Unringing the Bell, 2015
Incidental Music for Kepler 438B, a 24-hour performance piece that contemplates the exoplanet 438B, discovered by the Kepler telescope. Performed at Mobius, Cambridge, MA November 7-8, 2015.

Composed and Performed by Mark Pevsner

Collaborators:
Michael Moss, Soundscape Studios
Digitally manipulated sampled bell and wood percussion. Recorded samples of the original instruments and recorded the final compositions.

Jonathan Hess, Percussion
Performed (for sampling) the bell/metal/wood section of his percussion collection

Meditation #7
The original idea for this music was to record members of the bell family and to play the recordings backwards, hence the “unringing”. I soon discovered that cognitively, in order for a backwards bell (gradual swell to attack) to “sound” like a bell, it needs to be connected – via editing – to a normal bell sound (attack followed by decay). Once the various forward and backward sounds were loaded into a digital sampler, the element of pitch could be as prominent as the element of timbre. Meditation #7 is one of a series of compositions that comprise Unringing the Bell. It is a continuous, 15-minute, unedited improvisation.