Quest (Búsqueda)

1986, for stereo tape.

Program Notes

This piece was composed around 1985 in my Buenos Aires home studio and remixed latter at LIPM (Music Research and Production Laboratory, Buenos Aires, Argentina). All the sounds in this piece were generated using a CZ101 digital synthesizer, one of the first affordable (ie: cheap) digital synthesizers. A Commodore 64 computer with a home brew MIDI interface running the Dr T sequencer package controlled the whole show. The piece was originally recorded by bouncing tracks between my two open reel recorders. During the most dense passages of the piece there are up to 12 virtual CZ101s panned across the stereo field.

The first part of the piece is a quest for something unknown. Tension slowly builds up until what is searched for is found. As usual, the end of the quest finds something that is very simple in comparison with the complexity of the search itself, and this new material is developed in the second part of the piece. The natural rhythms of beating sine wave play for a while until the memory of the quest returns and takes command of the discourse while the searcher and the searched-for object become one and end together.

Performances

• Electroacústica: desde La Plata y Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Colombia, Sala Teresa Cuervo Borda, Bogotá, Colombia, March 18th, 2016 (program, pdf).
• CCRMA Winter Concert, The Stage, February 17th 2011.
• CCRMA Computer Music Concert, Campbell Recital Hall, Stanford, March 11th 1997.
• Electroacoustic Music from LIPM, CCRMA, Stanford, March 11th 1991.
• Music from LIPM concert, Center for Music Experiment, USCD, February 24th 1991.
• Electroacoustic Music Week, LIPM, Buenos Aires, Argentina, October 3rd 1990.
• Electroacoustic Music Week, LIPM, Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 16th 1986.

Awards

• 17th International Electroacoustic Music Competition, 1990, Bourges, France

  Winner of a Mention in the Quadrivium.

CD

Quest is part of the "Perspectivas I" CD released by the Tarka Record Company in Argentina

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano

Composer, performer, lecturer and computer systems administrator at CCRMA, Stanford University

Quick Links

El Dinosaurio
Applesauce Modular Mark V
Planet CCRMA

Music & Performances

Of Dinosaurs and Other Creatures
The Well Modulated Dinosaur
The Love Songs of Flying Dinosaurs
El PianoSaurio
Dinosaur He[a]rd!
Wings
Resurrections
Pia[NOT] Etude
The Miraculous Multiplication of Strings
Y Sonó Como Arpa Vieja
Un Esqueleto en la Cocina
The Hidden and Mysterious Machinery of Sound
Modulate me, please?
Space, S[acred|ecular]
Vox Voxel
Toast and Jam
Divertimento de Cocina
Velvet Skin, Heart of Steel
Fugue 1 (Fanfare)
Jurassic Modulations
Earth Songs
Dinosaur Skin
A Very Fractal Cat, Somewhat T[h]rilled
65 Second Bycicle
The Dinosaur At War
Exit Variations
El Dinosaurio Habla
Kitchen <-> Miniature(s)
Instant Knoll
iICEsCcRrEeAaMm
House of Mirrors
With Room to Grow
Knock knock, anybody there?
Three Dreams
Espresso Machine II
Hot'n Cold
Quest