Inspired by the observation that each of the standard tape speeds for legacy recording equipment represent either a doubling or halving of the adjacent speeds, this work was undertaken by recording a brief musical gesture to tape, layering playback at multiple tape speeds.
Each modulation corresponds to transposition of the music in octaves; these transpositions are presented as an ensemble, with each channel represented visually. The title of each piece refers to the original tape speed and musical instrument recorded.
In the first example, '3 3/4: Glockenspiel', this was created in the analog domain, playing back the tape at each speed setting, with the additional step of digital retiming. In the second work example, '3 3/4: Electric Guitar', this transposition was done digitally, in real-time, through the use of MaxMSP. The corresponding visual presentation of each example was generated dynamically by the multichannel output of these processes via Jitter objects within MaxMSP.