Feeling For Sound- Graphic Musical Scores

In a tutorial with Kathleen, I expressed my interest in creating a visual element to go alongside my sound piece. She suggested looking at graphical scores and Cornelius Cardew in particular.

Cornelius Cardew is a compose who works with graphical scores such as his famous 'Treatise' which a massive 193 pages long of just graphical score. Graphical scores in general are a musical score which is shown in either just shapes or lines, in any form, or a combination of these things and musical notes. Graphical scores often come with instructions on how they should be played, but some pieces like Treatise is interpretive and the performer must make up their own rules on how to play the piece. I found a couple of interesting examples of this type of thing being played out:

John Teske- Six Graphic Scores

Artikulation- Gyorgy Ligeti

After looking at a few of these kinds of pieces, I have some notes on how I think I want to take this idea:

• Why do the shapes, dots, lines etc. have to represent individual notes? They could represent something like texture, which may allow far more creative freedom in the piece.
• I feel as if the pieces are often played far too literally. Following on from questioning how to interpret individual notes, it feels as if the composers sometimes drew these pieces and then thought, well what would this sound like? This is not the effect I want to create, and so I think the compositions should be far more focused.
• Is it possible to create something that sounds more traditional using this unconventional technique?

I think I should experiment with the sound at first, and then draw some things surrounding how it sounds after. I think it would be far more beneficial to do it that way and that way I can experiment with different ways of showing the sound I have created on paper.