For string quartet and 2-channel live-trigger electronics (no click track). Max MSP patch included and can be used with free trial version of Max.

About the piece:

Four Tunes in A Major was written out of a desire to take myself and my music less seriously—to play rather than compose. Interestingly the resulting music was no less “serious” than my usual music, though it’s perhaps a little more loosely glued together.

The electronics in this piece feature samples of my fiddle playing on a hardanger d’amore 5x5 fiddle made by Salve Håkedal, a Norwegian instrument designed to maximize the resonance of five sympathetic strings that lie beneath the fingerboard. The audio samples feature everything from textural ricochets to harmonies and straight-up tune playing.

I’ve been inserting my fiddling into a number of pieces lately, and it’s been such a refreshing way of making music—to be in the action and exploring sound through physical, as opposed to cerebral, action. Other pieces in this series of fiddly fun include Turadh, to sing of sins, and Bolder.