Mobile Scores and Click-Tracks: Teaching Old Dogs
Lindsay Vickery · Australasian Journal of Paramedicine · 2010
This paper reconsiders the paper score as a medium for presentation of mobile score works. The precedents leading to the development of mobile form in music are discussed. The form and modes of realisation of a range of works by Earle Brown, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, John Zorn, Mauricio Kagel, Charles Ives and Denis Smalley are examined. The potential for computers to provide a more ‘natural’ medium for mobile scores is explored. A number of computer-based solutions to the realisation of mobile scores are proposed in regard to: the single page mobile score, the multi-page mobile score, the mobile graphical score, the polytempo score and works that include pre-recorded sound and/or live electronics. Solutions including the on-screen scrolling score, the onscreen timer, the computer controlled click-track and networked multiple computers are proposed. The potential to control musical parameters such as formal structure, tempo, meter and dynamics are explored, as well as the ability to represent “free” pitch and rhythm.