Echolocation

Takuma Itoh

2009

Saxophone quartet (soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone)

Echolocation is a piece that was inspired by sounds created by some simple electronic music techniques, most notably, the delay effect. The delay effect, in which the initial sound is played back at fixed intervals with a decay in the loudness, creates a simple "echo" effect. What piqued my interest in this simple effect was when I started layering different rates of delays simultaneously to create a rich, intricate texture of polyphony and polyrhythms. I attempted to recreate this acoustically using just the saxophone quartet, and used this initial idea as the recurring "theme" of the piece. The rhythms resulting from attempting to recreate the delay effect are extremely complicated and I would not have attempted such a difficult piece had I not known the high caliber of the musicians of the H2 quartet. I would like to thank them for their extraordinary dedication to the piece, and allowing me to explore techniques that I would not normally have had the opportunity to consider.