A four movement suite for quartertone electronic instrument. Composed in 1991, realized 1995 with Csound. Duration: 7 minutes. An exploration of a scale which divides the octave into 24 equal parts. Contrapuntal mayhem at the service of a hysterical baroque sensiblity.
Kyle Gann wrote about Acid Bach in July, 1999:
"Jeffrey Harrington's Acid Bach plinks its way through microtonal melodies like banjo music somehow smeared by a wet hand. The way those melodies fit together is determined by computer, for Harrington has programmed his software to work out the contrapuntal problems itself. He's a rare find; from his beginnings in Mississippi he's lived in a number of musical worlds, and at 17 wrote a serial piece based on the bass line from a Billy Cobham song. In the '80s he forged a style by combining an 18th-century harmonic vocabulary with jazz rhythms, while working as a galley hand in the offshore oil fields of Louisiana, as clerk in the world's oldest record store (Liberty Music on Madison Avenue), and writing Java games for Children's Television Workshop.
By a slim margin, Harrington is the most intriguing new figure I've discovered (so far) on the Web page that every new-music Web search ultimately brings me to: Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar (http://www.goddard.edu/wgdr/kalvos).
Kyle Gann, Village Voice, July 7, 1999
Acid Bach I: Download MP3
Acid Bach II: Download MP3
Acid Bach III: Download MP3
Acid Bach IV: Download MP3
Acid Bach Csound Orc and Sco Files for all 4 movements