Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

Yeah, the corny backronym? I went there.

But that’s not the point. The point is, this guy is amazing. The way John Luther Adams takes you to another world, it’s as if he went into your brain (through your ears, of course) grabbed your brain, absconded with it to Alaska, and set it free amongst rolling waves of snow-covered hills for what seems like a small eternity.

The only times I remember being taken to a place so visually have been with the music of Louis Armstrong, James Taylor, Bob Marley, or Marvin Gaye. So JLA’s got some good company in his influence on me.

Obviously, as we’ve talked about in class, color is so important in JLA’s works. Adams has a keen sense of color, as if the keys on a piano were a pallete for him to work from, painting with different textures using dissonance, repetition, and a slow type of counterpoint that blend beautifully over the span of 12 or 16 minutes. Going on a walk, taking a journey, exploring these sounds — that’s what it feels like to listen to his pieces. The progression over time is so well orchestrated, I’ve got to hand it to him.

I made my timeline based off of Dream in White on White, which I believe utilizes the aforementioned tools so well.I discovered after the first listen that its structure on a large scale is cyclical; there’s a huge amount of repetition in that entire movements are paralleled by a permutation in the other half of the piece. It’s not completely palindromic, as there are differences in the sections played, but the resemblance is striking. What this does for the piece is give it a certain kind of order that might not necessarily be discovered on a 5-second level, but that’s what’s so great about this piece: Beyond the basic properties of “white notes”, what happens every few seconds is validated exponentially by what gets played in the 5, 10, 50, or 1000 second intervals before and after it. That kind of mathematical composition is something I admire greatly, both in its difficulty to accomplish and its execution. It’s pretty baller.

The first time I listened to Dark Waves 2 the piece totally defeated me.  There are so many layers to sift through that every time I honed in on one, I’d resurface later to find that everything around it had changed.  I ended up splitting this piece into three parts.  The first, lasting until about 3:00, gradually builds up to a climax, becoming thicker and thicker through the addition of voices to the sound, each one seeming sharper than the last.  At the end the sound flattens, paving the way for a new pattern, which lasts until 7:00.  The underlying sound of the first section gradually builds during the second, but a rippling pattern of notes is superimposed on the image, cutting through the darker sound of the lower register. During the end of the piece, the lower register fades in and out much faster than before.  The rippling patterns also seem more rounded, as opposed to the sharp sound they had earlier in the piece.  The electronic buzzes which permeate the piece seem all the more present during the end. Overall, I didn’t find the piece to be “Dark” or threatening in the sense of say, Uaxuctum.  I thought the underlying sonorities had a sort of warmth to them, which was cut by the cold, rippling patterns in the higher register.

I really love John Luther Adams’ work. Each piece is this great expansive sonic painting, huge and beautiful like the landscapes that he draws inspiration from. It’s easy to imagine what those landscapes might look like; while listening to “Dream in White on White,” I was constantly visualizing broad stretches of tundra/forest and looming snow-capped mountains, all possessing that wild desolate beauty only found in nature that Adams communicates so well in his music. I think part of that ability comes from how well he weaves tone and texture together, as well as his usage of tone/harmony itself. Kyle Gann describes this ability appropriately:  “Adams has returned to tonality in a nontraditional, unsentimental way. There is no nostalgia here, there are no ‘chord progressions,’ no references to ‘great music of the past.’ The seven-tone scale is recreated anew in all its innocence, freed to create color fields, no longer burdened by the syntax of the tonal ‘language.’” I definitely agree, especially with the “innocence” part. Adams brings out the core essence and simplicity of tonality in his music, unbridled by any fancy flourishes, expressing the natural purity of the wild environment. In that sense, his pieces are like his own Walden–his version of a Thoreauesque return to nature.

I also agree with Matt G’s and Jackson’s visualizations of a slow sunrise or a time-lapse image; Adams’ compositions do possess this sense of timelessness and infinite stillness/movement. I guess time is also a significant aspect of nature; mountains that seem older than history itself, or the ever-flowing cycle of the seasons, or simply small pockets in time where a person might stop everything just for a moment to simply appreciate nature’s beauty.

I listened to The Farthest Place – it is the piece that I chose to outline.  I saw the piece as creating a sonic bubble – not necessarily seamless, but a rippling whole, in which both the high and low notes define the boundaries of this space.  A melody floats on top of these mixtures of sound, but I really felt that what was important within this piece was the space it created.  For my timeline, I chose to organize it around the entering and exiting of the percussion… but I only chose this because it helps the listener to follow the progression of the piece. In reality, the point is to float in the sonic bubble, to be lost in the swirl of tones that the piece creates.  I felt that the piece was not one to be necessarily followed – it was more of the feeling of being in the piece.  The title was very appropriate, with the tones weaving together the view of a space beyond the boundary of “the bubble”. I feel that many of John Luther Adams’ pieces have this quality – they seem to present an image that is far off, or very broad in scope. The image is very beautiful. 

