Alibi
. : two movements for stereo playback
: . : . The White Pieces . :
: : . : Donna Never Cries . :





Alibi (2001), is a two-movement work for loudspeakers where speech material is transformed and exploited out of its original context. The voice with all its character becomes the stimulus for a new interpretation of the inflections and gestures provided in a spoken language.

The initial concept from which this piece emerges sought to use speech but refused its inherent spoken meaning.

I wanted to evaluate words for their sound qualities and from that angle compose a work that transforms the speech as a non-programatic instrument. In using a language unfamiliar to myself it was possible to stay impartial to any meaning the speech may contain.

The computer is used then to rebuild the language either by reordering sylables, manipulating inflections and tones or by freezing certain points in the speech.

What we hear as a result is something that we recognize clearly as a person speaking but the manipulations it has undergone have striped it of an understandable idiom furthered by the uncommon knowledge of the source language, Japanese.

Alibi was composed in 2001 at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI) in Denton, Texas.