Contemporary Style

Short post! Just here to share a couple things. Basically the idea behind these pieces is that you record yourself speaking a short quote or paragraph or something. You then play the recording back into a room over speakers and record the playback. Looping this many times causes the recordings to loose quality, but gain emphasis in certain frequencies that the room emphasizes more. In addition to this, I added a visual element. On the theme of recreation and creating or rebuilding something I chose a picture from the current wildfire raging in California and removed all of the orange-yellow fire color from it. The text is that color, and throughout the piece it dissolves into the image, revealing what the original image was. Enjoy :) My piece: A whole new thing The first piece in this style: I am sitting in a room

Ben Johnston - String Quartet No.  7 (1984) Scurrying, Forceful, Intense Click here to listen! String Quartet No. 7 Nerd Stuff String Quartet No. 7 is one of the most difficult pieces of all time. The piece is based on the idea of microtonality. Normally music is divided up into 12 different pitch classes (a pitch class accounts for every octave of a given note). Playing twelve notes from the note C on a piano will get you back to another C an octave higher. However, pitch exists between these predefined notes. Ben Johnston, as seen in the image above, calculated many microtones; distinct pitches between what we classify as the 12 "normal" pitch classes. Johnston calculated over one thousand individual microtones to use for his String Quartet No. 7.  Why is it so hard Musicians become extremely good at playing the 12 pitch classes that they normally have to play, but playing microtones is something completely alien. Many instruments, for example piano, cannot pro

Pierre Schaeffer - Etude aux chemins de fer (1948) Click here to listen! Etude aux chemins de fer What am I listening to? Trains! Lots of recordings of trains. "Étude aux chemins de fer" translated to English means "Study at the railways" Nerd Stuff Musique Concrete is music created by formulating recorded and synthesized sounds into some reproducible structure. Pierre Schaeffer was one of the first composers to experiment with this form of music in 1942 in France. Over the following years Schaeffer formulated methods for recording and modifying tape created by the relatively new portable tape recorder. After recording, Schaeffer would physically cut up and rearrange the tape. To loop sounds he would make a copy of the tape and attach them end to beginning. To this day, we visualize video and sound editing in much the same way. Take Garage Band  for instance. Those boxes are very similar to how tape was laid out and layered. However, in Garage Band it takes t

Steve Reich - Piano Phase (1967) Click here to listen Piano Phase Nerd stuff So you aren't confused, I'll explain what phasing is right off the bat. There are two or more distinct parts in a phasing piece (in this case two). One part holds a steady tempo while the other slowly increase speed. This idea may sound similar to the concept of a round or a canon, but his form is different.  In cannon, one part plays a specific line and another part plays the same line but starts after the first. The aspect of a cannon that interests the listener on a technical level is how the overlap "works". The one thing that a phase adds is the transition. Instead of just starting later than the first part, the second part starts at the same point and then speeds up. The making of the piece (nerd stuff pt. 2) This is Steve Reich's first attempt to use phasing in a live performance with two musicians. Previously, he used one live performer with a tape loop. Us young folks do

Phillip Glass - Einstein on the Beach (1975) Knee 5 Click here to listen Click here to watch Einstein on the Beach Nerd Stuff Einstein on the Beach is an opera composed by Phillip Glass and originally directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson. The basic idea of the opera was to portray Einstein as an incredible historical figure. However, what made this portrayal unique and interesting was their decision to not have a distinct plot. Rather, they used recognizable symbols from Einstein's life throughout the opera to get the audience a sense of some theme. The music that the audience begins to associate with Einstein follows a circular formula (both additive and subtractive) that constantly is on the edge of resolution, but almost never resolves. The opera is structured in four acts. Before each act, and after the final there comes a Knee Play. The Knee portion of the title is referring to a human knee. The joint in the knee joins the two major portions of the leg. The

Alfred Schnittke - Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1990) Movement V. Rondo. Agitato  Click here to listen! Concerto Grosso No. 1 Nerd Stuff Concerto Grosso No. 1 represents two unique styles that were introduced to classical music in the 20th century. To begin, the entire piece was written in a Polystylistic style. Polystylism is a style where the composer builds the piece on a multitude of other existing, and oftentimes conflicting, styles. At the beginning of Movement V, the movement I linked at the top of the post, Schnittke is writing in a quasi-canonic, Vivaldian character. A canon is similar to a form that we have already discussed, a fugue. An idea is passed from one instrument to another; in this case from one solo violin to another. However, the cannon Schnittke created is not perfect, meaning not every idea is copied exactly right afterward. That is why I have labeled it is a quasi-canon and not a full canon. I labeled it as Vivaldian because it strongly invokes the style Vival