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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.
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