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    • Entrelacs

    Entrelacs is a research-creation at the confluence of modular synthesizer, early music and algorithmic principles.

    Through this work, I want to give a historical approach to my electronic practice in the contemporary conjoncture. Especially, I rely on the work of Nicola Vicentino1 on a 31-tone2 tuning system and the counterpoint practice of singing upon the book3.

    Thus, the different voices of my modular synthesizer will be sequenced by a script I’m currently developing for the monome norns4. With the latter, I will be able to invent a polyphonic counterpoint5 in realtime from a main melody (cantus firmus6), which will follow modal principles7 and rules of improvised counterpoint. The melody will be generated by a random walk8 algorithm and the additional voices will be guided by Markov chains9. I will approach this method as pattern synthesis10, which will produce a polyphonic structure organised by a stochastic process11 played in realtime.

    Like Vicentino — who paid attention to the act of listening and to the more subtle affects his 31-tone music could produce — I’m also interested in adapting ancient music to modern practice, to approach it with a close but different frame of reference. A new historical context where the electronic tools at my disposal can provide precise digital tuning, algorithmic processes and sound synthesis which will offer new timbral-spectral aspects to this particular pitches.

    This work aims to create new music interlacing those various and complementary strands, by combining, questioning and redefining categories about early and contemporary music in the electronic field. The goal is to invent directly on my instrument in realtime and avoid the composition-improvisation duality challenged retrospectively by the oral-written practice of singing upon the book.

    1. Nicola Vicentino (1510-1577) : Theorist and composer from Vicenza (Italy) who published L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica in 1555. He writes about a division of the whole tone — tuned to √5/2 (193 cents) in quarter comma meantone in his time — in 5 equal parts. In his work, he tries to adapt ancient ways about intervals distribution by using the unusual enharmonic genus which provides unfamiliar — even to the contemporary ears. ↩︎

    2. 31-tone tuning : Mentionned for the first time by Vicentino’s treatise in 1555, then it’s calculated as an equal temperament by Huygens in Le cycle harmonique (1691) and Fokker uses this tuning for his organ in 1950. The musical point of a equal division of the octave different from the dominant 12 tones one, is to obtain better approximations of pure intervals (from the harmonic series) and to allow transpositions from one tone to the other. ↩︎

    3. Singing upon the book : « Singing upon the book, in the Renaissance, is to add one or more voices to a written melody, the cantus firmus. Around this melody, be it a plain-chant, song, psalm, etc., singers improvise other lines, by inventing a counterpoint on the spot. » (Janin, 2025) ↩︎

    4. norns : Open-source source sound computer based on a Raspberry Pi, created by monome in 2018 in USA. In this environment, users can write scripts to create sequencers, synthesizers and samplers from the included libraries. It’s possible to connect monone interfaces grid and arc or other more standard MIDI ones. In 2019, monome with Whimsical Raps released crow a euroack module which is able to be a CV, i2c and USB interface compatible with norns, providing new ways to control eurorack modules. ↩︎

    5. Counterpoint : « The art of counterpoint involves creating the differents parts of a polyphony. Composing, it’s creating a counterpoint. » (Janin, 2025, p.262). In a general way, I associate this term to what Morgan calls “intervall-succession theory”, by quoting a chapter from Fuller (2002, p.477-502) « on the theoretical traditions known as organum, gradi, intervalschritt lehre, discantus, and contrapunctus. Insofar as they all describe ways of improvising and/or composing idiomatic polyphony, they are all part of a greater theoretical tradition which I refer to as interval-succession theory. » ↩︎

    6. cantus firmus : The cantus firmus (« firm, « solid » singing) is the melody which is the foundation of the polyphonic structure. Often at the tenor voice […], [it might] be a pre-existing melody ; but it could be invented entirely by the composer too, or improvised by one of the singers. » (Janin, 2025, p.262) ↩︎

    7. Modal music : The modes in occidental music defines at the same time, until the 17th century, the most important notes (finals), the lower and higher margins (ambitus), the types of tones and semitones placements (species) which wil evoke a kind of ethos. This subject is full of numerous ramifications that I would like to explore in this work (relations with traditional music, differences with harmonic music, perception psychology), for example in relation to the works of Viret and Chailley quoted by Le Vot on modality : « […] expressions like “dynamic scale”, “combinatory mode”, “formulaic mode” tries to take into account the strictly poietic reality of modality and shows this flexible way of developing music from numerous and varied components where pitch has not the same preeminent role as in tonal music. » (2011, p.139) ↩︎

    8. Random walk : « In mathematics, a random walk is a process that describes a path that consists of a succession of random steps on some mathematical space (e.g., 2-dimensional space: amplitude-time, or pitch-time). It was first introduced by Karl Pearson in 1905. An elementary example of a random walk is on the integer number line which starts at 0, and at each step moves +1 or −1 with equal probability. Other examples include the path traced by a molecule as it travels in a liquid or a gas (known as Brownian motion). » (Harley, 2023) ↩︎

    9. Markov chain : Stochastic process where we can define succession of events by describing probabilities beforehand. For example, from a table (matrix) of transition we can define the probability an event A goes to B (60% probability) or A goes to C (40% probability). ↩︎

    10. Pattern synthesis : Term used by artist Mark Fell (2013 & 2021) and applied to processes which generate rythmical patterns with the Max software on his computer. For Entrelacs, I generalise this approach to the synthesis of counterpoint structures generated by my script. Barbabé Janin in Chant sur le livre uses the term “contrapuntal model” : «  a polyphonic construction built on one or more constraints. » ↩︎

    11. Stochastic process : Process which follows calculated probabilities and applied, for example, to musical parameters. Influenced by the composer Iannis Xenakis, and particulary by his stochastic sound synthesis (GenDyn algorithm, (Hoffmann, 2009)), I’ve taken the principles of this method and used them for generating the main melodic voice in my script. ↩︎