To my parents, Larbi and Marie-Françoise

Move 1 presents some anecdotal and abstract representations of animal and human movement. It is not a ‘pure’ research work into the behaviour of sound in space but rather it is closer to a poetic etude on movement. Most listeners will recognize some of the sound objects in motion: sounds of bees and birds in flight and humans moving about on skates and skateboards are juxtaposed with abstract shadows, percussive imaginary echoes of the ‘natural’ world. This exchange or contrast between the recognizable (stable) and the unknown (unstable) is at the heart of my compositional exploration and often dictates the form of my works.

Technically, my initial intent was to find a way to integrate some of the work that I had been doing with the MAX software (Ircam, Paris) into a composition. I had heard some wonderful sounds fabricated with the SYTER system (at the GRM, Paris) and was interested in trying to find a way to use MIDI to reproduce some of those rich morphologies. I constructed a MIDI data generator that changes a sound sample start point every every time it is played. In addition this generator also affects a variety of parameters, including volume, filter cut-off point, pitch, pan position… allowing for various applications resembling granular synthesis. This allowed me to generate a constantly evolving yet homogeneous texture from a single sound sample (examples are abundant in the first and last sections of this piece).

Move 1 was realized at the electroacoustic studio of Université de Montréal, under the guidance of Francis Dhomont and Jean Piché, and premiered in April 1995 at the 4th Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea (Bogotá, Colombia). Move 1 was a finalist at the 4th Prix international Noroit-Léonce Petitot (Arras, France, 1995) and was recorded on the compact disc Prix international Noroit-Léonce Petitot 1995 (NOR 4). A shortened version was also recorded on the compact disc The Swarm of Drones (Asphodel 0953).

Premiere

• April 20, 1995, IV Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea: Concierto, Auditorio Alberto Lleras — Edificio Alberto Lleras Camargo — Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá (Colombia)