le centre de la bombe university

 

THE ELEMENTARY WESTERN CONCEPT OF WRITTEN MUSIC,

|----> WITH ITS LIMITS

ARE ------> m u s i c a l - p a r a m e t e r s,

which
are:

Pitch -> Pitch is a sensation of merged vibrations located in the Time continuum [1]. A single vibration is a frequency but a frequency is not a pitch sensation, it's a clock, a periodical phenomenon (which the duration of a cycle is T-1 second). However it can become one. A frequency is a sine shape wave (a circle in one-dimension space) and an ensemble of sine waves is a spectrum. A non-perpetual wave in four-dimension representation is a sphere-shaped spiral: a spatial short duration clock. How it is possible to understand the sense PITCH which is a clock? Tone is the name of localized discriminated pitch in Time continuum. The perception of exact tone position is determined by what the listener judge to be the most important frequency among connected frequencies in a sound. This judgment depends tight on education and culture: when and where we grow up [2]. This is why the sensations of musical tones cannot be measurable precisely. But there is a resistance of our recognition to keep the scale we know and to reject the scale we do not know. We hope to create enough unstable pitches to erase the resistance of "old tribe" recognition. The unstable pitches are a necessity to make music. The scales' building will be continuously a subject of controversy, because a scale represents a culture, and a game of counting digits. We choose to build unlisten scales for their specific colors.

Western pitches are written in one dimension and two directions:
______________________________________________________
towards down = low sounds, towards up = high sounds [3].

 

Intensity -> Intensity [4] is a static abstraction of Dynamic. The sensation of loudness depends of our psychological and physical state [5]. Dynamic is a nonstop multi-silence behavior in time. We know now that "without psychoacoustical phenomena that translates physical disturbances into conscious sensations, music could not exist." [6]. Deaf people who have the internal ear damaged, it means that the system to transmit and transform pressures in perceptual meaning, can feel different frequencies' pressures with skin, bones and guts like undeaf people. The sensation of intensity pressure is a physical constraint on matter, and its resistance depends of its focusing to divide this global pressure power: to unmerge the sounds. We know that in sound environment the high sounds "attack" our skull, the medium sounds "attack" our thorax and the low sounds "attack" our stomach. When by listening we decompose the sound we accumulate more flexibility with most of the sounds. Our ear is a balance, managing silence and unbearable internal and external sounds, receiving and producing sounds: out of phase to create silence, in phase to amplify silence and all the intermediary phases to locate them. Our ears are the management center of our body balance. Our ears are an incredible well-done complex sound manager and we are just at the beginning to know how it works. (See: Bernard Auriol, La Clef Des Sons, ed Érès Toulouse France 1994).

Notice that sensation of our internal hearing noises fed the creation of Soul: something else but me is inside me!

Western intensities are commonly written ppp pp p mp mf f ff fff

 

 

Duration -> Duration is a sensation of a time interval. The time passed by the sand of hourglass to flow out, is a time interval we would need to be a standard duration, a unit. Our standard time unit or frequency unit is the second. For music we use the sign of quarter note, and the minimal music sign duration is 64th note (la quadruple croche). Add this minimal ratio to itself or multiply by the Wholes Natural element of N = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...} and we obtain the additive time mode scale. Between 64th note and whole note we have 64 different values of duration (mathematically it is an arithmetic progression). The geometrical representation of this arithmetic progression physically is a straight line, but psychoacoustically it is a logarithm curve feeling. The second way to measure the time is deeply different from the first one. Is it the opposite? It's a deduction of the theoretical continuous movement (until 1950 it was the Earth rotation), the immediate data is a scale of time. "The perception of changing state of our organism and the memory that we retain of is the most immediate example of a time scale, or to be more exact a scale of chronology." (Bernard Decaux et Guinot, La Mesure du Temps, PUF, 1969.) It is a historical time. A date is a name of a localization in scale time. For example the calendar is a scale of chronology. In music there are an infinite number of time scales. We divide a limited duration by a Whole Natural Element of N={0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...} with each duration of the additive time mode repeating it in time or not. The result will be a fraction, a rational-number element of Q ensemble and a geometrical progression. There are three types of division in music. The tempo-technique, divides constantly one minute between approximately 40 to 250 Beats to give the speed of musical piece. [Note: 1 minute divided by 60 beats correspond to 1 second.] The tempo is independent but linked with the bar-technique which divides the time by a number Whole Natural between 2 to 8 generally in Western music. The bars are independent but linked with the "triplet-technique" which divides any duration value by a Whole Natural (the triplet divides a duration value by 3). This duality: arithmetic progression/geometrical progression is unavoidable and it will be always these two types of measured time on Earth to use. One is the duration time modes, second the chronological time modes: in the antique Greece they were named respectively Aïon and Chronos. The sensation of rhythm is a perception of one or several events put down on these different time scales at the same time.

We know how: Western duration, tempo, bar, rational-time scale, are commonly written.
This Western rhythm notation system is very flexible.

 

 

Timbre -> Timbre is a recent and particular notion in Western music who was created and first independently exploited by Arnold Schoenberg with his "Klangfarbenmelodie." At this time - around 1910 - the limit of the Tonality was reached and composers tried to find other systems to write music. The most spectacular system was the Dodecaphonism created by Schoenberg, Berg and Webern in Austria. But this democratic-tones-combinatory-system was not enough satisfying to express their musical desire. Then they transpose the dod-syst to instruments "colors" <=> "Klange" and made "color" dodecaphonic melodies. On the same pitch they used different kind of instruments playing (cf. Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces op. 16). This technique was fully exploited by Giacinto Selci in Italy between 1920 and 1950 app.

