Composition Study 10 - Phillip Glass

Introduction

Like the Steve Reich composition, we were tasked with creating a composition with two distinct rhythmic streams. The rules for this composition were as follows:

1. Fixed melody section.

2. Uses additive composition to produce poly rhythmic effects.

3. Try and work out a coherent harmonic scheme.

4. The aim would be to create a harmonic "stack" of different parts. 

Research

Philip Glass

Philip Glass is an American composer who is known for his work in minimalism. However Glass doesn't like to be associated too much with the name and prefers to be know as a composer using "music with repetitive structures". This is noticeable as his music evolves away from minimalism as he gets older. Glass became influenced into minimalism by Steve Reich after viewing a performance of his piece Piano Phase.

Additive Process 

The additive process describes the technique in which Glass used in his early music. This is the process of taking a bar of music containing a phrase of music and repeating it a number of times. Then as the piece progresses additional notes are added again and again until the composition evolves. In some of Glass' earlier works, he demonstrates this process in its most simplest of forms.

Philip Glass - Two Pages

  

Philip Glass - Music in Fifths

Another interesting part of this method is the rhythmic element of it.

"Rhythmic Structure:
This is the most important element in Glass' music. According to Glass, in traditional Western music, harmony and melody have always had priority over rhythm, and in the case of his music, the opposite is true." (Lodal)

Methodology

I chose the harpsichord instrument for the composition because of the inspiration taken from music in fifths. The composition starts with a two note phrase which is consistently repeated until a third note is added and so on, thus beginning the additive process. The piece slowly starts to become more dense with slight tempo adjustments to build tension within the composition.

A choir pad is played at different intervals during the piece, placed in sections of the piece where it was felt that it would benefit the composition in texture and harmonic range.

Photo showing the build up of the additive process.

Final Mix

 

Conclusion

Minimalism has been one of the most interesting genre's to have been studied within this module. The aim was to have this composition similar to that of Buildings or Music in Fifths. Improvements would have been to make the piece longer and again to have made the composition sound more human by manipulating the MIDI notes in Cubase.

References

1. Rik Hofman. (2013). Philip Glass - Music In Fifths. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GL3yNFmv0o. Last accessed Sep 2014.

2. Rik Hofman. (2013). Philip Glass - Two Pages. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZMJcrVIHCU. Last accessed Sep 2014.

3.Kirsten Lodal. (n/a). Music : Minimalism : Philip Glass. Available: http://www.math.brown.edu/~banchoff/Yale/project04/glasstyle.html. Last accessed Sep 2014.

Composition Study 9 - Steve Reich

Introduction 

For this piece we were tasked with creating a minimalist piece in the style of Steve Reich, the rule for this composition were as follows:

1.Create a modal pattern using quavers in 12/8. 

      2.Build up texture and harmony using canonic "phase shifting".

      3.Use substitution: rests for beats and vice versa
      4.Try and experiment with dynamics to accentuate rhythmic interplay.   
      5.Homophonic instrumental texture. 
      6.Produce a 'B' section using another mode. No bass line or downbeat.  

      7.Try and keep it under 5 minutes long.

Research

Minimalism is a style of music pioneered by artists including Steve Reich and Philip Glass. The musical characteristics of this type of genre usually include the use of a single repeating pattern of notes with a very slow harmonic change. Pieces in this style of music can also vary from anywhere to three minutes to three hours.

Steve Reich preferred method was to use phase shifting between two musical phrases to create constantly changing polyphonic parts. Steve Reich was born in October 3 1936. His most notable technique is phase shifting two repetitive sections of music, this creates changes in beats and rhythms within the composition. Reich is an American composer who pioneered minimal music in the late 1960s. 

Reich's Pieces

 
Piano phase was a piece written in 1967 for two pianos. This was his first attempt at using one of the phasing techniques.  The transitions between each section are not smooth however, leaving to uncomfortable changes before it phasing back into another rhythmic section (subjective as to whether this is unpleasing for the listener of course)

Clapping Music 

Reich's clapping piece used the phasing technique but rather than having an organic transition between each part, the clapping would move a beat forward, this was done to keep the pieces audible, otherwise the sound would just sound disorganized.

Method

The first thing that needed to be composed was a single non repeating section, quite some thought went into this part of the composition, as being the most heard part, it would have to be an interesting phrase for the listener to hear. Care also had to be taken in that the repeating section could be phase shifted without it becoming too distorted.

After this was composed, I then copy and pasted the phrase for a total of just over two minutes, this would be the underpinning of the composition in which I would layer in the other sections which would go out of time with the original.

The piece would also need to contain a b section, while it is different from the main part, I did start with the original phrase and edited it in order to get the b section, because this had to be in a different key, I modulated some of the notes in order to bring it from a Dorian mode into the Lydian mode.

Final Mix

Conclusion

In conclusion, I feel that this investigation into minimalism has been one of the most interesting pieces to research. Some of the pieces listened to induce almost a trance or meditative like state. If repeated again I would have tried to have made the piece longer and delved into what it takes to make the piece longer while still being interesting.

Composition Study 8 - Text to Sound

Introduction 

For this week's composition we were tasked with creating a piece of music using only the human voice as our sonic material. The rules of the composition were that we were unable to use any other sources of instrumentation and we were not allowed to sample anything, everything had to be a recorded. It could be either male or female.

