CORE — UCSD, Round 1 — Report
Composer Performer Orchestration Research Ensemble
UCSD
Round 1, Interactive Project Report
Overview
The 2019-2020 academic year at University of California San Diego (UCSD) through the Fall and Winter academic quarters generated a significant amount of documentation materials (written, audio, and video) for the ACTOR CORE Project. In the Fall Quarter, the course MUS206 - Orchestration as Timbre, led by Professor Roger Reynolds with Professor Rand Steiger, involved a group of graduate students from composition, performance, and computer music dedicated to learning and discussing Orchestration as Timbre as outlined and delineated in materials supplied by Stephen McAdams as well as looking at Reference Musical Works as listed by Professor Roger Reynolds in the course Syllabus.
The Fall Quarter process broke down into 3 major components: timbral concepts, student group presentations of the Reference works, and the application of this knowledge through writing/analyzing new Timbral Etudes (for the composition students) and analysis of these new pieces (for the performance students).
The composition/analysis projects also divided into several parts: Project Proposals, composition or analysis of these compositions, performance, recording, and a final, post- recording analysis/report submitted by each composition students on their own works. The last section of the Fall Quarter course included 2-3 rounds of discussing the Project Proposals so that students were allotted time to provide and receive feedback from each other and to revise their Proposals.
The Winter Quarter was devoted to the rehearsal, performance, and audio compilation of these Timbral Etudes. Professor Rand Steiger worked closely with the departmental audio production staff and the selected ACTOR CORE Project performers to set up a rehearsal schedule spread out over the Quarter. Each composition student had scheduled rehearsal time to meet with the performers and discuss the goals for their work in the recording studio in order to optimize the recording session. The plan was to do 2 rounds of recording so that the composition students would be able to listen to the first recording session, make corrections, and then do a second recording to further investigate or explore timbral concepts. The first round of recording sessions ran into unavoidable logistical issues between the performance ensemble’s schedule and the recording studio schedule during a busy academic quarter. Still, the first round of recording was completed by early March. The Covid-19 global pandemic disrupted the later phases of the proposed process, but each of 11 grad composers achieved a well-recorded, and edited recording representing their work, updated their scores to reflect revisions, and submitted a culminating Report.
The documentation from the two courses are on a shared Google Drive where the participating students can upload their presentation slides, proposals, music scores, analysis and reports. There are class notes for the Fall Quarter and video recordings of selected classes in the Fall Quarter.
Additional considerations:
The perceptual results of orchestration are highly dependent on how musicians interpret and realize them, the spatial positioning of instruments and the acoustics of the space in which they are heard. Musicians adjust relative levels, intonation, timing, and the timbre of their instruments to achieve or avoid blending together, to enhance or minimize distinction between different musical lines, or to reinforce or diminish contrasts, depending on the musical context. Performance studies thus need to be at the heart of the study of orchestration practice. The goals of the ACTOR project include studying composers’ and performers’ use of timbre in music performance as a means of musical expression, as well as characterizing how orchestration effects related to perceptual grouping are represented in scores, conceived and communicated to performers by conductors, and then achieved by performers and music producers through rehearsal and mixing. The intellectual and artistic contribution of both performers and composers are essential to improving the research work that is currently being done on orchestration, and through this course [Fall Semester, 2019 at McGill] you can add to new knowledge and practice.
Motivation, Method, & Materials
Motivation
The perceptual results of orchestration are highly dependent on how musicians interpret and realize them, the spatial positioning of instruments and the acoustics of the space in which they are heard. Musicians adjust relative levels, intonation, timing, and the timbre of their instruments to achieve or avoid blending together, to enhance or minimize distinction between different musical lines, or to reinforce or diminish contrasts, depending on the musical context. Performance studies thus need to be at the heart of the study of orchestration practice. The goals of the ACTOR project include studying composers’ and performers’ use of timbre in music performance as a means of musical expression, as well as characterizing how orchestration effects related to perceptual grouping are represented in scores, conceived and communicated to performers by conductors, and then achieved by performers and music producers through rehearsal and mixing. The intellectual and artistic contribution of both performers and composers are essential to improving the research work that is currently being done on orchestration, and through this course [Fall Semester, 2019 at McGill] you can add to new knowledge and practice.