I listened to The Light That Fills The World a bunch the other day. That composition is truly a masterpiece in my eyes. It is one thing to write a pretty sounding piece of music, but JLAmakes those thirteen minutes perfect.The texture rises and falls with such grace. Its slow but steady undulating is truly organic and doesnot seem forced. In the past, I have had to force myself to truly picture a mental image when listening to a piece of music. THis piece truly took me to another place with ease.  His use of seemingly contrasting  or seldom combined instruments (marimba and strings) did not seem  self serving  or “out there” . Somehow the timbres fit just  right and made the piece unique yes easily accesible. Although there wereno fast runs or melodic development, the emotions thiw piece inspirede in me were porfound and deep. I felt a true longing for my weyoming home, for the sunrises over the mountains. I wanted to be there nd watch the light fill that world. The title was perfect. It embodied the true feel of the piece and the physical scene it set. JLA hit a homerun with this one and he did it with grace and beauty.

I wasn’t at class on Monday. I do not know what was covered, so I’m just going to write about John Luther Adams. At this point, he is by far my favorite composer we have listened to. I’ve listened through all of “The Far Country,” “Earth and the Great Weather,” and “The Light that Fills the World.” I have had a harder time enjoying the percussion pieces. After reading the articles put up for Monday’s class, I began to understand why I enjoy his work so much. Adams’s appreciation of nature as an entity and as musical inspiration instill his music with such a vibrance that his pieces almost feel alive. The drums pounding four minutes in to “The Far Country of Sleep” communicate such raw power while leaving so much open to individual interpretation. The band Sigur Ros released an album with nonsensical lyrics and blank liner notes so that listeners could fill in whatever words they were inspired with in hearing the music. A lot of what I’m hearing from Adams seems to offer a similar idea. Regardless of how the music is received, it seems so emotionally charged that it would be impossible to listen and not feel something significant. Listening to his music makes me want to visit the areas that he inhabited just to witness the grandness that inspired a large amount of his beautiful work.

My ears were ringing intensely towards the end of Ratatat’s set last night, as I had been standing in the front row without earplugs since the first two acts, and even though I could barely hear much besides the music blasting in front of me, I was still overjoyed to see the band come back on for an encore, and to hear the easily recognized intro to the band’s most popular song.

The song: “Seventeen Years” — Ratatat – Seventeen Years

In Seventeen Years, as with many other Ratatat songs, one of the key components is the prevelance of harmonies at varying intervals–in Ratatat’s case–on guitars and synthesizers. The melding in and out of these chords is perfected in a way that Ratatat does well; instead of one guitar playing triads and powerchords, the melodic voices of the instruments are arranged so that more than one voice contributes to the harmony. The result is a fluctuating, moving harmonic series that is perfect when layered on top of a firm but dynamic bassline and the multifaceted percussion that the band employs.

After the concert, as I was wringing out my soaked t-shirt and my ears were screaming for dear life, I started thinking about how much I lit up when Ratatat played my favorite songs, and how I had the same reaction while listening to the John Luther Adams piece we experienced Monday night. The sheer power of a siren, when combined with other sirens’ voices, was so energizing, it made my face light up with excitement.

Ratatat’s songs are completely instrumental (excluding their remix discography). “Triadic Iteration Lattices” is also a completely instrumental piece. With that said, it strikes me to hear how vocal the instrumentation in both of these pieces can be. In “Seventeen Years”, the guitars and organ-synth sing to me. They speak all that needs to be said, lyrics not required. In “Triadic Iteration Lattices”, there are moments where the sirens sound like [shrill] human voices as well. To contrast these two, I’d say the main difference is the emotion summoned by either one: Seventeen Years gets me excited and happy. “T.I.L.” gets me excited and scared shitless.

Perhaps this is because the crooning wails of Ratatat’s electric guitar sounds evoke memories of the past, and, due to the jovial arrangement of the song, reminds me of fonder memories. JLA’s siren screams don’t necessarily evoke memories, but rather, they foster a forboding future with negative images of what sirens can mean: a macabre uncertainty that is fueled with images of air raids, tornadoes, and fires that pervade the psyche until the blaring sirens breach the threshold between visual thought processes and true sonic interpretation and perception. It’s when I’m a few minutes into the JLA piece that I start reaching the sonic Nirvana of sorts that Ratatat offers from the get-go.

So, while it takes some warming up to, I can really appreciate the power and beauty of “Triadic Iteration Lattices”, and I’m glad Ratatat played a show around the same time I experienced this piece; otherwise, I might not have noticed the strange similarities between the two.

