The Highest Arm - Amplified Flute and Electronics

Duration: 5 Minutes

Written: Fall/Winter 2020

Winner of the 2022 Flute New Music Consortium Composition Competition

Digital Premiere: Yoshi Weinberg, Spring 2021

Program Note:

The Highest Arm is structured around 2020's slow invitations to an old reality, amidst daily protests calling to abolish the old normal, eradicate the oppressive systems this country was built upon, and create a reality where everyone can thrive.

Starting June 18, 2020, every Thursday for a year and a half, a march in NYC drew attention to the state of emergency Black trans women are experiencing– over 350 trans women of color murdered in 2020 alone. This group of activists and organizers is known as The Stonewall Protests. In 2020 and especially towards the end of October, we found ourselves marching past the newly reopened West Village restaurants, and the near-entirely white, gentrified crowds dining outside. A full drumline, flags from Nigeria, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and more whipped through the air. Chants with the beat were fed through a PA system with responses yelled out behind our masks, as many watching from their dinner tables felt their identity and privilege attacked. We were left with an incredibly intricate web of perceived realities and futures that autumn, and I hope for this piece to provide a snapshot of that feeling.

In the electronics track, you can a drumline from the actual Thursday protest, crowds, and violins and violas mimicking the popular graph of 2020 covid cases with a large peak and slow descent. There are also samples of pouring rain, the tambourine I played each week as it's taken out of my bag, and an Italian wine menu from a place in the village, mispronounced for a waitstaff trying to feign politeness.

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The Highest Arm is also featured as the seventh and final track of Genese's SRG Soundwalk about NYPD's riot squad, the Strategic Response Group. The SRG consistently followed, intimidated, and brutalized The Stonewall Protests. Written in partnership with the New York Civil Liberties Union, the Soundwalk features seven electronic sound pieces composed around witness testimony and footage of the SRG, to educate New Yorkers not only about the police misconduct prevalent in our city, but what we can do within the scope of our immediate power to eradicate it.

 The soundwalk version of The Highest Arm is also included with the original electronics sound file, for performers who would prefer to perform that version. The entire soundwalk can be experienced at bit.ly/disband-srg

Electronics Hardware and Software Walkthrough:

Technical Requirements:

1. A computer, loaded with the provided sound files from michaelgenese.com/thehighestarm
2. Software (any DAW, ex. Ableton, Logic), loaded with the electronics track and click track
3. An audio interface
3a. For a 4-Channel interface, route the electronics and flute to Channel 1/2, and click track to Channel 3/4
3b. For a 2-Channel Audio Interface, go to your computer's Audio MIDI Setup page, and create an aggregate device. From the menu of options, select both your audio interface and your built-in output. Then, in your DAW's audio settings select your new aggregate device from the list of available outputs. Route the electronics and flute through your interface (Channel 1/2), and the click track through your built-in output (Channel 3/4).

4. Microphone for flute connected to any Computer DAW, with reverberation set as desired
5. An earpiece or pair of headphones for the performer to hear the click track
6. Four long cables
6a. Two cables connecting your interface to the stereo speakers
-(Check which ports are 1/4 inch and/or three prong)
6b. One cable for the microphone, connected to your interface
6c. One cable for the performer, running either from your channel 3/4 or built in output to the performer's earpiece (a headphone jack adapter may be necessary)

7. Stereo Speakers on either side of the performer