Method
Syllabus
SYLLABUS: Music 206 FQ 2019
Thursday, 2:00 – 4:50, CPMC 231
R Reynolds, Instructor
Over the course of a 2-Quarter sequence, composers and performers will work together collaboratively and interactively to conceive of and address orchestration-related issues for a specified acoustic ensemble of violin, bass clarinet, trombone, vibraphone with small percussion instruments. The term “orchestration” is taken in a broad sense: the informed selection, combination and juxtaposition of sounds to achieve a specific sonic goal.
The Fall Quarter is creatively preparatory, the Winter Quarter (with Professor Steiger) focused on ”problem-solving”, realization, and documentation of the composed etudes.
Fall Meetings:
26 September
Discussion of ACTOR project goals (including preliminary consideration of composer and performer questionnaires); discussion of individual aims of each seminar participant; presentation of a list of terms adopted by the ACTOR project to facilitate clarity and commonality; discussion of analytic “reference model” compositions by selected 20th and 21st century composers (including seminar participants).
NB: In order to better align with the ACTOR project [see Appendix A], we will not only be looking at non-traditional, “extended” behaviors, but also at the “normative behaviors” and instrumental characters out of which valuable extensions have been and still can be developed.
Readings:
Limits imposed by the neural coding of sound (S. McAdams) *
Loudness; Masking vs Fusion (S. McAdams)*
3 October
Psychoacoustic Issues, Session 1: Concerning blending/fusing, segregation/stratification, grouping (concurrent, sequential, and segmental), masking, spectrographic display of the behavior of spectral character and its dynamic evolution, impact of register, etc.
As an already documented instance of timbral analysis, we will discuss Reynolds’s The Angel of Death as explored in the assigned article.
Reading: “Perceptual Facets of Orchestration in The Angel of Death by Roger Reynolds: Timbre and Auditory Grouping” by Moe Touizrar and Stephen McAdams
Discussion of “reference work” candidates for later discussion. Agreement upon designated presentation teams. [See Appendix B]
10 October
Psychoacoustic Issues, Session 2: Continuation of 3 October meeting in regard to psychoacoustic phenomena that influence both solo and ensemble use of instrumental resources.
Readings:
Timbre (S. McAdams) *
Pitch (S. McAdams)*
Space (S. McAdams)*
17 October
“Reference Works”, Session 1: Discussion of relevant psychoacoustic / timbral features of works selected from an agreed-upon list of “Reference Models”. [See Appendix C] Each work will have an agreed-upon pair of presenters to lead the associated discussion.
24 October
Presentation and initial discussion of individual proposals for the composition of 8 – 10 minute timbre etudes.
26 October
“Reference Works”, Session 2: Discussion of relevant psychoacoustic / timbral features of works selected from an agreed-upon list of “Reference Models”. [See Appendix C] Each work will have an agreed-upon pair of presenters to lead the relevant discussion.
7 November
Presentation and Discussion of individual etude projects.
14 November
Continuing discussion of individual etude projects Members of WQ 206 ACTOR CORE Ensemble also participate.
21 November
Continuing discussion of individual etude projects
5 December
Continuing discussion of individual etude projects
* These “preludes” or compact “primers” on psychoacoustic issues were prepared by McGill Professor Stephen McAdams for a 2017 “Science and Music” Seminar that he co-taught with Steiger and Reynolds at UC San Diego.
Materials
Candidates for Reference Model works
Bold face selections are mandatory.
Schoenberg
Webern
Six Pieces for Orchestra, Op 6a, No. I — 0:00 – 1:04
Stravinsky
Three Pieces for String Quartet, II, III
Quatre Etudes for Orchestra II, III
(Stravinsky orchestrates the string quartet originals] provides instrumental version of original quartet form.)
