Introduction
Welcome to Derviş Can Vural's music website. My
compositions are experiments in counterpoint, distortion and noise,
microtonality, electroacoustic improvisation, and various folkloric and
classical forms of the Middle East and Balkans. My structural themes
include closed orbits, series, stochastic patterns, partitioning,
decomposition and disintegration of order, self similarity and self
reference.
Tonal Works
Heterophony is
when multiple voices play a single melody together, with slight
variations. Few heterophonic voices produce a fibrous texture; when
many are put together, individual voices cannot be discerned, producing
a dense cloud.
I
build some melody lines self-similarly (e.g. three notes surrounded by
three shorter notes, each of which are surrounded by three shorter
notes). I also build multiple independent heterophonic voices in
counterpoint. I find the effect to invoke tactile impression, as if
one is touching an ornate architectural detail, or a heavily textured
surface.
|
Tonal Samples
Tonal Poetry for a Dragon that Smells like Supernovae: To Anka.
Gülnihal:
A belated birthday present for Pinar; a reimagination of Ismail
Dede Efendi's piece with the same name.
Embracing
Oppression: Dedicated to
Faruk Yarman and the wise children of the Gezi Park protest.
Oil
Wrestlers Celebrate the Ovulation of Pachamama: This piece is a fusion of Aymara
folk form with syncopated triplets,
parallel fourths, and decisive codas; Ottoman classical music, with
dense
heterophonic melody line and deep and slow drums; and baroque
counterpoint.
Piece
for Gene: Pentatones and
thirty
one eighths for an unintelligible afroamerican cowboy shaman who one
night froze himself to death.
Fevkalbeşer
Dumduma: Up beat
heterophonic
counterpoint, building on the piano tradition
of Feyzi Aslangil. The title roughly translates to ‘‘superhuman
disarray".
Heterophonic Textures: A
humorous melody line embelished by space-filling self-similar ornaments
with a generous whack of disorder.
The
Epic of Failure
Meditations
on a Picture of Dr. Z.
Knots
and Folds
Ney Taksims
The Ney, an
rim blown reed flute, has a history of 4500 years. It is the
centerpiece of the Ottoman classical music tradition.
The 13th century poet
and philosopher Rumî wrote, ‘‘Pay
heed to the grievances of the reed, of what divisive separations breed:
From the reedbed cut away just like a weed, my music people curse, warn
and heed. Sliced to pieces my bosom and heart bleed, while I tell this
tale of desire and need". Below are few ney taksims, i.e. short structured
improvisations.
One, Two, Three,
Four, Five, Six, Seven.
|
Sound Sculptures
These pieces are mosaics of natural recorded
sounds mutated and fused
together via digital signal processing. The input material can range
anywhere from a brief cough to stirring wet styrofoam and pennies in a
metal bowl. I am particularly interested in granular synthesis, which involves
overlaying identical or similar sound bits many thousans of times, each with a
slight shift of phase and amplitude.
Phase randomization is exactly why a
single violin sounds so different than an orchestral ensemble. If you
ever wondered what a few milisecond tap on a desk or a hum would sound
like when
millions of them are overlayed, check below.
The
Humming Song
Fine
Structure of an Ultrasonic Orgasm
Kitsch
The elegant marble sculptures
of antiquity, now all white and noble, were once painted in awfull pinks, purples and
greens. Art historians have been crying in denial for a
decade, but this shouldn't have been a surprise: Who in the eastern
mediterranean doesn't love a little bit of kitsch?
These
pieces are the musical analogues of these sculptures, or Leonardo's
grotesque faces, featuring caricaturistic, jazzy, uncomfortable,
inelegant and awkward expressions. You'll love it if you are a fruit fly with Asperger's syndrome.
Bionic
Safiye and the Pepper Flower
Delik
Pantolonlu Narin Sebastiyan
Mukaddes
Oynak Beri Zelzelesi
|
