On the Other Oceanwas David Behrman's first studio album, released in 1978. Considered a milestone in music history for the way it combined electronics and musicians in acoustic instruments, the album consisted of the title theme and Figure in a Clearing.

On the Other Ocean, David Behrman (1977)

 On the Other Ocean is centered around six pitches which, when they are played, activate electronic pitch-sensing circuits. The computer can sense the order and timing in which the six pitches are played and can react by sending harmony-changing messages to two handmade music synthesizers. The relationship between the two musicians and the computer is an interactive one, with the computer changing the electronically-produced harmonies in response to what the musicians play, and the musicians influenced in their improvising by what the computer does.

On the Other Ocean was created after David Behrman encountered with the KIM-1 (short for Keyboard Input Monitor, the first of the inexpensive "microcomputers", a small single-board computer developed and produced by MOS Technology, Inc. and launched in 1976.)

Its first recording was made at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in September 1977, with Maggi Payne: flute, Arthur Stidfole: bassoon and engineering by "Blue" Gene Tyranny.

Figure in a Clearing, David Behrman (1977)

Figure in a Clearing, made a few months before On the Other Ocean, was the first piece of Behrman's to use a computer for music. For Figure in a Clearing, the “microcomputer” Kim-1 controlled settings of a homemade music synthesizer with triangle wave generators, voltage-controlled amplifiers and frequency modulators. The computer ran a program which varied the time intervals between chord changes. The time intervals were modelled on the motion of a satellite in falling elliptical orbit about a planet. The cellist only "score" was a list of 6 pitches to be used in performance, and a request that he would not speed up when the computer-controlled rhythm did. The timbral richness and concentrated eloquence of his playing sprang from his own sources.

Figure in a Clearing was first recorded by David Gibson who played slowly-moving cello phrases against the fluctuating rhythms of the Kim-controlled synth.

View Finder, David Behrman (2002 – 2020)

View Finder finds its roots in the early 1970s analog synthesizer pieces that included a high number of floating triangle waves and has been evolving slowly during the past decades.

In 2002, View Finder was presented as an installation in which a camera detecting physical motion triggered changes to electronic sound.

In current versions, sounds performed on acoustic instruments or voices are mixed with the textures of electronic sounds. The piece provides situations for the performers to explore rather than a fixed composition with instructions to be followed.

David Behrman: electronics

ARS AD HOC

Álvaro Pereira: violin

Gonçalo Lélis: cello

Horácio Ferreira: clarinet

Beatriz Ribeiro: flute