Digito In Machina

Out Now! 🙂

Digito In Machina was composed over the course of a week during the 2020 lock-down. Working from home with no access to performers, recording venues or instruments other than what was immediately to hand narrowed some of the physical possibilities, but in so doing paved the way for the exploration of different solutions.

Superficially Digito In Machina can be perceived as a work for piano and computer, but to draw this conclusion would be an error as the whole piece was generated digitally. What interests me is how it is still so tempting to conjure a physical causality behind the piano (all the notes of which were pre-programmed) especially when it blurs into, and is overwhelmed by the ‘other’ of electronic processing which is in turn based upon the “piano” sound. Up until seven weeks ago the idea of not recording it with a real person playing the instrument would have been anathema; but given sessions are currently not an option it frees up this new metaspace between the inference of instrument, performer and computer audio.

The work reflects some of the strangeness of the lock-down time, arching over an approximately bell-like curve mixing whimsy and moments of beauty, with occasional flashes of fear, engulfment and the feeling of a niggling itch somewhere inside the mind. I sincerely hope we all arrive well on the far side. Stay safe.

Ed Wright
Penmaenmawr 4th May 2020

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