I've made a bunch of basic assumptions, premises, axioms - call them what-you-may. First, I've settled on using 7-9-11-13/8 for time signatures - I felt that 5/8 would clash too much with 11/8, by virtue of being less than half as long. Now. These meters will next be given their set rhythm patterns, consisting of quarter and eigth notes only (partly in an effort to keep it simple). Once these are set, I can see at what points along the composition all four parts will have simultaneous quarter notes - I postulate that these points will stick out as sore thumbs, and are thus fitting candidates for Schenkenian structural chords.
Now might be a good time to give a short primer on Schenkerian music analysis. At it's most basic, according to Heinrich Schenker (a grumpy old man who is rumoured to have liked Wagner in his youth, until he came up with his analytical scheme and poor Wagner didn't fit anymore), all good music - without exceptions! - are, consciously or not, embellishments of a basic structure. This basic structure, or Ursatz - our good Heiny was German, or possibly Austrian - is a two-part harmony, consisting of the Urlinie (which goes in step-wise motion down the scale from either the third or fifth, or in very rare cases, the octave, to the root of the scale), and the Bassbrechung (a bass movement from the tonic, to the fifth, and back again - when the Urlinie is longer than the standard three notes, it gets a little more complicated, and thus I feel at liberty to make up my own rules a little).
Now. One voice will be the designated melody; two or more voices will be able to trade time signatures (and with that, the repeated melody fragments, of course) with each other whenever the first beat of both/all respective bars coincide. The designated melody voice will contain all the notes I deem shall form the Urlinie - thus, it will need to shift around quite a bit between the time signatures. Further; a voice will be allowed to shift octaves up or down at the start of every bar.
The designated melody voice might be traded back-and-forth between two or more singing voices (I'm sorry if terminology gets muddled around here, I'll try to come up with a consistent naming scheme for the different kinds of constituent parts of the piece in my next post) - I haven't quite decided this yet. If I go that way, I might try to get some of those who knew my friend to help get some lyrics down. (All in all, there'll be about 3000-3500 notes in the designated melody part; and with me being not quite used to writing long-form poetry, to spill out word upon word of meaningful stuff, help in that department would be good. And 3k syllables equals about 300 lines of blank verse - it is a bit. Or to take another example, Poe's "The Raven" consists of just under 1500 syllables - almost half of what I'm aiming for here.)
Coming up in the next post, then: definitions, rhythms, and the basic working order which will lead up to deciding the melodies.
More then.
6/29/2010
Poly-Metric Study, part two: Requiem
A friend killed himself recently. Today was the funeral service. Being in the wrong end of the country, I couldn't attend; as a homage, I will dedicate this project to him.
I feel it might fit on several levels. The Schenkerian structure of it all might hint at a certain inevitability, and the ultimate inevitability is after all death. Then there's the aspect of taking what little information we have - in the case of the music, four bars - and twisting, turning, examining them from every angle possible, trying to make as much sense as possible.
Yes, it will be fitting.
I feel it might fit on several levels. The Schenkerian structure of it all might hint at a certain inevitability, and the ultimate inevitability is after all death. Then there's the aspect of taking what little information we have - in the case of the music, four bars - and twisting, turning, examining them from every angle possible, trying to make as much sense as possible.
Yes, it will be fitting.
5/29/2010
Poly-Metric Study, part one
I had this idea a while back about exploring poly-metric in the strictest sense possible. The idea would be this: four voices, each in its own time signature, with the same bar repeated over and over again. The voices will then phase in and out of each other, at predictable but differing intervals; say you have three voices, in 3/4, 4/4, and 5/4 - the starts of the 3/4 and 4/4 bars will coincide every 12 quarter notes, the 4/4 and 5/4 every 20 quarter notes, the 3/4 and 5/4 every 15, and all three together every 60 quarter notes. One such full repetition of all voices, from being in sync to coming back in sync, seems a good length for the whole composition, as it will include all possible juxtapositions of all voices.
Now, there are some things that must be decided from the start; for instance, which time signatures? Another is that of structure, if there shall be another structural principle at work than just "from sync back to sync". In the latter, I've decided to structure it according to Schenkerian principles, albeit somewhat subverted. While not being a huge fan of Schenker, I am somewhat familiar with it. And, since this is a study on if strict poly-metric can yield pleasing results, it makes sense to structure it in an established framework for what makes pleasing music. (Again, I'm subverting it, in part by handwaving my own criteria for what makes a note structural or not, in part by extending the Schenkerian Urlinie to a tenth or twelfth, rather than the approved third, fifth or octave.)
As for which time signatures, my first trial had 4/4, 5/4, 6/4 and 7/4. I'm not really pleased with the result, so I'm starting over from scratch, this time documenting it. One reason I dislike it is that 4/4 and 6/4 have a common denominator in 2, meaning they have a tighter repetition, and that some juxtapositions between them simply will not occur. Now I'm thinking instead of using either 5/8, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8, or 7/8, 9/8, 11/8, 13/8. More to come.
Now, there are some things that must be decided from the start; for instance, which time signatures? Another is that of structure, if there shall be another structural principle at work than just "from sync back to sync". In the latter, I've decided to structure it according to Schenkerian principles, albeit somewhat subverted. While not being a huge fan of Schenker, I am somewhat familiar with it. And, since this is a study on if strict poly-metric can yield pleasing results, it makes sense to structure it in an established framework for what makes pleasing music. (Again, I'm subverting it, in part by handwaving my own criteria for what makes a note structural or not, in part by extending the Schenkerian Urlinie to a tenth or twelfth, rather than the approved third, fifth or octave.)
As for which time signatures, my first trial had 4/4, 5/4, 6/4 and 7/4. I'm not really pleased with the result, so I'm starting over from scratch, this time documenting it. One reason I dislike it is that 4/4 and 6/4 have a common denominator in 2, meaning they have a tighter repetition, and that some juxtapositions between them simply will not occur. Now I'm thinking instead of using either 5/8, 7/8, 9/8, 11/8, or 7/8, 9/8, 11/8, 13/8. More to come.
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