Litli Askr - Guitar and Max

For Classical Guitar, Max-patch and Electronics

Litli Askr (Little Tree) is a piece for classical guitar, electronics, and optional visuals. Inspired by the early growth stages of a tree, the work reflects my fascination with how much information is packed into a single seed, allowing it to eventually create seeds of its own that repeat the process. Each movement is inspired by a particular growth stage that caught my imagination.

1. Fræið spírar og byrjar að vaxa (The seed sprouts and begins to grow)

2. Ræturnar binda sig við jörðina (The roots bind themselves to the earth)

3. Greinar tvístrast og breiða úr sér (Branches scatter and spread out)

4. Lauf baða sig í sólargeislum (Leaves bathe in sun rays)

5. Kórónan teygir sig til himins (The crown stretches towards the sky)

The guitar is processed through a few of my audio effects, the most noticeable effect I call a: Spectral Playback Speed Delay, featuring an eight-channel phase vocoder. This enables dynamic time-stretching capabilities on 8 layers of a circular buffer - functioning as a kind of delay, reverb, reverse delay, granular delay and spectral freeze. Each movement uses this effect in a particular way and throughout the piece, manyn of the parameters of these effects are automated to evolve over time, with the performer performing roughly in sync with a clock/counter to keep things aligned.