nu notation andminimalism

David Black

1

“Traditional Notation” through the ages

2

Traditional Notation

• Biased towards pitch and notes

• Limited to equal-tempered pitch, pulsed rhythms

• Limited representation of timbre

3

Criticisms of Common Music Notation (CMN) – page 726•!Most western music between 1600 and 1900 uses common music notation

•!Much music falls outside usability of CMN

•!Biased towards pitch and duration of notes

•! Limited to equal-temperament, pulsed rhythms, and fractional durations of

notes•!Few provisions for representation of timbre

• Improvised music is hard to put into terms of CMN

Traditional Notation

• No spatial trajectories

• Single-note events dominate

• Synthesis parameters/computer music is unsuitable

• Inefficient at describing sounds

• Not for use in computer/electronic music

4

Hebrew Cantillation

Gregorian Chant

5

Hebrew Cantillation - gave instructions to singer as to how to shape the melodic structure, but weren’t specific notes.

Gregorian Chant - Gave way to common music notation with eventual staff (lines) structure and dot note heads.

Chinese Qin Notation (500 C.E.)

6

• Chinese Qin Notationo Didn’t say what was playedo Only gave finger positions, stroke techniques, tuning, perhaps similar to

guitar tablature.

Guidonian Hand (< ~1000. C.E.)

7

• Mnemonic Hand of Guido of Arezzoo Helped with sight singingo Joints of hand used to train hexachords (whole note scale) and solfege

(do-re-mi... note names)

Chopin, Prelude in AOp. 28, No. 7

8

• Chopin Prelude (example of established notation as we know it)

J.S. Bach - Gott sei uns gnädig und barmherzig (BWV 323) - 1725

9

• Example of relationship between “piano roll” visualization and musical score

Claude Debussy - Clair de Lune - 1903visualized using Music Animation Machine

10

Extended piano roll concept, brought to you by the “Music Animation Machine”:

video here:http://www.vimeo.com/90612

Harp Notation

11

Seven pedals set the strings of the hard to many possible chromatic harmonies, making glissandi and chord playing easier. Example of common music notation adapted to new instruments (the chromatic harp)

New Notation

• Aid composer in visualizing composition

• Sound parameters/sound synthesis

• Give instructions to musicians for performance

• Can be used as documentation for the piece itself

• Useful for new/electronic/computer music

12

Jazz Lead Sheet - Giant Steps (John Coltrane)

13

Example of “lead sheet” - common in jazz, which gives the melody and chord structure with which the performers improvise.

Solo Transcription - Giant Steps (John Coltrane)

14

This sheet continues where the previous slide leaves off - the improvised saxophone solo of John Coltrane, transcribed form the recorded material, which follows the chord structure presented.

Pictograph Notation - Gardner Read, 1998

15

Updated notation possibilities invented by Gardner Read, from his book available here:

http://www.amazon.com/Pictographic-Score-Notation-Gardner-Read/dp/0313304696

These are meant, like the harp notation, to adapt common music notation to new instruments

Cornelius Cardew - Treatise - 1963-1967

"A Composer who hears sounds will try to find a notation for sounds. One who has ideas will find one that expresses his ideas, leaving their interpretation free, in

confidence that his ideas have been accurately and concisely notated."

16

• Graphical score that allows for some improvisation, where performers devise their own methods for interpreting the score

More resources, recordings, and video here:http://www.spiralcage.com/improvMeeting/treatise.html

Cornelius Cardew - Treatise - 1963-1967

"The notation is more important than the sound. Not the exactitude and success with which a notation notates a sound; but the musicalness of the

notation in its notating."

17

• The instructions were a guide which focused each individual's creative instinct on a problem to be solved - how to interpret a particular system of notation using one's own musical background and attitudes.

Animationhttp://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/picturesofmusic/pages/anim.html

Cornelius Cardew - Treatise - 1963-1967

"Remember that space does not correspond literally to time."

18

• Not supposed to be played spontaneously, but practiced as a set of explicit instructions

Cornelius Cardew - Treatise - 1963-1967

Text

"Performance advice. Divide the musicians into those involved in dot events (percussionists and pianists?) and those involved in line events. Dot events to be exclusively soft."