Messiaen
Quartet for the End of Time: VI. "Tangle of rainbows, for the Angel who announces the end of time"
Varese
Lachenmann
Grissey
Saariaho:
Terrestre (solo flute, vln, vc, harp, perc)
Kurtag
Brefs messages (fl, b. cl, cl, vl, vla, vc, hn, trp, tbn)
Wallin
Concerning King (string quartet)
Beethoven
Berlioz
Tchaikovsky
Debussy
Timbre Terms
TIMBRE TERMS ADOPTED for use in FQ and WQ 2019-20 206 ACTOR SEMINARS, Department of Music, UC San Diego
TIMBRE TERMS (EVALUATIVE):
Concepts that combine temporal spectral profiles with perceptual correlates, as captured with the most common semantic labels.
[See McAdams (2019) for more detail on perception and acoustic correlates, see Wallmark & Kendall (2018) and Saitis & Weinzierl (2019) for more detail on timbre semantics]
1. bright: Sounds that contain most of their energy in the higher-frequency portion of the spectrum.
2. dark: Sounds that contain most of their energy in the lower-frequency portion of the spectrum.
3. rough: Sounds with sensory dissonance, namely strength in inharmonic partials (e.g., distortion) and/or auditory roughness (i.e., beating)
4. smooth: Sounds with low degree of sensory dissonance, i.e., strength in harmonic partials and/or little or no auditory roughness.
5. muted / damped: Sounds produced by physical systems whose natural modes of vibration have been altered so as to suppress portions of their normal spectral character.
TIMBRE TERMS (ORGANIZATIONAL/PERCEPTUAL)
[See Goodchild & McAdams (2018);Touizrar & McAdams (in press, English version); McAdams, Goodchild & Soden (submitted) for more detail.]
1. grouping / perceptual grouping: Perceptual effects of orchestration practice based on principles of auditory grouping.
concurrent grouping: Concerns the integration or separation of simultaneously present acoustic information from multiple sound sources. This process is responsible for auditory event formation. In orchestration, an "event" can therefore be formed from several grouped sound sources (see fused, blend, timbral augmentation, timbral emergence).
sequential grouping: Involves the grouping of similar things that are occurring over time and separating them from other grouped things occurring over the same time span and that share a different similarity. We can perceptually connect a succession of similar events with shared perceptual qualities and at the same time perceptually connect other event successions with different perceptual qualities such that both successions belong to distinct groups. (see streaming, segregation, stratification, Klangfarbenmelodie)
segmental grouping: Segmentation into perceptual units occurs when discrete changes are involved in one or more musical dimensions; in particular, here, sudden changes in instrumentation or electroacoustic sound create (orchestral) contrasts that delineate sets of different segments in succession, each with their individual identities.
2. auditory scene analysis /
The set of perceptual processes by which the sound world---understood as a “scene" such as is established by objects in a visual field---is organized into events, sequences of events (streams, surface textures), layers of differing degrees of perceptual prominence, and segmented units of various temporal scales.
3. blend /
The fusion of different sources of acoustic information into a more or less unified auditory event. It primarily depends on onset synchrony, harmonicity, and the degree of overlap of constituent sound spectra. It is reinforced over time by parallel or similar motion in pitch and dynamics.
4. fused / perceptual fusion
Perceptual fusion occurs when sounds played by several instruments combine to give the auditory illusion of a single unified sound emanating from a solitary source (see blend).
5. timbral augmentation / augmented (a result of fusion or blend)
The use of a subordinate timbre to embellish or highlight a dominant timbre. One sound source (timbre) is identifiable and dominates the timbral result but is embellished, highlighted or reinforced by one or more other subordinate timbres.
6. timbral emergence / emergent (a result of fusion or blend)
The simultaneous fusion of several constituent timbres, resulting in the formation of a novel timbral complex. Augmentation retains the timbral identity of a particular instrument, whereas emergence eviscerates recognizable instrumental identity, creating a sound for which there is no easily identifiable source.
7. timbral resonance
The use of timbre to highlight and extend pitch classes presented in one instrument by using the sustained timbre of another instrument, much in the same way that a pianist uses the pedal to prolong particular pitches. The resonant part could sustain, fade or swell, sustaining and swelling being impossible on a piano.
