Museau de Singe is an interactive work for double bass, piano, and live computer processing. In Museau, the composer wanted to create an environment within which the computer could extend the capabilities of both the bass and piano, while at the same time retaining the elements that make each instrument unique. The voice of the double bass is transformed into a hyper-bass of sorts, with no constraints on duration or pitch. The piano’s voice is similarly released from the restrictive decay of its strings to be heard at tempi and pitches previously unimaginable. By realizing the computer’s voicing in a vertical-quadraphonic soundscape, he attempted to introduce a new dimension to the performance, that of motion. The technical goal of Museau was to create a flexible audio-processing architecture that would afford the user complete pitch and spatial control over short sample sets of the live instruments. To this end, the composer utilized multiple instantiations of Max/MSP’s poly~ object to allow either individual or group manipulation of each sample or sample set. By introducing randomized dynamically generated buffer~ objects alongside a fully scripted computer performance score, a balance between deterministic and indeterminist events was achieved.

Museau de Singe was commissioned by doublebassist Jeremy Baguyos and is featured on the 2005 CD release "Uncoiled Oscillations" by Jeremy Baguyos.