DOS-Lab [1981 – 2020]
Technology represents wrongly acquired energy and results. Anyone who deals with technology has to laugh; you feel caught because what technology yields does not rightfully belong to you. This is because a minimum of effort results in a maximum outcome. Have you ever seen a farmer laugh after working himself to the bone in the fields all day? That farmer looks serious.
Art, too, is characterized by seriousness. Just look at musicians. Even if they play humorous music, their facial expression remains serious. This is because the relationship between work and result for that farmer and those musicians is as it should be. The balance is well maintained.
— Dick Raaijmakers in an interview with Elmer Schönberger [1985]
In 1981, I started using a computer to generate my composition material. The first computer system I used was one of the first IBM mainframes that didn’t work with tapes, but with drums containing seven hard disks.
From 1985 onwards, I also worked with PCs from the brand Datapoint. Such a device had an internal memory of 32 kilobytes and was operated with an 8-inch floppy disk with a storage capacity of 128 kilobytes.
From the 1990s, I worked with DOS. This system operates optimally on the last version of Windows that is still essentially a shell of DOS: Windows 98.
Since 2010, it has also worked on a MacBook via a Windows simulation program. On newer Macs, this program no longer works. As of 2020, all my DOS computers have become obsolete.
For Karkas, I wrote a computer program in 1981 that allowed me to create an infinite canon series, based on every possible pulse ratio, for example, 3:4:13. The pulses not only had to develop the notes or chords canonically, but when two or more pulses coincided, they also had to have the same chord. The sequence of the chords thus progresses both forward and backward in steps. Below is an example of this.
In the beginning, I mainly worked with tables, like the one above, but in 1982 I also started using a simple music notation program. These were not yet on the market at that time. This resulted in a very basic notation because I only had a simple 7×7 matrix printer at my disposal. Below is an example from the percussion part.
In 1985, when I started writing Grand Hotel, I expanded the notation program. Each character that the printer could print consisted of a maximum of 49 dots. But by combining those matrices, I could also design, for example, a treble clef. To print it, three lines were needed. Below is an example I used for a lecture on Bint. It is an example from Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony, final movement, concerning the ‘hocket’ setting of the strings.
Example Canon Series [2:3]
The series begins as follows: 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 3 1 1 2 3 1 5 3 2 1 6…
Example of rhythmic distillation from Canon Series
The pulses where the new chords appear are distilled from the series, thereby creating new rhythmic motifs.
Another form of distillation I used in Het Gebroken Oor, where I was able to project quotes from Schönberg’s Chamber Symphony Opus 9 out of the Canon Series.
Since the 1990s, music notation software programs have entered the market. The first program I encountered was called ‘Noteprocessor,’ which was designed by Stephen Dydo. I could input my files into that program. A few years later, the program ScoreTM followed, which I still use to this day. My DOS-Lab generates files that can be converted into a score by this program, as seen in the video above. Years later, I was able to import the Score files into Sibelius[2].
Video: example of my DOS Lab at work.