8. streaming / musical streams
A stream is a sequence of events produced by a single sound source or groups of blended sound sources, which are perceived as connected and form a unitary musical pattern.
9. Klangfarbenmelodie
Two broad categories:
The Schoenbergian approach deemphasizes individual pitches, melodic voices, and individual instrumental sonorities in favor of homogeneous sonorities. Changes in blended sonorities are foregrounded, while the melodic progression of pitches is either completely neutralized or at the very least relegated to the background of an auditory scene.
The Webernian approach foregrounds the concurrent change in pitch and timbre as co-equal, creating a less nuanced and more direct “tone-color-melody”. Here, both the individuality of instrumental timbre, as well as the progression from one discrete timbre to another become the focal points of ordered changes by step or by degree.
10. segregation / perceptual segregation
Sequences of events that separate into two or more independent streams or strata (orchestral layers) (see stream segregation, stratification). Perceptual segregation occurs because of audible differences in terms of timbre or by differences in register or dynamics, which also have concomitant changes in timbre.
11. stream segregation
Stream segregation is the separation of “voices” or streams of equivalent prominence, a voice being either an individual instrument or two or more instruments that are fused into a “virtual voice” that gives rise to a unique timbre. Note that each stream is integrated but segregated from other streams.
12. stratification into perceptual layers
Orchestral stratification involves looser groupings of events into strata of different prominence (e.g., foreground, middle ground, background). Individual stratified layers can have several instruments that are not fused, but which group together by contrast with the material being played in other layers, including timbral differences. A layer can contain a single voice, two or more co-equal voices in counterpoint, or two or more instruments that, while not blending together, create an integrated surface texture. Unlike the relative equality of layers that characterizes segregation, stratified streams are unequal in prominence and timbre plays a role in determining the perceptual salience that creates the prominence.
13. timbral contrast /
Timbral contrasts form segments as small as melodic-rhythmic patterns and as large as sections of a piece. Contrasts of lesser strength may just highlight changes in other musical parameters and stronger contrasts can create boundaries between adjacent musical materials.
14. masking /
Masking occurs when one sound makes another one inaudible or perceptually softer with potential changes in its timbre.
Participants
Researchers
Roger Reynolds
Rand Steiger
Composers
Stephen De Filippo
Alex Stephenson
Sang Song
Zach Konick
Jacques Zafra
Anqi Liu
Janet Sit
Andrés Gutiérrez
Felipe Rossi
Ioannis Mitsialis
Tiange Zhou
Performers
Berk Schneider (trombone)
Ilana Waniuk (violin)
Michael Jones (percussion)
Madison Greenstone (bass clarinet)
Matt Kline (conductor)
Research Assistants and Technical Staff
Andrés Gutiérrez Martínez (organization, audio setup and recording)
Alexandria Smith (audio editing and mixing)
Questionnaire
“Here are three primary Questions (formed collaboratively with ACTOR partners). There are two additional queries that are optional. PLEASE take a few minutes this weekend, before your memories are swept away by the New Year! … and respond with your comments. They can be of any length. It’s up to you. They will become part of a DATA Collection process, so they would ideally be substantive. Many thanks for your continuing considerations of the 206/ACTOR process and what we all are gaining from it.” R Reynolds
How and in what way did the vocabulary terms and concepts discussed at the beginning of the seminar affect your creative process, both individually and collaboratively?
Did the introductory material presented in the Fall prove to be productive musically for you, and what influence do you think this experience may have on your future creative work?
How would you evaluate the presence in the Fall Seminar of differing perspectives (composer, performer, computer music research)?
Did this interactive process change your way of listening, and if so, how?
What notational issues arose for you over the course of the seminar: both in terms of conceiving of and understanding the different types of notation?
