your future self, before being dragged away by the infinite pull of a force beyond its control, 'Scherzo' is a tally of de-regulated sounds speeding and elastic, looping but linear and finite. Virtuosic in their temporal imperfection, crescendos rising in a merging of moments, the track is 1:42 of experimentation.
"When I listen to a track, I like to search for rules describing some aspects of it," Sciolla tells yes/no via email. "And in the same way my composition notes are placed following algorithms, especially rhythmically."
"There's a lot of math involved in Synth Carnival," he continues. "I set the tempo and then notes were gradually added and removed following a specific pattern. So one gets the impression of chaos and slowing down or acceleration, but the BPM is always the same.
"It's similar to what some arpeggiators give off, but writing it by myself I can control more parameters."
Sciolla mentions that he was driving along Lake Geneva, Switzerland, when he first came up with this way of creating music. "In those days, I was recording a large number of synthesisers at the SMEM Museum in Fribourg," he says, and likens the sound of 'Scherzo' to the way one can stumble upon state-of-the-art buildings in the middle of a forest — "unspoiled, wild nature next to high technology."
The is suitably organic: self-made, instead of relying on the convenience of automation. It's a testament to the majesty of nature, as much as to the tone and texture of organic synthesisers, and to the power of mathematics.
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'Scherzo' is taken from Daniele Sciolla's Synthesizer Carnival EP, which you can listen to over on his SoundCloud.
- 🔔 SMEM is the Swiss Museum & Centre for Electronic Music Instruments, in Fribourg, Switzerland.
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