Looper's Delight Archive Top (Search)
Date Index
Thread Index
Author Index
Looper's Delight Home
Mailing List Info

[Date Prev][Date Next]   [Thread Prev][Thread Next]   [Date Index][Thread Index][Author Index]

Composition Contest: in search of the lost chords



The following is exerpted from the blog called 
"Score", connected to the New York Times online at:
http://thescore.blogs.nytimes.com/?excamp=mkt_at12

March 6, 2007,  11:13 pm
The ‘In Search of the Lost Chords’ Contest

By
Glenn Branca
glenn@glennbranca.com

The sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard are still 
inside my head.— Richard Rogers

We discussed the widespread contempt in which 
ukulele players are held - traceable, we 
concluded, to the uke’s all-but-exclusive 
employment as a producer of chords - single, 
timeless events apprehended all at once instead 
of serially. Notes of a linear melody, up and 
down a staff, being a record of pitch versus 
time, to play a melody is to introduce the 
element of time, and hence of mortality. Our 
perceived reluctance to leave the timelessness of 
the struck chord has earned ukulele players our 
reputation as feckless, clownlike children who 
will not grow up. — Thomas Pynchon from "Against The Day”


Yes, this is a contest.

And it’s open to any and everyone.

Here are the rules. Write and record up to three 
minutes of startlingly new and original 
instrumental chords. They can be scored in any 
fashion whatsoever, using any instrumentation or 
sound producing devices. You can submit a static 
series of chords or you can perturb the chords in 
any fashion. You can just submit one big gorgeous chord if you wish.

The submissions can be sent here in the form of a 
posted link to a site where a recording of the 
piece can be heard (like MySpace, for example). 
Leave the link in a comment at the end of this 
post. Don’t send any music files.

At the end of the month I will announce the 
winners on my last blog entry.

I was hoping to be able to have some kind of 
small rewards for the winners, but it’s not 
possible at this time. The links to all of the 
entries will stay posted in the comment section 
so that people can judge for themselves if they 
don’t like my choices. But I will only post 
entries that seem to be within the spirit of the contest.

[Legal Note: By submitting a link to music you 
represent and warrant that the music found there 
is your original creation and that it does not 
infringe on any existing copyright.]

Anyone who can’t post an entry because they’re 
not a member of TimesSelect can just send the 
link to me at glenn@glennbranca.com and I’ll post it.

In searching for lost chords there can only be 
one method, and that is the method that eschews 
all pre-existing methods.

THE SECRETS OF HARMONY

Are there natural laws of music? Are the rules of 
harmony like a science that reveals to us the 
inner workings of a system? Are modulations and 
cadences like formulae that will produce accurate 
results? Is the history of music more or less a 
map which if followed to a logical conclusion 
will leads us to the perfect destination? Or is 
music a mysterious, irrational problem that even 
a gifted savant could not solve without the help 
of an intuitive muse and perhaps a little white-hot inspiration?

The secrets of harmony are buried in a safe place 
beneath hundreds of years of music theory. 
Originally theory was called counterpoint and was invented
solely as an instruction manual for rural 
choirmasters. It was cheaper than commissioning 
the likes of a Bach to give your town its own 
musical identity. Since theory was necessarily 
derived from an analysis of previously existing 
music, then any music based on that theory must 
itself sound like the music that the theory was 
derived from. In fact that was the whole point. 
Of course my point is that if you want to write 
something that doesn’t sound anything like 
anything you’ve ever heard before then this kind 
of self-referential theory can’t get you there.

But there are other reasons to support 
anti-theory. If there were a natural law of music 
it would be the harmonic series:
http://cnx.org/content/m11118/latest/
  Being infinite it contains within it all music: 
every interval, every mode, key or cluster in 
every possible tuning or temperament, all 
resonating in multifarious rhythms and melodies 
from a single fundamental tone. To create a 
system based on a particular set of intervals, 
chords or keys over any other is a matter of 
cultural preference that becomes entrenched over 
time, attaching meaning that is illusory.

PSYCHO-ACOUSTIC SUBJECTIVITY

Music must be heard. This is the corollary to 
Varese’s “music must sound.” Unlike the other 
arts music can never be literal. By its very 
nature it is abstract. But it can move a listener 
in ways that no words or pictures can ever do.

When a major triad is voiced in a particular way 
and is heard in a resonant acoustic space, 
sometimes voices or even choirs seem to be heard. 
This psycho-acoustic phenomenon can be explained 
simply by the fact that the music is voiced in a 
manner that people associate with a choir. This 
is the reason why early dissonant music often 
reminded people of traffic jams, or certain types 
of clusters sounded to them like a swarm of bees. 
The mind must categorize what it hears based on 
previous reference. Music sounds like music 
because it sounds like music.

Composers can’t ignore this subjective aspect of 
perception. But they can exploit it in the gray 
area between perceived musical sound and 
non-musical sound. This is the point at which a 
moment of perceptual tabula rasa can imprint 
music that’s never been heard before.