Replies:
Media
Scores and Recordings
Stephen De Filippo
Score: timbre etude
Andrés Gutiérrez
Score: timbre etude 1
Score: timbre etude 2
Zach Konick
Score: Voices
Anqi Liu
Score: Etude for Echoes
Ioannis Mitsialis
Score: Timbral junctions
Felipe Rossi
Score: Per mutare
Sang Song
Score: Stendhal Etudes
Alex Stephenson
Score: Etude
Jacques Zafra
Score: Actor Project
Tiange Zhou
Score: Scenarios
Conclusion and Future Research
Summary of Reports
A Summarizing Evaluation of the 11 ACTOR Composer Participant’s Post-Recording Reports
Introduction
After having read the participants’ reports and listened to their pieces’ recordings carefully with score, it was clear to me that most of them could be grouped in two general categories. The first would include works that investigate the interaction of timbral phenomena with time, and in which the pieces of Stephen De Filippo, Alex Stephenson and Sang Song certainly belong. The second category would integrate those that are composed solely (or at least centrally) on 1-2 quite similar timbral phenomena without necessarily pointing an interaction with each other: Zach Konick’s (timbral emergence and timbral blending), Jacques Zafra’s (vertical blending-fusion, timbral emergence and timbral resonance) and Anqi Liu’s (timbral resonance). Janet Sit’s etude kind of fits in the 2nd category but it is of a particular nature as it investigates 2 phenomena in a very detailed way (timbral blending and timbral emergence). The 3 remaining pieces -including mine- deal with a broader variety of timbre issues in relation to orchestration.
- Submitted by Ioannis Mitsialis, 15 June 2020
Stephen De Filippo
The common line of investigation which De Filippo and Stephenson choose to focus on is Klangfarbenmelodie. The former is interested in the Webernian type of this orchestration technique and in the various degrees of effectiveness this can have when is related to different tempi. From the very beginning in his report he expresses skepticism about the combination of fast tempi and/or short durations with Klangfarbenmelodie, and about the possibility that involved sound streams have to be perceived as separate and with discernible timbral qualities for their musical elements. It is more than clear that he has a high interest in exploring this space, also including other areas of investigation such as the role that auxiliary instrumental preparation, register and/or silence can play in the clarification of these streams. In his report he takes a thoroughly analytical approach, explicating every single aspect of the above-mentioned factors and elaborating on the degree of their effectiveness in relation to their initial utility role. His final conclusions focused on the fact that the integration of too many extended performance techniques and auxiliary instrumental preparations obfuscated the clarity of the sound streams in the first version of his piece. For this reason, he removed – or in certain cases reduced – them and created a second version.
Concerning the dimension of register and its relation to the structured gestures of the piece, he also experienced challenges because of the applicability of his initial design, and those were provoked by inadequate planning at a deeper level of the structure (in his own description). In order for this conflict to be resolved, drastic revisions were made. He also came to the conclusion that slower tempi were more effective to support the disconnection of the ensemble’s registers, a desirable one for a Webernian Klangfarbenmelodie technique, although the fast ones didn’t prove totally undesirable for reasons that he explains in his report. Concerning the temporal aspect, after going through an elaborate description of the ways he constructed the tempi in relation to the structure of the work, he finally concludes that taking the risk of integrating multiple changes of tempi, the very fast included, was worth a try. The initial skepticism he had (s. p. 1) is finally reconsidered, as according to his own perception the audience is able to perceive the musical line of the Klangfarbenmelodie between the instruments, regardless of the complexity degree and rate of compression of each musical event, as long as the focus stays on the timbral domain. The fastest tempo that appears in the piece (crotchet = ca. 170) exemplifies the highest rate of compression and its instances of appearance could serve as testing domains for the validity of De Filippo’s conclusion: m. 12-16, 25, 30, 35- 36, 39-42, 46, 50-53, 56-58, 63-65, 68-70, 73-90. Adding some useful points on the role of silence in his project, he concludes that the overall endeavor was very successful because it provided a broad variety of exploration opportunities for the fruitful relation between Webernian Klangfarbenmelodie technique and temporal domain. In general, I found De Filippo’s report of high quality and very clear in analyzing the intentions of his piece. Through listening to it, I cannot perceive all the relations between timbre and its structural domain, I have the feeling that his intention is not to reveal all the involved processes and their function at the surface of the texture but to have an organic result generated by those. The cohesion and multi-dimensionality of the work, and also its idiomatic approach to timbral combinations, made it a rewarding listening experience to me.
