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AshishYadavJohn Cage's 4'33" 4′33″ is a composition by John Cage, considered the most important composition of his life. The three-movement composition by American experimental composer John Cage was composed in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs performers not to play their instruments during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements, The score has “Tacet” written under all three movements, which is defined as ‘to perform with the voice or instrument silent,” it also states that the piece can last for any length of time. The composition when heard for the first time, invokes a sense of perplexion, leaving the listener wondering about the 4 minutes and 33 seconds of sound that they just experienced. Digging deeper into the composition and it’s context reveals the intentions of the composer, ‘To empower the listener’. John Cage has put the listener in charge of the experience, The composition being different every time it is played, The ambience, artifacts, and the people (the audience as well as the performer(s)) involved in the performance control how the composition sounds, John Cage has sacrificed his own self-expression to empower the listener. The composition also begs the question of what it means to experience silence, Silence is not merely the absence of sounds; something is called silence when there is no apparent connection to the intentions that produce these sounds. (This means that there is no essential distinction between silent silence and loud silence according to Cage. They both lack intention.) Defining Sounds <a href="https://imgur.com/Ccg1iBC"><img src=" Jesus Tod by Burzum:Texture: Heavily layered, grunge, low-fi, dark, industrial drone, Ambient Harmony: Depressive, monotonous Melody: Dark growling vocals invoke fear and misanthropy Rhythm: Repetitive tremolo picked guitar, Groovy, double bass blast beats Form: Norwegian Black Metal
Fear Inoculum by Tool:Texture: Multilayered, gritty, discordant sounds and electronic bubbling Harmony: Dark, dynamic Melody: Melancholic, building expectation Rhythm: Keeps changing, sudden stops and build ups, polyrhythmic, slowly reveals its secrets. Form: Progressive, alternate time signatures
Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell:Texture: There are several overlapping sounds, combining into a massive soundstage Harmony: Backing vocals, chords Melody: Very dramatic, intense, contemplation, Rhythm: Starts slow and gloomy, transforms into fast paced marching, energetic, reaches a crescendo Form: Orchestra, builds up twice and releases into the end on the second time, elegy
4’33” by John Cage:This is an account of ‘my’ version of 4’33”, a cover if you will. Setting a timer for 4 minutes and 33 seconds and listening. Texture: Drone noise, multiple sound sources, close and far alike Harmony: Discordant Melody: Occasional chirping of birds, car horns, repetitive Rhythm: Imaginative, such as finding rhythm in a fan’s noise Form: Ambiguous
Pauline Oliveros was an experimental electronic music composer, she started exploring drones and resonance in her mid-thirties, which led her to create Soni Meditation, and Deep Listening among other projects. She explores listening and how it can be used for meditation. Listening to the surroundings, listening to oneself. In Sonic Meditations, she used the participants as a way of creating sound and also using the sound to heal them. Sonic Meditation XVI It Induces a feeling of spiraling outwards, The constant drone throughout the composition as well as the sound produced by the participants coalesce into a resonating sound in the head, that keeps growing outwards and fades away, only to repeat the cycle over and over again. Using headphones to experience the composition, the closed noise isolated environment lets you flow into the droning ambient sounds and be lost in a state of transforming into an empty vessel, only acting as a passive resonator for the sounds that enter. It’s a meditative experience, if listened to correctly. After Reading the score for Sonic Meditation XVI and listening to the youtube version again with context, it begins to clear up how the different pitches produced by the participants tend to be discordant at first but begins to form a unison with each other and makes a fuller droning sound, Then begins to move away and goes back to the beginning. What I couldn't figure out was how the participants could locate the group’s center sound spectrum, but that might be because I haven't experienced it first hand.
Finding TexturesRecording Textures inside the house and using volume envelope to make tracks https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IeV2Dg98Jj0wU0G2xtQeI5-qRJ4tYw_d?usp=sharing
MIDIMIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a protocol which allows musical instruments or other input devices to communicate with each other and with a computer. A MIDI input sends messages to the computer, which turns them into sounds. A midi input can have information about which note is being played, the velocity, pitch bend, pitch change, aftertouch etc. There are many types of MIDI devices, the most common being a keyboard and pads. A MIDI device can also have potentiometer knobs to control levels in a DAW, it can also have wheels used to control the pitch and bend the notes. A MIDI trackpad is used for recording x and y values and converting them into levels for use in a DAW. When a key is pressed on a MIDI keyboard, it sends a “on” signal to the computer and tells which note is being played, when the key is released, it sends an “off” signal for the same note. The Keys also have a velocity attribute, which tells the computer how fast/hard the key is pressed; higher the velocity, higher the volume and vice versa. A pitch bend is used to shift a note 1 semitone up or down, it is usually controlled by a wheel on the keyboard.
Assignment 3: MIDI CompositionUsing sound recordings as a MIDI instrument https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YjCCAWu55qOjhqwSA_XtmStcsNQ8qaS8?usp=sharing
Assignment 4: PanningPanning MIDI compositions to left and right channels https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EeVExGsBkxVahwmdG-kW55yZbjwfp7_8?usp=sharing
Untitled #249 - Francisco LopezStarts with a deep low end and soft echoes moving around. Muffled, like underwater, it has moments of excitement where the droning voices start amplifying and add drama, the low end vibrates faster and builds anticipation. Droning voice resolves into a buzz which fades away while getting more muffled. It creates a large soundstage without revealing the exact positions of the sources. It gives the feeling of being lost in another dimension, a feeling of interacting with a celestial object. The low pitched vibrations are the backbone of the whole composition, a guide in a way.
Untitled Sonic Microorganisms - Francisco LopezStarts with a high pitched ambient voice and faint voices that sound like chants. Occasional low vibrations in a rhythm start appearing, The wideness of the sound is very apparent and gives a sense of floating in a large chamber. The several frequencies are somewhat meditative in nature and causes a vibration that seems to be reflecting inside the head. The sounds grow louder and turn into a sort of screech and static, fading into a low vibration that clicks inside the body.
Solid Vibration of the Surface of Concrete Ground (Part 1&2) - Toshiyo TsunodaThis has a deep bass drone throughout the piece and a layer of irregular clicks that are, as the title suggests, vibrations of the surface of concrete ground. The composition urges to think about and make associations with the sounds and the concrete surface. It makes me think about how other materials sound through the surface and what the internal sonic properties of different materials are. It’s almost too easy to make an association and to accept the fact that these sounds are from a concrete ground, the sound of a concrete block hitting another concrete block makes a sound consisting of several frequencies, the sounds in this piece are like an isolated version of the trebly part of that sound of a clash.
Clear Forest Of a Windy Day - Toshiyo TsunodaA very rich sound experience, there are a lot of layers and complexity, each sound being an individual element and contributing to the composition in a different way, the sound of leaves rustling provides a background for all the other sounds. There is what sounds like tree trunks twisting, colliding and rubbing on each other. It Sounds like a recreation of an environment but not in the way we perceive sound through the ears which stay in the same place. This sounds more like a collage of different sounds from the same place, but using several sound capturing sources to provide an immersive experience and to amplify sounds which we normally can’t hear. The composition starts slowly and builds up after a minute or so and ends abruptly after around 4 minutes.
Assignment 5: MelodyCreating a melody with 5 notes https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11QH_NGuH0JGvj5733_OkXUuWuH0OwJ_s?usp=sharing
Assignment 6: CounterpointUnderstanding and using counterpoint in a melody https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12yYHbYDC0FFrG1qTJtlOtk2vlaS-pC4G?usp=sharing |
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