Companion web-app:
xavierbonfill.com/34mapp

DLB2305
three_four_maybe (composed 2020-21, recorded 2023)
for 3 musicians: midi controllers, prepared piano, 24 solenoids, 3 LED panels

When I was a child, before I started writing my own music, I used to write short stories. My poor handwriting made it difficult for others to read, and we didn’t have a computer at home at the time. So my parents got me a typewriter for my birthday. I loved it so much. Ideas would just flow, from my mind, into printed paper. What I liked the most about the typewriter was the sound that it made. And how each word would become music as it got typed. It was an electric typewriter, so there was a little bit of delay between my key presses and the actual sound. I learnt how to work around it and I would type faster or slower in order to queue up characters and hear certain rhythms I had in my head. So that electric typewriter was, in a way, my first sequencer.
I see the grand piano in “three_four_maybe” a bit like a giant typewriter that makes the most amazing sounds. Sounds that are like characters in a text. When combined, these characters become rhythms, melodies, words, sentences. And, in theory, when used
in a given combination, they could, like atoms, become something unlike anything that has ever existed before.

This studio recording took a few detours, cancellations, iterations. But now it's finally here! We opted for recording the piece in "midi" first (note data instead of sound), so I would have more freedom to manipulate "takes" from NEKO3 in a non-destructive way, and then record the editing in audio and video. "three_four_maybe" remains, for me, a very non-photogenic piece, in the sense that no recording can really reflect its "inner life". But I learnt to embrace this idea during the process, and I'm so happy to have it here, "immortalised". Thanks to all who made it possible, and thank you for listening.

Xavier Bonfill, May 2023