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Terry Riley's famous minimalist composition, In C., is comprised of 53 musical parts. These are to be performed in sequence by an orchestra whose size can range from small to large.

Each player is allowed to select how many times to repeat a part and the result is a mesmerizing interplay between voices and parts.

To achieve this in a simple Fiddle project, we combine abc notation with a simple node graph.

Right-click to copy examples to your workspace

in-c.abc

In the screengrab below, you can see:

• we use M:none to indicate that measure may have different length
• we use L:1/8 to select our default note-length
• we use abc's voice capability to encode the 53 different patterns. Here, V:1 defines the pattern {C}E2 {C}E2 {C}E2, which can be visualized live (via abcjs) while entering the pattern. The visualization can be toggled on-or-of via hot-keys or the cogs menu. You can even play your notes here. In this case, all voices are played simultaneously which is not very helpful for this composition.

We explore how the voices are selected and serialized below.

in-c.chg

Below we see the graph overview for 5 players. Notice:

• each voice is comprised of 4 nodes, from left to right:
  • AbcNotes - parses the abc file and delivers notes to the player node
  • Player - receives notes optionally transposes them and delivers them to the the instrument node
  • Instrument - receives notes from player and converts the notes to sound. This graph employs a different instrument for each voice.
  • Channel - receives the sound and offers controls over gain and panning. Optional per-channel effects chains can be embedded within these nodes.
• the small nodes on the left represent shared-values for the AbcNotes nodes and makes it easier to fiddle with their values.
• the nodes to the right of the player subgraphs provide global control over the final mix and the master tempo.

In this detailed view the green circles represent values that have been changed. To the right you can see the node inspector for an individual AbcNotes node.

Notice:

• the name of the abc file is provided in workspace-relative form
• we select a start delay of 12 beats with the intent that each player start at slightly different times.
• we request AbcNotes proceed from voice 1 through 53.
• we request a random number of repeats, expressed in Beats. As discussed above, the values for MinRepeats and MaxRepeats are provided by upstream value nodes so we can share these numbers amongst all players and readily fiddle with them.

the payoff

If you right-click on this example you can copy it into your workspace where you can perform the piece and make changes.

To perform:

• click on the file fiddleExamples/in-c/in-c.chg in your workspace. This should load the file into a graph editor window.
• right-click on the graph window an select Chuck it! to send it to chuck for performance.
• while in C. is playing you can modify instrument settings, channel gain and pan and even the tempo. Have fun!

next steps

An exercise left to the reader:

• improve the ending to better adhere to Mr. Riley's instructions
• modify the volume over the duration of the piece

See also:

• https://teropa.info/blog/2017/01/23/terry-rileys-in-c.html