Alex Stephenson
Alex Stephenson wrote an etude in 4 sections with the intention to focus on the Schoenbergian Klangfarbenmelodie technique (timbral modulation) and to explore the effect that tempo can have on the listener’s ability to follow this modulation. In the first 2 sections (m. 1-152) he works with looping instrumental pairs, whose choice he based on the commonalities of their spectral centroids. He finds that this aspect worked particularly well in the piece in illustrating the timbral modulation. On the other hand, the temporal aspect, although quite effective in contributing to his goal, it could have been developed even further as he says. After hearing the piece, I have a similar impression and I would be very curious to listen to the second version, where his proposed modifications would have been put in practice. Unfortunately, because of time limitations and logistics involved, the second recording of Stephenson’s piece never happened.
Sang Song
Sang Song’s proposal of long-term timbral augmentation applied in different ways in each of the 4 short movements of his Stendhal Etudes also deals with the issue of time in relation to timbre and orchestration. For his post-recording report, Song chose the 3rd movement to focus on, which in his own words presents “an encapsulated version of this process”. He mentions a reiterated “quasi-canon” that he uses in this movement, which seems to have a certain significance for the piece. Whenever it appears (m. 1-8, 10-15, 20- 25), each time in a different instrumental combination, it embodies his idea of long-term timbral augmentation, through the gradual narrowing of the intervals of the voices involved. While finding Song's idea very interesting, I noticed at the same time that the work’s process strangely creates another point of reference in relation to the foundational psycho- acoustic and cognitive principles that are mentioned by Prof. Stephen McAdams: musical streaming. Either through looking at the score or listening to the music, this aspect of the piece comes out very prominently, as musical streams interact conjointly or superimposed, especially because of the nature of the musical gestures that the composer chose to include in these layers.
Jacques Zafra
From the 2nd category of reports, I found particularly interesting and rich in information that of Jacques Zafra. The reason is that he achieves in a concise manner to give a global view not only of his piece and intentions, but also of the performance and recording process, and an illuminating reflection on the challenges, the failures, the positive outcomes and his thoughts on possible improvements. After reading his report we interacted for a while on minor adjustments and he was highly cooperative, providing me with 2 subsequent revisions of the initial report.
My first impression by listening to his piece is that his music is “homophonic” in its conception to a certain extent, as it blends timbral nuances of peculiar nature, which are provoked by his unique exploration of an auxiliary sonic space. On the contrary, the composer believes that his musical language is not ideal for testing Prof. Stephen McAdams’ concepts that refer to timbral phenomena of a vertical nature (i.e. blending and fusion). His argument is that these concepts were conceived to describe a less advanced sonic vocabulary and of a more stable nature than his own. Although I can understand his point, as a listener I can perceive that the vertical aspect of blending is particularly strong in his music, since the unstable sonic environment that he creates is very rich in timbral details that are successfully integrated in an organic totality, as if they were produced by a single musical instrument. This feature, in combination with the rhythmic domain, which is driven from his idiomatic analog notation, and which again plays with subtleties, works for vertical blending and not against, at least in my opinion. On the other hand, the fact that the intended degree of blending was not fully achieved because of performance issues, which were caused by time pressure during the recording session, is an argument that I can understand. But I am not sure if this particular material is more appropriate for the study of timbral phenomena of horizontal nature rather than vertical, as it seems to me that it has a versatile nature to work equally well at both levels, at least in my subjective point of view. According to the composer, the passage in the piece that best exemplifies timbral phenomena of an horizontal nature is letter L (timbral resonance in combination with timbral emergence).