FULL RANGE CHORDS

Nicholas Slonimsky once wrote that it had been 
determined that there are 479,001,600 
permutations of a single musical phrase based on 
the 12 tones of the chromatic scale. In that same 
light it can be shown that there are 4095 
different chords that can be derived from those 
same 12 tones. But if one thinks in terms of 
chords that extend over the full orchestral 
range, using the 88 keys of the piano as 
reference, there are approximately 
300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different 
chords that can be derived from those 88 tones. 
That’s 2 to the 88th power. Of course this 
calculation does not take into account microtonal 
intervals which would increase the size of the 
number astronomically considering that it is possible to get meaningful
audible differences down to at least an eighth tone.

The point of such a demonstration, similar to 
what Slonimsky was trying to show, is that the 
number of possible chords is inexhaustible. And 
of course with timbre and orchestration 
introduced the potential is virtually infinite.

AMBIGUOUS TONALITY

One example of a chord that defies analysis is 
the “unison cluster.” This is a type of dense 
cluster in which the tones are placed very close 
together using small microtonal intervals. The 
effect is neither of a cluster nor a unison. But 
the sound is rich with a strange, singing 
choir-like quality. The clash of harmonics which 
occurs in a standard cluster does not occur here 
because the harmonic interaction that creates the 
harsh sound is so high that it’s outside the range of hearing.

In fact this quality is at work to a subtle 
degree in the sound of an orchestral string 
section that can never be perfectly in tune. Some 
conductors will even use the trick of having the 
string players tune slightly out to get a 
“richer” sound. It is also why an out of tune 
piano can have an oddly appealing sound. A piano 
doubles and triples unison strings in most of the range.

Music is not pure. It cannot be pure. Sound is 
noise. In the 70s it was popular for studio 
engineers to try to get the “cleanest” possible 
sound, a vogue that lasted for years and was a 
complete failure. The only clean sound is silence.

Schoenberg in his “Harmonielehre” refers to what 
he calls “tone colors.” This was his way of 
describing ambiguous pitch or sounds that cannot 
be analyzed in terms of pitch alone. In fact he 
went so far as to say that there could be no 
system or theory to define such music.

Ironically this work led to the rejection of 
tonality by many 20th century 12-tonalists and 
serialists. Instead of opening the potential for tonal variety
it became severely limited. They believed that an 
ambiguous or neutral tonal landscape could not be 
achieved using consonant chords. They also had a 
reliance on specific pitch that could be dealt 
with like numbers in a mathematical equation. 
There is a reason why art is not science. To 
“prove” the efficacy of a musical pattern in some 
rational system means nothing if it sounds bad. 
Strangely few had seemed to notice the success 
that Webern had had introducing consonance into atonality.

MATERIALS FOR BUILDING LOST CHORDS

It should be kept in mind that when building lost 
chords the sound of a chord is relative. A 
dissonant chord can sound almost consonant when 
preceded by a chord or cluster that is far more 
dissonant. As well, a series of consonant chords 
can sound saccharine without contrast. Following 
are a few hints on mechanics:

TIMBRE: The use of untempered sound such as steel 
chicken wire instead of guitar or piano strings, 
copper plumbing pipes, bowed cymbals or a kazoo, 
homemade instruments, “ethnic” instruments such 
as a hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes or sarangi, synth 
effects and EQ that can be found on any sampler 
to alter a conventional instrument sound. 
Altering timbre entirely changes the harmonic 
content of a sound. With this type of sound the 
fundamental often no longer dominates. The 
harmonic interaction is unpredictable and can 
create unusual relationships.

MICROTONALITY: Tones based on the intervals of 
the harmonic series or any division of the octave 
smaller than a half tone.

WEIGHTING: Using dynamics or instrument doubling, 
the balance of the tones within a chord can be 
drastically altered. For example if one were to 
use a cluster and a major triad in the same 
chord, emphasizing the cluster would give a very 
different chord than emphasizing the triad. Of 
course this technique can be used in far more subtle ways.

VOICING AND RANGE: Three notes spread out over 
the entire range is a very different chord than 
the same three notes voiced within a single 
octave. A chord in the high range is very 
different than the same chord in the low range. 
This is not trivial. Voicing change and note 
change are equally important. Think in terms of a 
full seven-octave range.

AMBIGUITY: This technique includes unison 
clusters and ambiguous tonality discussed 
earlier. Introducing an unfamiliar sound into a 
familiar context or vice versa is an effective tool.

CHANGE: Here is a trick of the trade. When making 
a change always change at least two elements. 
This is the concept of contrary motion but 
extrapolated across the entire field of possible change.

Combining these various types will give the best 
results. In short, composing lost chords requires 
attention to detail and carefully constructed contrast.


Anyone who is interested in finding out about 
recordings of music that transcend the 
predictable can go to Massimo Ricci’s
www.touchingextremes.org.


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.446 / Virus Database: 268.18.7/713 - Release Date: 3/7/2007 
9:24 AM