Tectonics: Errata by Elliott Sharp

TECTONICS is a solo program performed on saxophones, guitars, an Apple Powerbook running MAX/MSP as well as various DSP applications, plus a variety of external hardware DSP devices.

Sharp's work with electronics dates back to the late 60's and has included extended techniques on a variety of instruments, both "traditional" and invented, as well as use of analog synthesizers and processors, and, later, experiments with Music 4 running on a PDP. When the Atari ST first appeared, it was utilized to manipulate samples and MIDI devices using the software M in real-time performance. The 1986 release VIRTUAL STANCE (Dossier) and 1988's LOOPPOOL (Ear-rational) documents this work.

Errata was the third studio album in E#'s Tectonics project and was recorded between 1995 and 1996. Sharp's self-designed 8-string guitarbass (built by luthiers Doug Henderson and Carlo Greco) had just been completed as E# was recording the final overdubs on Errata and it made its debut appearance on Spliny Thicket, City of Sand, and Errataka with a trackpad velcroed to the body and used to control the live-sampling software LiSa.. A variety of electronic drum grooves were programmed using algorithms based on Fibonacci and Prime numbers.

Elliott Sharp: composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, author, leads Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics and Terraplane with compositional strategies including fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors as well as new techniques for graphic notation to yield work that catalyzes a synesthetic approach to musicmaking as well as functioning as retinal art.