Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

So I was thinking about blogging about something completely different, since everyone seems to have covered “Q” and the siren piece already, but I think I’ll just write about Q since it was one of my favorites.  What I liked to much about it was that it was so different from the drone pieces we’ve heard.  Now, I know that a little while ago I would have considered “varying drone pieces” an oxymoron (pronounced the canadian way).  But this piece seemed centered less around overtones and whatnot than a strange sort of airy rhythm.  The oscillators held down the drone while the instruments played around with intonation.  The way all sorts of beating patterns were created really pulled me in.  It’s almost like its creating music, a song, only using random space between the tones, and the whisping of the beats.  Really, really, cool.  

It was hard for me to decide in which piece I wanted to write about this week.  I really enyojed all the pieces in the class, but when I was hearing them again, I wasn’t able to reproduce the response I had towards them in class.  It was hard for me therefore to try to explain what impression this pieces made on me.

I enyojed “Q” very much.  I remember fist listening to it, and for a moment not realizing what was going on.  It took me a couple of seconds to realize that the sound I was focusing on came from the oscillators (dah…)  I started hearing the oscillators as producing a circular sound.  I remember that during the first third or so of the piece I was felling a little bit alarmed, maybe because of the intencity that the piece maintained.

As I started getting into the piece, and because what was going on in the classroom, I starting realizing how hard all my body was vibrating.  My pulse was up.  I had a very strong physical response to this piece, but not a negative one, I didn’t feel opressed or nervous for a change.

Digging down to the frequencies in between notes, hearing them collide and reinforce one another, and listening to the rhythms that they create and destroy was for me a very uncomfortable experience.  Right from the start, the two oscillators made me squirm, turning my head this way and that as if that would make it resolve.  Q made me think of trying to help someone who is really bad at tuning their guitar – and listening to the collisions of your pure note with theirs, off just enough to jar you.

Despite my discomfort, I thoroughly enjoyed this piece. It challenged me to take the inherent dissonance of the tone and focus on it alone, how it weaves in and out but never completely resolves.  The hiccups in the piece jolted me – everything almost came together… But then they were off again, pulsating and raw. Sometimes I think that listening to a piece like that is more about the feeling you get when it is over, and you can relax and appreciate what you now hear around you (silence)… At any rate, Q was intense.  

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