Anna Meredith Plays the Skyline

The bridge as a musical score

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Last year BBC 4 ran a three-part series in which musicians looked at the sky and read it as a musical score. Each entry in the series featured two composers, including Anna Meredith, who has posted her piece, “Blackfriars,” on [her SoundCloud account](https://soundcloud.com/annameredith/blackfriars). “Blackfriars” features cellist Oliver Coates, who employed a special, curved bow. Curvature is at the core of Meredith’s piece, which is modeled on the design of the bridge that commanded her view of the skyline.

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An image, shown above, hosted as part of the BBC’s documentation of the project, shows an initial vision of how the rough sketch of the bridge was turned into shapes on a proper musical score. The completed piece is slow, and centered on swellings that bring to mind the water’s pace, its give and take. Underlying it is this quiet yet intense tick-tock.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/annameredith](https://soundcloud.com/annameredith/blackfriars). The other musicians featured in the series include Kizzy Crawford, Julie Fowlis, James MacMillan, Courtney Pine, and Gwilym Simcock. The full series, presented by Tim Marlow, is housed at [bbc.co.uk](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04bgdn0), which among things shows [the first page of her score](http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/336xn/p0230qns.jpg). More from Meredith, who is based in London, at [annameredith.com](http://annameredith.com/) and [twitter.com/annahmeredith](https://twitter.com/annahmeredith).

What to Call Drone Music After Drones

"One Note" by Finland's Michael Rooke

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

You can call it “drone” music, but the word “drone” has, of course, come to be synonymous with hovering agents of surveillance. So, Michael Rooke, the Finnish sound designer and coder, just calls it “One Note,” or at least that’s his name for a [recently posted track](https://soundcloud.com/urlme/one-note). There is, arguably, more than one note to “One Note,” since that note dangles like a platonic ideal amid all manner of light, nuanced variations. It sounds like a bowed glass harmonica more than anything, this one intoned sound on repeat, the lulling pace of its sine wave see saw occasionally usurped by secondary, deeper tones. As Walt Whitman said in a different context, this one note contains multitudes.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/urlme](https://soundcloud.com/urlme/one-note). More from Rooke, who is based in Hyvinkää, Finland, at [rookelabs.com](http://www.rookelabs.com/).

Violin in the Machine

And vice versa, from Leeds-based Chrissie Caulfield

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The track “Weavezyme” is Chrissie Caulfield turning noise into music, specifically machine noise, and specifically something with a distant yet clinging association to classical music. The track is from a recent collection, titled *Mechanisms*, in which Caulfield’s violin and, to a lesser degree, cello join up with transformed recordings of machinery in action — here sodden thud and distant clank and rumbling drone. She notes in a brief accompanying statement, “This is an album based loosely on ‘mechanisms’ of various kinds. Many of the tracks feature actual mechanical noises, but some are just a nod to classical compositional ‘mechanisms’ or structures.” That sentence makes a helpful parallel to the concept of language itself being a form of technology.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/progchick](https://soundcloud.com/progchick/weavezyme). The album *Mechanisms* is streamable in full and available at “name your price” on [music.chrissieviolin.info](http://music.chrissieviolin.info/album/mechanisms), via Bandcamp. More from Caulfield, who is based in Leeds, England, at [chrissieviolin.info](http://chrissieviolin.info/) and [twitter.com/chrissie_c](https://twitter.com/chrissie_c).

Piano Phase Is Urban Noir

A Reichian piece by J.C. Combs

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The title for J.C. Combs’ simple piano piece references the beading rhythmic experiments of famed minimalist composer Steve Reich. But it arguably has as much Gershwin in it as it does Reich. “Phase Study for Paul Muller” manages a small amount of swagger, a fair measure of swing. The driving pulse of the music has the busy urban nightscape quality of Reich’s early works in this manner, where musical lines of close derivation create sonic moiré patterns. Perhaps its the compact length, at barely three minutes, but Combs’ seems bustling and jaunty, rather than hallucinogenic and geometric.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/jc-combs](https://soundcloud.com/jc-combs/phase-study-for-paul-muller). More from Combs, who is based in Seattle, Washington, at [jccombs.com](http://jccombs.com/).