I just came back from the Ratatat concert and my ears are ringing as though I have a personal overtone concert playing in there. I held off blogging until now because I wanted to write about my experience at the concert, but looking over the other recent blogs, most of them focus on the pieces we listened to during class, which probably makes more sense…so I’ll talk about that first, and if I can, I’ll relate Ratatat back to it in some way. (If you haven’t already, I recommend checking them out, they’re amazing–and even more so live). The piece Four Sirens really moved me, and I’m not sure if that’s despite the fact that it was composed of sirens, or because of it. Although there wasn’t much cause for air raid-style sirens to go off frequently back home (New Jersey is pretty uneventful that way, and the local siren that calls for volunteer police to come into the station sounds like moo-ing), I’ve seen my fair share of movies and such to have that Pavlovian fear when I hear that whining crescendo. It reminds me of tornados, of WWII, of impending danger and the need to flee. Yet, making music out of that fear, taking that which triggers raw and delicate emotions and making art out of it, was such a brash and challenging move. It instilled a lot of admiration and hope in me for what music is capable of. My own emotions were toyed with while I listened to the song. At one point during the song, I was convinced that this could be the soundtrack to that “life flashing past your eyes” moment right before you die. At others, I was in a trance simply lost in the way the tones played off each other and created eerie yet beautiful harmonies. Then, of course, as the pitches escalated, the high screaming overtones were too much to bear. Over all, I felt the song possessed a sort of narrative arc. In the beginning, when the sirens colliding produce a sort of uncomfortable yet pleasing effect, I thought it could be taken as (one aspect of) human nature’s tendency to find a sort of comfort in the misfortunes of others–that is, a sense of relief that the sirens of trouble are not ringing for them. Then, towards the end of the piece as the soprano siren becomes almost unbearable (I covered my ears, I confess), that signified to me that one can never truly escape the unfortunate things that happen in the world, that everyone could be affected equally. Now, bringing it back to Ratatat….in one of their songs, although I don’t remember which one, the guitar shredding away with all of the electronic alterations produced a high and painful overtone that was so clearly an overtone–I’d never experienced it live before, and it was really exciting, in a nerdy kind of way. And now I’m going to go to bed.

It blows my mind away.

I think I’m becoming hysterical(to some people maybe) right now since this is the 7th time I’ve listened to this piece back to back. Its pace,its breath and its screaming still atonish me in such a way that I couldn’t even turn even a little bit of my thought away from it.Like what I have learned in my psychology class:We don’t choose to attend to these sounds, they just draw our minds towards them.

The soundmass was like a group of eyas struggling to fly. Dark clouds blocked the sunlight and it felt like a storm was coming close.They were so determined,so sure that they were going to fly over the trees, over the hills and over the clouds in search of the warm, bright sunlight. But it was so hard. Breathed in,breathed out, the first eyas gave it a try. It flapped its wings and tried to leave the ground. But it failed. However, it started the whole serious of endless trying.They went up, failed, went up again,higher, fell more heavily to the ground. It seemed they were never going to give up. When I was listening to this in class,it felt a little disapointing.  I was waiting and waiting for a time when the sirens just went up, like nothing could ever stop it, to an extreme when not one of us could even hear it. Like the eyas eventually broke through the dark clouds and the sunlight just blinded us. But they didn’t. At around 6:30, they went so close to the border of the clouds, so close that I could even smell the fresh air above the clouds. I wanted to scream with it,  wanted to give it a little more push to make it go beyond that line. However, no matter how hard I tried, it went down again. Like a dream been shattered into pieces. Like a marathon athlete felt down two meters before the finish line. Like the last soldier in an army got shot before he could put the flag of his motherland onto the land they were going to reclaim. He struggled, used his last strength to crawl to that place, but the scene just fade out, and I was left there, speechless.

 I’m still listening to it. Listening to the story what the four sirens are trying to say. Listening to the passion, the spirit and the taste of failure. But the piece is more than this. It blew my mind away and will always blow my mind away whenever I can’t help to press the play button.

I was upset that Sirens ended up not being on the iPod, because I was curious to listen to it again and play with the climaxes and such, however it wasn’t so my plan ended up being screwed. The thing I liked about “Q” the most was that aching feeling of constant battery. The tones just kept pumping themselves onto me creating this dry and harsh physical effect. For most of the piece I couldn’t tell the difference between the oscillators and the instruments. Somehow it became neither mechanical nor acoustic, it was just one big wall of sound so to speak.

I never realized how picky sound can get. Why is it that western cultural music was designed around half steps, when there is so much more between them? Most people can’t even tell the difference, and lots of people can’t even hear a half step. Who’s idea was it to design sound in this way? Was there some big ancient gathering where musicians got together and created this criteria? There’s so much more to sound than we could possibly even imagine. I mean low bass notes can kill people!!! what the hell man? Why are there a million different ways to produce a song, and yet the majority of popular music boils down to songs that only go as far as 3-chords?

Basically all my ramblin’ boils down to this: I don’t understand how this whole sound thing works. I think there are very few people who truly do. But we all love it, so somethings going right.

Sorry,

-Jackson Meredith