Book Of Grooves (score and parts) by Alejandro Vinao

The ‘groove’ or ‘feel’ of a piece is understood to consist of a pattern or sequence that repeats periodically in such a way as to create in the listener the desire to move, or dance, or to foot-tap following the repeated rhythm. A groove is therefore a rhythm ‘locked’ into a pattern of repetition. To ‘unlock’  a groove would mean -to some extent- to threaten its very existence. This is precisely what happens in this piece. The grooves are presented at first in their simple ‘locked’ form, so that the listener may swing unequivocally with the initial grooves. But gradually these grooves are ‘unlocked’, that is to say, they are subjected to transformations that change the point at which they repeat. In this way the shape of each groove is changed.

This involves a risk because the listener may stop feeling the ‘desire to move’ with the groove. If this were to happen, one could say that the groove has been ‘killed’. My idea in Book of Grooves was to explore changes that would transform each groove without ‘killing’ it.

It is a risky compositional strategy: new grooves must be created or ‘cloned’  from the original ones without disturbing the delicate balance that makes the music ‘groove’.

If the piece is successful the listener should be able to follow the process of ‘unlocking’ or changing of the original grooves into new ones, and experience this as a voyage of transformation.  But unlike what happens with grooves in popular music, in Book of Grooves the voyager never returns to the port of departure. The process is not cyclical but developmental. And yet, while the music material is permanently transforming into something new, I wanted to make sure that the listener would never ceases  to ‘swing’ with a groove.

This much I wanted to achieve.

AV. April 2011