The standard method for scoring Western music is known as Common Western Notation. For centuries, it’s been used to successfully encode music, acting as a vital bridge between composers and performers, and enabling the dissemination of a vast musical repertoire from classical to jazz to pop and beyond.
Traditional notation relies on a relatively predictable link between a note and its sound. But in electronic music there is no such stability. Instead, sounds emerge from complex processing chains and are modulated in real time across multiple parameters.
“Even if a composer specifies that a musician should produce, for example, a square wave with 20 per cent filtered noise, different performers will reconstruct that sound in very different ways,” explained Bernier.
This variability renders descriptive methods like Common Western Notation inadequate. This prompted Bernier to shift the core focus of musical notation to live movements.
“We can, for example, concentrate on the action to be performed, such as which knob to turn, which slider to move and, above all, at precisely what moment in time,” he said.
By shifting from the sound itself to the performer’s movements, the composer can better capture certain performative practices. This avoids the struggle of trying to fix a sound that is, by nature, unfixable.