Research

"Text-Sound Composition remains after more than forty years one of the highlights of Swedish electroacoustic music. The name denotes an artistic phenomenon which arose in the open environment of the 1960s at Fylkingen in Stockholm as an expression of interests in multi-disciplinary art at the nexus of text, music and technology." (Brunson) 

The piece would also have to be intelligible, meaning it would have to have contain content that could be understood. There are a number of different "language levels" that are contained within this style of composition which range from beneath the phonetic level to complex sound compositions. However for the purposes of this composition our brief 's are generally open ended, so we could use any language level we liked, here is an example of the table:

Composition

After failing to come up with a poem or something I could read myself, I decided to look at the broader term of the meaning of "text" and found that I wasn't specifically constricted to reading things myself. So I looked to one of the iconic scenes in Breaking Bad, with Walter White turning into Heisenberg. This is one of the most iconic scenes in the series with one of his famous quotes "I am the one who knocks".

To fit in with the criteria of the assignment, I decided to record the scene as it was being played through my speakers. The narrative I wanted to created was that Skyler was acting as Walter as the actual Walter White is turning into Heisenberg. To demonstrate a battle of Walters sub-conscious. The sounds that I used including using large amounts of reverb on the voices to make them sound cavernous, trying to demonstrate as if they were inside Walters brain. As Walter starts to talk towards the end his voice becomes more and more distorted, turning into Heisenberg, with the piece ending on the famous words "I am the one who knocks."

As discussed, everything used within the piece is from the vocals recorded. I used a program called Paul stretch in order to create the ambient sound in the background, I also made use of reverb, a ring modulator and octaver to manipulate the voices. Pitch-shifting on the voices between Skyler and Walter was also used, sometimes to give a more demonic effect.

Conclusion

This was an enjoyable piece to make and one of my favourites from the module. If the process was to be undertaken again I would have create more space between certain parts in order to build more tension. I would have also worked on certain aspects of the mix to make it sound more aesthetically pleasing. 

Final Mix

References

1. William Brunson. (n/a). Text - Sound Composition – The Second Generation. Available: http://www.ems-network.org/ems09/papers/brunson.pdf. Last accessed Sep 2014.

Composition Study 7 - Random Sequence

Introduction

For this week's composition we were tasked with creating a random process to be the core generative element of our composition. But the composition would have to have some kind of musical structure and develop. Or in other words, use a cageian method but producing a composition with some form. 

Research 

 Aleatoric music

 Also referred to as chance music, it is a term that refers to music that in some parts of the composition is left up to chance.

John Cage

John Cage was an American composer who is cited as one of the most influential American composers of the 20th Century. Cage's most well known composition is 4'33" which he composed in 1952. The piece consists of complete silence, the effect is meant to turn the audience into active listeners of the environment in which they are listening to the composition.

Methodology

A random method had to be created in order to generate the composition. The method I chose was to use a metal tape measure, the tape measure was thrown out and at random intervals I would clip to stop the tape measure. Whichever number it would land on would correspond to a number which I would then use as a MIDI value. I repeated this process fifty more times in order to have enough notes to generate the composition, I also used the inches on the tape measure, so the note values would range from twelve to seventy, so it would range over a few octaves. The second part was to determine the lengths of each notes, the same process was repeated but for this time I measured it in centre metres otherwise the note lengths would have been too long and the piece would have been boring. All of these results were then inputted into a table which could then be implemented into Cubase.

The recording process was pretty simple, the note values and lengths were taken from the table and inputted into Cubase via MIDI. I chose a violin and cello for the instruments which was a departure from what I would usually use as instruments for my pieces.

Final Mix

Conclusion

It was an interesting way of generating a composition, although because of how random it could be it was difficult to create something that was pleasing to listen to. However if I were to repeat the process again I would have added more variables for example, having values for rests between notes and also able to change the velocity.

References

1. TheWelleszCompany. (2011). John Cage: Fontana Mix (1958). Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roASIVIXGXY. Last accessed Sep 2014.

Composition Study 6 - Graphical Score

Introduction

This week we were tasked with composing a piece of music whilst using a painting supplied by the lecturer as a graphical score.

Things which needed to be considered included:

1. Colour;
2. Rhythm;
3. Line;
4. Space;
5. Texture;
6. Shape;
7. Implied depth.

Research

Adolph Gottlieb

Adolph was an American abstract expressionist painter. A noteable part of his biography is
"Gottlieb joined his New York school contemporaries to protest the prejudices of curators and critics against avant-grade art (most notably in May 1950, with the abstract painters and sculptors dubbed the Irascibles, against the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s refusal to show abstraction in a juried show)." The image I was supplied with was by Adolph Gottlieb, the painting called Frozen Sounds (1951).

I undertook research into the ideas of the painting in order to have a better idea of what to compose and found this quote:

The painting is split into two distinct sections, the bottom half supposedly being the earth as it is dense, in contrasts to the top half of the painting which is more sparse and meant to represent space. It is also suggested that there are some tidal implications of some of the patterns in the painting.

Composition 

After examining some of the research I tried to focus on starting with sound effects to start getting an atmosphere or certain aesthetic for the composition. However after a certain amount of time I decided that in order to compose a piece I was happy with I would take a more abstract view of how I thought the painting would sound and decided to make it my own. 

For example, there are two rectangular/square objects in the pieces, rather than trying to create sounds that may sound straight, or jagged or rectangular, I decided to make the first one into a melody. The main inspiration for the different sounds within the piece come from a number of words in one of the references, being "Sky", "Water", "Planets" etc.

Final Mix

 

Conclusion

Although it is a very abstract view of the painting I did enjoy the composition created, however again, in future I would like to try a different way of composing, using different sounds in order to complete the composition.

References

1. guggenheim. (n/a). Adolph Gottlieb. Available: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/bios/533. Last accessed Sep 2014.

2. Lawrence Alloway (1995). Adolph Gottlieb: A Retrospective. US: Hudson Hills Press. 56.