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Re: OT: Composition Contest: in search of the lost chords



Below is the whole deal-i-o, one has to join the Times to see the online 
article so I've reposted Chris's post. Looks like basically you can just 
send a link to your recording to Glenn at his email address.

Daryl Shawn
www.swanwelder.com
> What was the original link here?  I tried to search the archives but the
> word chord is quite common in this group;-)
>   

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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