I have been using the score feature constraints tool developed within the SUM research project for a couple of works by now, and it has been an interesting experience. Take a look / listen to Sparks and Feathers, Quiet Voice and Defun. What struck me the most in the composition process was my eagerness to change score features abruptly, and at times very often. It was at times as in anxiety, looking for surprises and interesting twists intended to generate curiosity and capture and sustain my – imaginary – audience’s attention.

Now, the score tool identifies the constraints for a specific emotion, and inversely that particular emotion a set of features will express. It hereby tells us what the score features is likely to generate as emotion of a specific sort, which probably is obvious when you think about it. But in the moment of composing, choices were more an inner necessity for me, rather than a musical expression that I wanted to convey. This was of course my suspicion,  and it points to an unconscious attitude towards the emotion expressed, produced by subjective musical material concerns. The musical material (or the processing applied to it) needed to be ‘interesting’, exciting’, ‘new, ‘fresh’ etc., but the perceived result is instead ‘anger’, ‘tension’, fearful’, unsettled’ etc.

For more information and downloads go to the Toolbox page.