In my teaching, I have a habit of having people draw their account of a piece. Since I call virtually everything into question, a natural thought arises: what’s that drawing all about? Drawing asks for an embodiment of a visual sort, which helps a person put the thoughts they may have about a piece into… Continue reading Drawing musical energy
Tag: embodied sound
In Praise of Debussy (Musical Energy: Register)
Claude Debussy pioneered the world of sound in western classical music, and I revere him as the head of the sound-as-such movement that includes Varèse, Ligeti, and many, many recent composers. In this post, I’ll explore a single piece of Debussy’s, focussing narrowly on one aspect of the piece to demonstrate how he created music using… Continue reading In Praise of Debussy (Musical Energy: Register)
Musical Energy: Horizontal Density
An important, time-honored way to increase the energy of music is by speeding up. Of course, speeding up the tempo, the speed of the beat, is a very familiar means of doing so. I want to explore a larger concept here, horizontal density, which refers to the number of events per unit of time. Events… Continue reading Musical Energy: Horizontal Density
Energy Words
We know immediately if a word describes high energy or low energy: for example, lethargic instantaneously suggests low energy. It also immediately implies musical factors: slow tempo, low volume, probably not high-pitched. Doesn’t this tell us a lot about our everyday language and its implications for the analysis of musical energy? Another word that comes… Continue reading Energy Words
Melody as relationship
One of the most simple, yet striking realizations to come from the SEA theory is the fact that melody is a relationship. It’s so often talked of as all about the pitches, what they convey, and that’s not wrong. Many point to the value of rhythm – Ornette Coleman’s saying that rhythm is like oxygen… Continue reading Melody as relationship
Musical Energy: Dynamics
One of the most important means of altering the energy of music is by means of dynamics. Officially known as loudness, or sound pressure level, this acoustical fact can be measured accurately and expressed in decibels (dB): perception of loudness is a fundamental aspect of our hearing. Accomplished at the very first stage of the… Continue reading Musical Energy: Dynamics
Musical Energy: Harmony
By now, I’ve written in the blog rather often about the Sound-Energy Aggregate, or SEA theory. The basic premise is that many musical factors, or parameters, are involved in creating the acoustical information that our brains process. The theory holds that any musical factor can create energy that changes over time, and that all musical… Continue reading Musical Energy: Harmony
Meta-composing
I have had a rupture in my composing life that spans the pandemic, but I couldn’t say that the pandemic is the cause. On March 1 of 2020, I enacted a pre-premiere, a “dry run” of a piece whose premiere would end up being postponed for two years, Groundhog Night (the link here is to… Continue reading Meta-composing
The question of energy
The question of energy in music is vexing: easy to say, hard to define. One way of looking at energy is to bring forward traditional concepts from physics and everyday life. In physics, there are a number of categories of energy, some of which directly relate to music, some of which create interesting parallels to… Continue reading The question of energy
“How’s it going?”
How’s it going? It’s a simple question that needs a more complicated answer than “fine”. The more I live in this world, the more I realize that my life is full of opposites, and that both “fine” and “not so well” are credible answers to that familiar question on a given day. And I’m coming… Continue reading “How’s it going?”