Primitivo
This audio/visual work was composed during the Spring of 2007 as partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Master’s Degree in Music and New Technology awarded to the author at the Conservatory of Music in Florence, Italy in the Fall of 2007.
It started out as a long audio/visual improvisation done using the application Metasynth 4 Pro by U&I, recorded on a digital VCR, then edited and processed with Apple iMovie and Final Cut Pro.
The graphical approach to music composition of Metasynth permits the composer to draw on a virtual blackboard while the application, in real time, transforms the visual images to audio. All the parameters for these transformations can be programmed: vertical pixels to pitch, horizontal pixels to time, different colors for positioning sounds in the stereo field, dullness/brightness to loudness, waveforms, signal processing etc.
The title “Primitivo” (Primitive) hints at the esthetic rawness of the movie that tries to recreate the atmosphere of the experimentalism of the “Fifties”.
The basic esthetic choices, in order to achieve this goal were:
1) black and white images
2) use of sine waveforms, most of the time
3) atonality
4) quarter tone tuning system