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Weird sounds

In the NWC Scriptorium are many works, covering a wide range of interests. What one likes, another may find uninteresting. But I am intrigued by Jay Hamilton's "Therapy"   Has anyone else listened to this?

Tony

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #1 –
G'day Tony,
Intriguing? yes, but not my "cup of tea".  I found it very repetitive.  Still, that said, without experimentation where would music be?  So full marks to Jay for exploring stuff.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #2 –
very...experimental. reminds me of a piece i started once, i called it the migrane song.


but i have no right to criticize after all, i am responsible for this

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #3 –
Well,they say "To Each His Own," but you know what?  I kind of like the Migraine song.  I would love to hear it live, with the top three lines played on acoustic instruments.  I don't know if a theramin qualifies as acoustic, but it would work.  So would a musical saw, and maybe some stringed instrument.  So it's fair to say instead of "negativ" the file should be called "positiv."

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #4 –
Lawrie,

I would sooner have your migraine thah the therapy, but to each, his own.  I quite like the throb of steam trains!

Tony

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #5 –
G'day Tony,
actually mate, the migraine is Christians, but I like steam trains too!
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #7 –
I beleve tnat quite a few lovers of pipe organs find a delight also in steam locomotives. There are some similarities - mechanical complexity, visibilty of woking parts (often behind some sort of screening) and oftena nice and syncopated rhythm.

Tony

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #9 –
Always good David.  Thanks mate.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #10 –
I listened to it, reminds me of a piece for prepared piano, something like John Cage would have written. To some, Cage was a revolutionary- to others, just an oddball who "composed" 4min. and 33 seconds of silence.
-DAVID COOPER

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #11 –
When I was young, Cage was revolutionary.  We listened to his recordings in high school music class in the '60s.  I don't remember much about what I heard on those recordings, but I do remember they seemed interesting.  Our teacher http://ellingtonweb.ca/Hostedpages/JohnFearing/JohnFearing.htm gave the impression Cage's work was important. 

There was a juxtaposition - we listened to Cage, Britten's War Requiem, and of course Stravinsky, also a lot of protest music (Joan Baez, for instance, probably because of the quality of her voice, but perhaps also for the content of her songs).  We also heard and played a lot of baroque, medieval and renaissance music.   But no jazz newer than Dixieland, and no schmalz. 

Thanks, Dave, for bringing back the memories.

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #12 –
It does sound a little like Cage's prepared piano works - which were said at the time to sound like gamelan music - which Hamilton's piece also resembles a bit. But a gamelan is Indonesian and primarily composed of hammered instruments (gongs and xylophones), while this one is a strange mix of African, Japanese, European, and West Indian instruments that includes strings, woodwinds, tuned percussion, and a small box with springy little metal strips that you press and release with your thumbs. I dunno. Odd instrumentation. The music itself seems fairly typically minimalist - although the minimalists aren't usually this dissonant. But I suspect the dissonance is amplified by the MIDI playback. It might sound quite different in live performance.

....and we could really get off into some interesting territory if we start talking about Cage. I met him once. Very serious, charming, quiet, humble man. But not a composer. He was very quick to state that himself.

Cheers,

Bill

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #13 –
I have to say I actually like "therapy". It, like many of Hamilton's works, is an excellent mood piece. Although it also shares the fault of many other experimental works in its lack of a dicernable melody or form, this can be overlooked.
 

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #14 –
Well this was a surprise.  I don't visit the forum very often, just compose and use the program and scriptorum for saving my compositions.
Responses to comments as they occur to me;
1] I met John Cage and played played his music 5 or 6 times, at least once under his direction.  Was honored to be at one of his last birthday parties.  Influenced? Probably-

2] Gamelan, yes the compositional method is based on both Persian dastgahs and Indonesian selendro models.  Therapy was performed live a number of times.  The instrumentation for Scriptorum is an approximation of what I did and had performed.  Most of the actual instruments were plucked open strings that I created and built, flute, drum, and metallic idiophones- very difficult to simulate with general midi.

3] I don't think of this as minimal music at all.  And I do think of it as melodic, that's been interesting both in live performances and here that someone would say that melody is lacking.  One thing about both Persian and Indonesian music that I had taken to heart is that the melody is stretched out, We in the west are more used to hearing the melody over a very short period of time yet some of my music the melody can take a full minute to hear.

Also I have a tendency to not repeat the melody but to run with it through out the entire piece with little or no repetition (that is not entirely the case with this piece).

4] Lastly for now- what you can't do with midi is give a sense of space, there's no 'room' with midi and most of my performances with that ensemble the audience either surrounded the ensemble or we surrounded them.

5] oh and thank you
Hope this helps
Jay
www.soundand.com
jay@soundand.com

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #15 –
I kinda like it, too.  I had to mute the flute, though, because it's too loud on my system and the tone color seems out of place (on my system).  Would like to hear it live.
Particularly like that the guitar part is in three-four (though it's written in four-four as are the other parts).

Re: Weird sounds

Reply #16 –
I agree that music really can't go forward without experimentation, of course. I do it all the time! Dissonance is one aspect of music that I feel many people are afraid to experiment with, save for the one note resolution that is so common, but it is something that can really produce some beautiful and unique harmonies. Anyway, that's how I feel about it. :)
-DAVID COOPER