19

George Crumb - Makrokosmos - 1972/1973

”an all-inclusive technical work for piano [using] all conceivable techniques”

20

• For amplified piano, uses extended techniques such as string piano methods (such as playing the inside of the piano with the hands)

• Made to explore possibilites of piano• Like cage, put objects in strings, modified instrument itself, but objects are

moved (!) during performance

Morton Feldman - The King of Denmark - 1965

SYMBOLS USED:

B—Bell-line sounds S—Skin Instruments C—Cymbal G—Gong

T—Bell-line sounds T.R.—Skin Instruments !—Triangle G.R.—Gong Roll

21

• For various percussion instruments, uses a grid-like notation with symbols for instruments

• Played very softly using only hands and fingers, concerned with delicacy and luminosity, taking the essential mallets out of the percussionists’ hands

• Graph: how many sounds to be played per beat, and whether high, medium, or low pitch

Earle Brown - December 1952Vocal rendition

22

• Associated with Cage, Morton Feldman• December 1952 – “open form scoring”

o “Activity” rather than piece of musico Horizontal and vertical lines of various widthso Role of performer is to interpret score and translate graphical

information to musico Brown says to consider this 2D space with time and move through it in

3 dimensions

Earle Brown - December 1952Electronic rendition

23

Earle Brown - On December 1952

My first impulse is to work in scoring and performance processes both of which are represented in the score December 1952.... I was first moved to think about such things by observing mobiles of Alexander Kolger and the very spontaenous painting techniques of Jackson Pollock. Both of these things I vaguely remember becoming aware of in boston, mass in 1948 or 49, and i had very much the impluse to do something in “our kind of music” which would have to do with this highly spontaneous performing attitude, improvisational attitude that is, from a score which had many multiple possibilities of interpretation.

24

“Having nothing to do directly (or does it?) with the jazz background, my primary aesthetic influences were the spontaneity, direct contact, the “now-ness,” and the in-the-moment immediacy of the abstract expressionist painters— especially the “improvisational” techniques of Jackson Pollock and the subtle coloristic effects of Philip Guston and Bill deKooning. More than anything, in terms of Cross Sections and many other works of mine, it was the example of the mobiles of Alexander Calder.“

Earle Brown interview: “On December 1952”http://earle-brown.org/archive.focus.php?id=726

Earle Brown - Cross Sections and Color Fields - 1975“You can’t grow up in America and not have a connection to folk, jazz, or rock”

25

“As a young trumpet-playing jazz musician in the 1940s and ’50s, I played in “territory” Big Bands, and I very much admired the Big Band energy and sonorities of the Stan Kenton orchestra and its composers and arrangers. (Morton Feldman called me “the lone arranger.”) Cross Sections and Color Fields is in no way an attempt to imitate or extend these concepts—they already went further than I do here—but to be a kind of gentle “homage” to that world that I enjoyed so much....”

Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis (1954)

26

• First major work• Inspired by the Einsteinian view of time and his memories of sounds of

warfare• 61 players, with no players playing the same part• Uses sound masses with many glissandi, dominated by strings• Although it uses sound masses and graphical notation, individual parts are

still written in standard notation, leaving nothing to the performer’s discretion

Score video with follow-along bar:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZazYFchLRI

Electronic Music Notation

27

Goffredo Haus - EMPS system - 1983

Melody/Harmony

Sound Analysis/Printing

28

• Transcribes sound of computer-synthesized music into a reading score by means of sound analysis.

• Graphic notation registers sound as different symbols• Amplitudes are plotted as histograms

Unité Polyagogie Informatic (UPIC) de CEMAMuXenakis, 1977

29

• Unite Polyagogie Informatic de CEMAMU (Centre d'Etudes de Mathematiques et Automatiques Musicales/Center for Studies in Mathematics and Automated Music)

• Flexible user interface with a score page and a sound structure page• Wave envelopes could be drawn, as well as event information in the XY

plotter• Realtime UPIC was available by 1991• Could use samples in many different ways, such as banks of digital

oscillators

Iannis Xenakis - Mycenae Alpha - 1978

30

• For mono tape, projected onto either of two or four sound sources around the listening room

Score video with follow-along bar:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yztoaNakKok

