BENJAMIN K. SHISLER
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BENJAMIN K. SHISLER Back to home |
It may seem that the absorption of patterns is an exercise of the intellect as opposed to an excercise of the emotions. Not necessarily so: sounds that are evocative of emotion are themselves patterns. The plaintive sound of the human voice, the twang of a blues guitar, the breathy tones of a lonely shakuhachi, the exotic echo of an armenian doudouk: these are all nothing more and nothing less than complex and subtle patterns of frequencies changing in time. It doesn't take an intellectual understanding of music theory to appreciate the haunting sound of shifting minor chords or the terror of rapid chromatic scalar movement. But, as I am learning now, my favorite pop song for many years, the 23 minute pink floyd "Echoes", contains both combined with the the slow bending of Gilmore's strings and the strange application of then cutting edge technology. It produces a striking if not beautiful effect that even non pink floyd fans can appreciate.
And what are the songs that we hate? These are songs that have no fractal nature-- either by wavering too far into the realm of sickeningly consonant periodicity, such as Muzak, or too far into the dissonant and confusing realm of freeform patternless noise, such as avant guarde composers and myself.
My original philosophy was that repetition was tantamount to tedium. But now I see that repetition is nothing more than another form of consonance. In fact, any jarring sequence of noises can be made consonant if they are repeated often enough. Hence the trance inducing power of techno. Too much consonance is undoubtedly unbearable, but, likewise, so is too little. A little bit of repetition can bring a sense of unity to a piece, a memorable, hummable, mind-imprintable tune. This is why just about every pop song you can think of has a chorus and every classical piece a "theme".
Sometimes a chorus can provide relief, release from a buildup of tension. This is certainly true in the case of "Echoes" wherein the 10minute crescendo climaxes in a great surprise with the relatively mellow chorus. From the final chorus, the song again erupts into torrential chormatic hard-rock, but the imprint has been made, the song exists as a gestalt, and it can now meander and end gracefully. (I've been studying this and other Pink Floyd songs intensely, since I have access to their midi files from the Net. I hope to somewhat emulate their style eventually. It's much less challenging than Bach :-)
Lately, I've been trying to reign in my undisciplined style. I don't think I'll ever be in danger of creating "Muzak", so without hesitation I'm overcompensating for consonance and periodicity in my recent works in grand pursuit of the Aristotelian mean. Robert Frost wrote that writing poetry without rhyme or meter is like playing tennis without a net. Perhaps that's a bit unfair to freeverse, but I find it poignantly applicable to the subset of noise called music.