Daniel Scheidt

Action / Réaction documents five pieces by Daniel Scheidt for instrumental soloist and interactive computer system, composed between 1986 and 1990 and recorded mostly at the Luscar Studio of The Banff Centre for the Arts. In each, software written by Scheidt takes the performer's acoustic input and produces electronic responses, which in turn become new material for the player: a feedback loop one musician called an “idea expander”. The recordings are studio performances with very little editing.

The pieces grew out of long rehearsals, and the performers improvise within each system. In Obeying the Laws of Physics (1987) Trevor Tureski moves through four timbral regions on MIDI percussion, triggering transitions with specific playing techniques, with no score in the computer and no operator. A Digital Eclogue (1986), made with clarinettist Claude Schryer, was Scheidt's first interactive work and received a mention at Bourges that year. Stories Told (1989), for soprano Catherine Lewis, uses a pseudo-language generated by Robin Dawes from a statistical analysis of the Oxford English Dictionary, so that every listener hears a story in a foreign tongue.

The last two pieces use NORM, Scheidt's most general response program. Norm 'n' George (1990) is a free improvisation between George E Lewis on trombone, the composer and the software. In Squeeze (1990), Lori Freedman explores pitch on bass clarinet in a closer study of instrument and machine. Martin Bartlett's booklet essay describes these encounters as duels between composer and performer on equal footing.

Born in Edmonton in 1956, Scheidt studied percussion and composition at the University of Victoria and computer science at Queen's University, and treated software as a compositional medium. He died in Calgary in 2021.

CD in jewel case, empreintes DIGITALes IMED 9105, 1991.