SHIBATA's live-electronic music

SHIBATA created five electroacoustic music during his turning point years from 1968 to 1972. All his electroacoustic pieces amount only seven, so most of his electroacoustic creation is condensed to the four years. Display 1, 2 are for the Japanese Pavilion of Osaka World Exhibition in 1970. Perfect Liberty is also an occasional piece for wind ensemble and tape.

The score for Improvisation for electric sounds was designed on paper as visual color images. According to Koji SANO, SHIBATA remembered the experience in NHK electronic studio and said;

As I used to think music as some unstable fluid which is changing itself into various forms, I enjoy creating electroacoustic music which can reveal the images of the spirit of a dead person.

Here SHIBATA used the expression the spirit of a dead person and it shows SHIBATA's preference of being unstable, as Distanz in Japanese tonal system.

The sole live-electronic piece by SHIBATA is Leap Day's Vigil for Ko-Kyu, San-Gen and Electro-acoustic Devices (閏月悼歌 jungetsu touka 胡弓、三弦、電気音響製造のための). This piece was created in January and February in1972, and was premiered on the third night of the 6^th NICHI-DOKU(Japan-Germany) Music Festival in Tokyo. The electric device was in bad control that night, so the piece was performed again in NHK509 studio on April 5, and broadcasted. The score of Leap Day's Vigil is composed of three types of graphical notations and one sheet for the ensemble time schedule. Two types of graphic notations are bow and pitch of Ko-Kyu. The tape part was made from the sounds of Ko-Kyu and Futo-Zao. The modulated pitches in the tape part are layered on the sounds of the performers, which make unique timbre as heterophony. As Keiji AZECHI, a Ko-Kyu player who played Leap Day's Vigil several times, indicates Ko-Kyu has a dazzling timbre and it appeals to the primitive humane emotion, and the feature of timbre could be produced by irrational system by indeterminate relation between pitch and timbre.