John Cage - Fontana Mix - 1958

31

• for any number of tracks of magnetic tape or any number of players playing any number of kinds of instruments

o 10 sheets of paper and 12 transparencies with randomly distributed points

o Performer superimposes these to create a structure of curved lines, dots, etc

John Cage - Williams Mix - 1952

32

o Used “found” samples much like Fontana mix. o The score denotes cutting and splicing tape to create a final mix

Kees Tazelaar - Geoglyphs - 1999

33

o Tendency masking in voltage controlo Random signal masking - defines “range” of random output

Artis’s homepage:http://www.keestazelaar.com/

Kees Tazelaar - Pier en Oceaan - 2002

34

o The used sound material was organized into five main groups, that each were subdivided into the categories Tone-attacks, Tone-fields, Noise-attacks and Noise Fields.

György Ligeti - Artikulation - 1958

35

• Combination of graphical pictographic notation and abstract synthesis mapping

• Studio of Electronic Music of the West German Radio in Cologne• Combination of tape and generated sound

György Ligeti - Artikulation - 1958

36

• Visualization by Rainer Wehingero The piece is called ‘Artikulation’ because in this sense an artificial

language is articulated: question and answer, high and low voices, polyglot speaking and interruptions, impulsive outbreaks and humor, charring and whispering.

Wehinger score with follow-along bar:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71hNl_skTZQ

Han-Cristoph Steiner - Solitude - 2004

37

Another example of “notation” for electronic music, which uses PureData (PD) data structures to visually represent rapidly morphing textures and data masks.

Each color represents a different sample, and each sample has two arrays: one for playback, and one for amplitude and panning.

Artist’s homepage:http://at.or.at/hans/solitude/

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte - 1960

38

o Piece for four loudspeakers, electronic sounds, piano, and percussiono Tried to achieve total serialism, controlling pitch, timbre, intensity, and

duration of all aspects of the musico Used spatialization between the four speakers

One rendition of the piece by David Tudor, Gottfried Koenig, and Cristoph Caskel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvpesmJzQws&feature=related

Karlheinz Stockhausen - Helikopter Streichquartett - 1994

39

o For four helicopter with pilots and sound technicians, four television transmitter, 12 sound transmitters, and auditorium with four columns of televisions and loudspeakers, a sound technician with mixing desk and moderator, and a string quartet.

o Colored score is to represent the four musicians

Karlheinz Stockhausen -

Spiral - 1994

40

o Events appearing on short wave radio give the soloist instructions for performance, which can be on any instrument

Pedro Gomez-Egana - clark nova - 2006

41

• “Clark Nova” – British Music Information Center Cutting Edge Series

Video of the artwork:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlVDPF_-s5k

Minimalism of Steve Reich

42

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6209213

Clapping Music - 1972

43

One performer claps same rhythm for entire piece, the other performer shifts the pattern one note every 8 or 12 bars.

Reich wanted to “create a piece of music that needed no instruments beyond the human body”

Video of the performance with two clappers:http://www.stevereich.com/multimedia/clappingMedProg.html

Video of jugglers (!!!) performing the piece:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXhBti625_s (jugglers performing !!!)

Clapping Music - 1972

44

Come Out - 1966

45

"I had to, like, open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them"

About the Harlem Riot in New York City in 1964. This recorded quote of one of the accused boys is used as source material, which uses Reich’s famous phase shifting technique.

More and more voices are added until there are eight voices in total.

Different Trains - 1988

46

• First classical work to use digital sampling keyboard (Casio FZ-1)Inherent melodies in spoken texts are transcribed and written out for

orchestral instruments and played backFollows Reich’s memories before, during and after World War II

Violin Phase - 1967

47

Temporal variations created with the performance of two violins. The recordings slowly go out of sync with each other. This process repeats throughout the piece. Can be played live by very determined and focused players

Electric Guitar Phase - 2001

48

Played by Dominic Frasca, similar to Violin Phase

Music for 18 Musicians -

Let’s take a step backwards into Western tradition...Let’s recover my birthright ... Let’s start the whole piece with a cycle of harmony ... Lets bring in strings! Let’s bring in woodwinds -

they go very well with the human voice!

49

• Barely noticeable voices• Can’t actually only use 18 musicians, they would get too tired!• Explored what happens in absence of many melodic changes