The triangle

Nathan Davis, born in Alabama in 1973, is a percussionist and electroacoustic composer. Among other things, he is co-founder of the electroacoustic cello and percussion duo Odd Appetite. From whose website we take this excerpt from Diving Bell (2002), a piece in which all the sounds are generated by the "humble and wonderful" triangle.

It's the kind of piece I encourage my students to play sooner or later because working on a single sonority helps them understand that there's a complex universe within each sound.

Author's note:

Diving Bell invites the listener to delve deeply into the sound of the humble and magnificent triangle. By striking the triangles at different points and with different materials, and by using a handheld microphone, I extract and re-sculpt single overtones that are present in the overall sound of the instruments, hidden sounds that are normally only apparent when one holds the triangle up to their ear, like a tuning fork. With the help of tape delay modeling software, I layer these rich overtones in a structured improvisation.

The piece is part of the CD Memory Spaces.

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