| Composition Year | 1990 ca. |
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Contents |
No files submitted.
| Work Title | Merritch |
|---|---|
| Alternative. Title | |
| Composer | Drehmer, Earl Richard |
| I-Catalogue NumberI-Cat. No. | IED 109 |
| Year/Date of CompositionY/D of Comp. | 1990 ca. |
| First Publication. | 2023 |
| Average DurationAvg. Duration | 8.9 minutes |
| Composer Time PeriodComp. Period | Modern |
| Piece Style | Modern |
| Instrumentation | keyboard (Ensoniq EPS): mouth samples |
| Extra Information | Electronic Music |
This is another piece in the series composed using mouth sounds. I intentionally spelled "Marriage" wrong. All the pieces in this series have odd titles spelled all kinds of ways.
The title "Merritch" is my play on words, combining marriage and itch. It represents a married couple having discussions and even arguments, sometimes repeating or nagging, thus the sound of dripping water.
On my Ensoniq EPS I sampled 8 sounds made by my mouth (whistle, hum, wind, etc.). Then I altered them through various electronic techniques (filters, LFOs, loops, envelopes, etc.) and created a set of 8 instruments with multiple patches and mod wheel available to alter them live and intuitively. I then created these works with the fanciful titles, mostly in 8 tracks, with 1 or more of these sounds per composition. I explored what could be done to use the EPS as an instrument and not just a sequencer. Merritch was a result of my explorations of these mouth sounds. One friend calls these samples "extended vocal techniques". Some of these pieces use 1 or two samples not of my own making. Some of them, like Merritch, were composed directly on the EPS, so there is no score. Others were composed on the computer using Finale and performed through the synthesizer via MIDI, so they have an actual score with patch, mod wheel, pitch wheel, and other expressions inserted, performed by settings and graphics.
