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We are thrilled to announce the publication of Timecode-Supported Polytemporal Music: What It Is and How to Write It,<\/em> released on the 1st November 2025.<\/p>\n In his new book, introduced by a warm and insightful foreword from composer and writer Dr Alastair White, Marc Yeats presents timecode-supported polytemporal music<\/em> \u2014 a unique compositional method developed from his WRoCAH AHRC-funded PhD research at the University of Leeds (2017\u20132021). It offers a detailed guide for composers and performers interested in creating orchestral music with multiple, independent tempos. Unlike traditional approaches relying on conductors or unified scores, this method uses fully notated individual parts embedded with timecodes\u2014timestamps displayed on performers\u2019 loosely synchronised mobile phone stopwatches. Each musician navigates their own tempo, resulting in a complex, layered soundscape Yeats terms \u2018sonic flux\u2019, where controlled indeterminacy balances global structural coherence with unpredictable localised performance outcomes.<\/p>\n The approach eliminates the need for a conductor or click tracks, decoupling players from a central score. Timecodes provide a temporal framework, allowing musicians to adjust their pacing while maintaining notated structure, rhythm, and pitch. This flexibility addresses challenges in polytemporal music, such as performer coordination and rhythmic complexity, while preserving compositional intent. Drawing from works like a point in the landscape<\/i> (2020), performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra at Tectonics Glasgow 2024, and earlier compositions from 2007\u20132021, Yeats demonstrates how this method ensures structural consistency while allowing nuanced, performer-influenced variations in performance outcomes.<\/p>\n The book traces the development of these techniques, exploring their conceptual and practical foundations. It examines rhythm perception, notation challenges, and the evolving roles of the orchestra and score. Through clear definitions and a step-by-step guide, readers learn to create polytemporal compositions, from conceptual design and computer modelling to preparing performance materials. The approach is adaptable, allowing composers to tailor it to their aesthetic goals. Informed by Yeats\u2019s reflections on subjectivity, inspired by Ernst Cassirer\u2019s philosophy, and supported by performance analyses comparing live and computer-generated renditions, the text provides a rigorous yet accessible framework. It invites composers and performers to explore new possibilities in orchestral music, where independent temporal layers create a dynamic interplay of structure and spontaneity.<\/p>\n This insightful book by Marc Yeats is a lucid and fascinating exegesis of ‘timecide-supported polytemporal music’. Opening with an outline of Yeats’s personal background as a composer, the text moves through an overview of the broader context of other examples of different approaches to the temporal in music over the last sixty years, to a detailed explanation of how the author has utilised this unique approach in recent work. The book balances technical insight and broader philosophical themes about critical creative practice in a way that will appeal as much to the interested layperson as to the specialist composer and university student.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Dr Mic Spencer, Associate Professor of Music, School of Music, University of Leeds.<\/p>\n But Marc\u2019s book is, like him, warm and generous: a lucid narrative of hard-won techniques and methodology. This, in itself, would have been enough. And yet, it is presented here with such\u2014I say the word again\u2014generosity\u2014<\/em>it is given<\/em>, a gift, much before it is outlined or explained or advanced, etc. That\u2019s how I felt reading it. For composers, there are provocations, starting points, a flowerbed of ready dirt just waiting for your hands to plunge into its worms and tendrils. But there is much here for others, too: delightful musicological considerations, self-reflections on the process of creation, as well as teachings of complex musical ideas that will make this text a must-read for students of modernism. And more, and more, and more. At the heart of the book is the wager that everything is possible, that many things can be true\u2014that contingency does not preclude structure (and vice versa). This profound insight is not asserted, but proved; in technique, in artworks. Look. It\u2019s right there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Dr Alastair White, Composer and Writer.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n FOREWORD <\/b>\u2013 Dr Alastair White<\/p>\n INTRODUCTION <\/b><\/p>\n CHAPTER ONE \u2013 A PERSONAL CONTEXT<\/b><\/p>\n From the Beginning<\/p>\n Pulse, Tempo, Polymeter and Notational Reformatting<\/p>\n The Third Way<\/p>\n Indeterminacy as Soft-Focus<\/p>\n Measuring Soft-Focus<\/p>\n Quid Pro Quo: Flexibility and the Orchestra<\/p>\n CHAPTER TWO \u2013 THE WIDER CONTEXT\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b><\/p>\n Introduction<\/p>\n Cage<\/p>\n Berio, Segerstam, Lutos\u0142awski and Boulez<\/p>\n Ives, Stockhausen, Ferneyhough and Brant<\/p>\n Davies, Carter and Ferneyhough<\/p>\n Czernowin, Nancarrow (Murcott) and Johnson<\/p>\n Kirk, McGowan and Fein<\/p>\n Saunders<\/p>\n Finnissy and Harding<\/p>\n Hope and Clarke<\/p>\n Drawing the Threads Together<\/p>\n CHAPTER THREE \u2013 TIMECODE-SUPPORTED POLYTEMPORAL MUSIC AND HOW IT FUNCTIONS<\/b><\/p>\n Introduction<\/p>\n A Combination of Familiar Functionalities, Actions and Conditions<\/p>\n Assemblage, Territorialisation and Deterritorialisation<\/p>\n The Model: Audio Assemblages and Notation Networks<\/p>\n The Model Tripartite Relationship<\/p>\n Mediation: Composer Control, Performance Flexibility and Sonic Flux<\/p>\n The Performer\u2019s Share: Mediating Clock Time and Musical Time<\/p>\n No Conductor, No Score<\/p>\n Sonic Complexity, Not Notational Complexity<\/p>\n The Model: Plato, Flux, Indeterminacy and Complexity<\/p>\n Recognition, Compositional Modelling and Performance Outcomes<\/p>\n Synopsis<\/p>\n CHAPTER FOUR \u2013 BUILDING THE MODEL<\/b><\/p>\n Introduction<\/p>\n Notational Transformation and Obsessive Self-Borrowing<\/p>\n Tempo Transformations<\/p>\n Rhythm, Time-Stretching and Referent Perception<\/p>\n Pitch Transformations<\/p>\n Transposition and Voicing<\/p>\n Creating Materials that \u2018Work\u2019 in Shifting Contexts<\/p>\n Assembling the Assemblage<\/p>\n Consolidating with Timecode<\/p>\n Final Thoughts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Timecode-Supported Polytemporal Music: What It Is and How to Write It We are thrilled to announce the publication of Timecode-Supported Polytemporal Music: What It Is and How to Write It, released on the 1st November 2025. In his new book, introduced by a warm and insightful foreword from composer and writer Dr Alastair White, Marc… Available now on\u00a0Composers Edition<\/a> for \u00a319.99 excluding p&p.<\/h3>\n
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CONTENTS<\/b><\/h2>\n
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