Week 4 - Musical 'Variety'

When people were taking their seats for the Thursday workshop, there was a piece of music playing called “Sweet Air” by David Lang. It sounded familiar, and I deciphered that the melody and harmonies were looping, yet the rhythm that they were being played with was looping at a quicker rate. It turns out I was paying attention in Introduction to Theory and Analysis, as this form of music is called isorhythm. The result was harmonically sound, yet intellectually stimulating due to the regular changing of the timing. A nice start to the lesson, but a false pretence for the following song.

The next piece, “Surf Music II” by Jack Vees, was certainly a tangent to the planned structure of the ‘entrance’ music. Using bowed bass guitars to create deep, repetitious sounds, various harmonics and echoing sound effects that had nothing to do with “Surf”, this 22 minute long overtone-fest would have made more sense with a name like “Submarine Port”, or “Submarine Port II” as the case may be. There were some fantastic effects at the start that I’m sure took a long time to create, like some of the upper-harmonics that would beat against each other while seeming to pan around the room. As the song moaned on with the deep, dying elephant sound, the collaboration of effects seem to get less organised, conjuring images of audio mixing with a food processor. The sound effects that played a small, ambient role at the start became centrepiece about 7 minutes in, and showed why they should be just ambience. Purposefully or not, they were either thrown through a low-pass filter, or just very under-sampled. Chuck in a wah pedal and you’ve got yourself a cheap sounding mess - “I’ll take 22 slices of Cheap Sounding Mess, thanks. Oh, do you sell harmony, melody or rhythm here? Never mind, I can get it from Sam‘s Fruit, Veg & Musical Basics.”

Moving on. “Fog Tropes II” by Ingram Marshall ironically could have been called “Surf Music II”. With the Kronos string quartet playing ever-so-slightly modulating harmonies, the tranquil boat and whale sounds added environmental depth to the emotion present in the music. As the piece moves on from the introduction, the modulation of each instrument begins to increase in severity, with only the occasional chord played perfectly by all instrumentalists. As the tuned harmonies became more and more scarce, anticipation for the next resolute chord increased, until the song reaches a violent climax of upper-partials and senselessness. Calming back down into more up-beat harmonies, the bass betrays the emotion of the main sound, often attempting to manipulate major chords by playing in the relative minor. If I must be critical, in the second half there were human voices and possibly a pan-flute quietly polluting the concept of solidarity created by the strings.

Now to my favourite, Michael Gordon’s “Trance IV”. With seemingly just a saxophone and xylophone playing the exact same melody at the start, it becomes apparent that there is many more instruments playing. Gradually, a saxophone begins to break away from the main rhythm, playing just out of time. Enter a third sax, and two more xylophones all playing the same melody just after one another, and it’s only just getting started. In comes 3 trumpets and it starts to get difficult to locate specific instruments. As complication increases, what else needs to be added? How about asking BassSatan and OverdriveGuitarDemon to kick in with a head-bashing death metal riff, and while you’re there, molest a drum kit to get some palpitating psycho-rhythm.

Then Stop.


Michael Gordon info worth checking out:
http://www.cantaloupemusic.com/artists.html#gordon