Month: April 2008
-
(musTh 212) Final Exam Review
Terms and Topics to Review for the Final Exam: scales and chords chromatic mediant relationships polytonality and pandiatonicism rhythm and meter, especially complex meters intervals in atonal theory, including: pitch (ordered and unordered) pitch class (ordered and unordered) interval classes pitch-class set analysis, (and here) including: normal order prime form interval vector serialism and 12-tone…
-
(musTh 212) Lecture Notes: Chance Music
Chance music runs contrary to the prevailing 20th-century tendency towards greater and greater control over musical materials. There are many words that are mostly interchangeable to refer to chance: indeterminacy, aleatory, and improvisation are the most used. I will mostly used indeterminacy. There are three ways that music can be indeterminant: Indeterminacy with regards to…
-
(musTh 212) Lecture Notes: Minimalism
Minimalism began as a general reaction to post-WWII modernism, atonality, and integral serialism. As such, there are certain traits that one find in minimalist pieces, but the technique is not uniform (just as there are many ways of composing 12-tone music, for example). Characteristics of minimalism: diatonic/modal pitch content use of repetition short rhythmic cells/patterns…
-
(musTh 212) Lecture Notes: Timbre/Texture, Electronic
Speaking historically, there are two main approaches to composing electronically. One approach is to manipulate recorded sounds – natural sounds, or simply any sound recorded on tape. This approach is called Concrete Music (musique concrete) because the composer is manipulating actual sound, rather than notation (an abstraction, or representation of sound). The other approach involves…
-
(musTh 212) Lecture Notes: Timbre/Texture, Acoustic
Some Definitions Timbre refers to tone color. Tone color can be a property of an individual instrument, or of an entire ensemble. Texture is another one of our fuzzy terms. (“I know it when I see it.”) It generally refers to the relationship between individual parts at a given moment in a composition. The line…
-
(musTh 212) Final Exam Review Session
Final Exam Review Session Sunday, 4/27, 1 – 3p Mu 309 All Sections. Bring a friend.
-
(muMet 242) Assignment: Final Performance Project
Due Monday, April 28, during final exam time (9:45 – 11:45). Create a live-audio performance patcher and perform it in class. Your patcher must generate and manipulate digital audio from within MaxMSP. It can incorporate live audio input, and/or audio input from other software applications, but it is not required. You can (and probably should)…
-
(musTh 212) Assignment: Sound Mass Analysis
Due Friday, April 18th: Listen to Ligeti’s Atmospheres (<Atmospheres.mp3>, in iLocker) and write a sectional analysis of the work. Use Kostka’s analysis of Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima on p. 239 of the text as your model. List the section number, start time (based on the recording I provide), and a brief description of…
-
(musTh 212) Off topic, Frank Zappa
Since very few of you know who Frank Zappa is, I’m including a few YouTube videos that highlight different facets of his very extended personality. Zappa performing Inca Roads, something of an experimental jazz-rock fusion. Zappa is playing the guitar solo, and periodically conducting. (Besides the standard long black hair and mustache, Zappa is the…
-
(musTh 212) Assignment: Ionisation
Due Wednesday, April 16th. Using the YouTube video embedded below, listen to Varese’s Ionisation. Identify four (4) thematic elements (rhythmic cells) by the time on the video that they occur, and what instrument(s) is playing the element. Musically notate the rhythms for three (3) of the elements. Note, pay attention to the video editing. It…