Saturday, October 24, 2009

Song Drawing

This is the first drawing I made based on the song by Reich.
The different elements are notated by varying scales of lines
and planes. Dashed lines connect melodies that begin to sound
like a continuous streams of sound.



Hugo Demartini

The following are a series of images from the Czech artist Hugo Demartini I found his work inspiring for this project, in particular the way that he captures moments of dynamic spatiality within a series of individual components. I think that there are a a lot of parallels that can be drawn between his work and music composition, especially that of Reich. Within each image, a series of elements all interact with one another in complex matrix of relationships. The photographs capture this dynamic matrix at particular moments, freezing the components at one instant in time, each moment creating a floating structure inherently architectural in its components, yet alien in its spatiality.




Phasing

In phasing, two melodies are played at different notes and in slightly different rhythms. The notes then go through a musical process, shifting from a slight echo, to a doubling, and finally to a complex ringing before meeting up again on the same note where they started out. I think that the concept of phasing could have interesting architectural implications and I hope to continue to explore it in my project.

Drumming Part 4 by Steve Reich

The song I chose to investigate for this studio was Drumming part 4 by Steve Reich. I found the song to have, an interesting spatial dimension in the way its components interacted with each other. The different percussive elements weave, intersect, cross over, extrude and recess in volume and in pitch. The song also relies heavily on phasing, a technique made famous by Reich.
Steve Reich / So Percussion - Drumming, Pt. 4
Found at bee mp3 search engine