Now every music maker takes care of timbre in different ways. Analog synthesizers are one of this passion result: progressive mutation of timbre. Computer sound design is an another one. This virus of morphing sounds was injected in 1910 by Arnold Schoenberg and today we are crazy to control this process by computer. Cf. the following software and hardware like Chant, Audio Sculpt and Phone from Ircam, Kyma by Symbolic Sound, SoundHack by Tom Erbe and Larry Polansky, etc. The first spectacular (1979) example computer music was Jean Claude Risset's Mutation who creates with Max Matthews' Music V software the separate control of fundamental and partials of sound spectrum.

In orchestral works (Scelsi works were discovered only in 80s!) the "Romanian School" worked from 50s on Heterophony Technique with composers like Aurel Stroe, the unbearable Horatio Radulescu (I was travelling with him in England for performances in 1983), Costin Miereanu (who was my professor in composition), Costin Cazaban, etc. They developed several subtle techniques to write musical timbre. Followed by French composers (Most of these Romanian composers was immigrated in Paris from 60s) like Gérard Grisey who created the "Spectral Technique" - to be short, Spectral Technique is to write orchestral chords based on musical instrument spectrum - Tristan Murial, Ircam's composers like , etc.

In other hand many instrumentalists in jazz and "contemporary music" from 60s developed some fabulous techniques to generate strange sounds and other multiphonics. Like on saxophone Daniel Kientzy (he wrote a dictionary of saxophone multiphonics, Salabert Paris 1985), on trombone Vinko Globokar, on flute Pierre-Yves Artaud, on organ Gerd Zacher (he was playing with church organ engine to create glissandi,), on guitar Derek Beley or Fred Frith, the voice of Demitrio Stratos or Diamanda Galas, the saxophone of Anthony Braxton and John Zorn, the drum of David Moss, the objects of Hugh Davies, etc.

The French Musique Concrete leading by Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry was the first exploration of sound for music without musical instrument: they create the concept of sampling with a special recorder to change pitch of sound. In Germany composers followed the path of pur electronic music to explore music parameters like pitches (I have in mind the Electronic Studies by Karlheinz Stockhausen where he tuned exact pitches with frequency-meter and get particular tempered spectrum.)
In popular music the precise timbre control became possible in the 90s with the MIDI home studio: merging composition techniques with mixing technique like The Orb, Future Sound Of London, Aphex Twin, Cold Cut, Alec Empire, Goldie, DJ food, etc. Other musicians mix live world music with electronic like Transglobal Underground, Asian Dub Foundation, etc. Most of these artists are London residents. Why? Digital equipment gets cheaper and Electronic music gets richer around the World.

The quantifying timbre perception is only possible through acoustics parameters (see next pages).

Western timbre was commonly written, like "Cello con sord sul ponticello, staccato, etc."

yes, not so far, Italian was the universal language of music.

|----> ITS LIMITS

THE LIMITS OF THE ELEMENTAL WESTERN WRITING MUSIC CONCEPTION

|----> AND ITS PARTICULARITIES

How sounds Western Written Music?
It sounds like Quantified Graphic Music.

Music has several faces around the World and WWM is one of them.
One of a WWM's particularities is that you can read scores.
A musicological occupation with no sound: an unlistened imagined music without musical instrument.
A result of serious music.

WWM's feelings is an historical conflict among white people culture. Feelings are cultural sensations "tools" of our self-surviving in society. Feelings are the connection's lines between our inside sensitive world and our outside social work. Does Western music have this elementary role with its music to love us? Like this strong example of a National Anthem feelings to emphasize social citizenship in opposite of our inside sensitive world? Quantified Graphic Music is to control masses?

The limits of this writting-music-conception is only quantitative. The limitation of Western sciences and music is the quantifiction: one point of "view" of being against others... For analysis and creation, our Western culture emphasized today its computer tool, digital huge possibilities of digit. We represent our world with measurement and we create our world with measurement trying to touch the continuum we are perpetually looking for. Again this paradox! We would like to experience writing complex music beyond measurement. One day... perhaps.

 


NOTES:
[1] See the diagram "duration scale" with the location of hearing sounds.
[2] See how many different pitch-modes (scales) were created by all the civilizations, historically and geographically, according to their own cultures and mythologies. Yet it exists a universal mode: the pentatonic. Less than 5 tones there are no mode perceived.
[3] The 7 lines pitch notation was specially created for the 7-tone major mode. Other modes and scales are considered as alterations of this major mode.

[4] In physics, acoustic intensity is expressed in Watts per square meter: at 10-12 w/m2 is the minimal intensity heard, at 1 w/m2 is the maximal. Acoustic intensity depends of matter density, of sound propagation speed in this matter and the amplitude of transmitted sound. The Watt expresses the power of an energetic system inside what 1 joule is transferred uniformly during 1 second. The Joule expresses the work produced by a force of 1 newton in 1 meter in the force direction. The Newton expresses the force communicated to an object of 1 kg, an acceleration of 1 meter by square second.
[5] It means that two persons in a same sound environment will never have the same evaluation of loudness.
[6] "Psychological foundations of musical behavior" by Rudolf E. Radocy and J. David Boyle.1979