Zachary Konick
The 2 psycho-acoustic phenomena of timbral blending and timbral emergence are a common space of interest in the proposals and pieces of Zachary Konick and Janet Sit, although they investigate them quite differently. Konick’s point of view was to write a musical piece in order to explore those in association to the harmonic spectrum of each instrument of the ensemble and of their combinations. In quite a few moments in this piece the instruments start from a total unison and diverge gradually forming harmonic constellations, subsequently coming back to unison again (i.e. m. 18-27), similarly to a Ligetian approach. During this process the composer intends to emphasize the contrast between total fusion and complete segregation of the involved instruments’ timbres. This intention is certainly fulfilled, and the results can be easily well perceived and followed by the listener. One additional phenomenon that came to my attention, especially because of the composer’s particular use of dynamics and their swelling during the unison moments, is timbral resonance, and I think that it could serve as a fruitful terrain of exploration and development for him, if he would choose to do so.
Janet Sit
Janet Sit’s different approach to the above-mentioned phenomena lies on the fact that she created an etude, which behaves inside a very limited space, with the intention to pursue meticulous investigations of all possible combinations between the instruments of the ensemble. She subsequently recorded the results of her research for observation and future reference. As a matter of fact, her endeavor stays more on the side of a strict scientific experiment rather than that of a composition with creative goals. She has listed her findings and their conclusions in a detailed table, where she also includes suggestions for possible modifications in order to achieve blending more effectively. Her main conclusions from this experiment, with which I concur, is that timbral blending is more successful, for this particular instrumental combination and writing, when the dynamic and registral space is uniform to the greatest possible degree, provided that the timbral identities of the involved instruments each time are well suited to each other. According to her observations, instances of the piece where all these factors cooperate well towards the above-mentioned direction, and in selected instrumental combinations, are the following: fragmentA+B(vn+trbn,vn+trbn+vib,sop+vib),fragmentB(sop+vn+trb+vib). I found Sit’s undertaking particularly interesting and worth engaging with because of its singularity, as it completely differs from any other etude of the participant composers and also because it takes the risk of research inside a very limiting space in terms of scope. The abundance of her findings and their content inside this space could be taken as a success for her project.
Anqi Liu
Anqi Liu’s Etude for Echoes starts with the idea that the bass clarinet multiphonics can serve as a useful basis for the exploration of the phenomenon of timbral resonance. It is the only composition of the ACTOR project that deals with a single foundational psycho- acoustic/cognitive principle that is mentioned in Prof. Stephen McAdams terminology. Choosing specific partials of selected bass clarinet multiphonics (7th, 11th and 13th), her creative proposal on this phenomenon is to create what she calls a “virtual space” of an unstable nature, a space that goes beyond simple echoes (resonances) of previous sonic events into subsequent sonorities. According to her, this goal finds its highest fulfillment at the final stage of her etude, where she asks from the performers to play “normal tones with stable features” (m. 47-67). It is my impression that this space has a strong performance practice dimension along with a collaborative one (between composer and performer) in its core. Liu asks the performers of the ensemble to tune their pitch material on these unstable bass clarinet multiphonics’ partials, and on top of that to explore uncertainty in the domain of gesture. This uncertainty is intentional and is also reflected in the way the composer has notated her score, leaving a major part of the sonic result to be “investigated” by the performers who need to lean on their technical skills, intuition and imagination in a quasi-abstract field of performative practice. This approach towards the creative practice and psychoacoustic research came as a result of the regular communication and meetings of the composer with the clarinetist of the ACTOR ensemble (Madison Greenstone), where these performative nuances were discussed and tested. I personally found the piece very interesting and I would be curious to learn more on the specifics of the 3 instruments’ material (vln, perc, tbn) and the various ways that this instrument-specific material interacts with the 3 selected partials of the bass clarinet multiphonics in use. This elaboration I believe that would make the illumination of the above-mentioned “virtual space” much stronger.
Andrés Gutiérrez
Two endeavors from a total of 11 form a special category by themselves as they don’t actually fit in the above-mentioned groups. Firstly, the etude of Andrés Gutiérrez, which despite being the shortest of the seminar, serves for him as a source of elaborate spectra analyses and centroid estimations of its component chords, with their detailed numerical results listed in the tables included in his report. It is also the only etude, along with mine, that deals with the sound phenomenon of masking (i.e. in section A, different types of it in m. 9-14, 15-23). Further psycho-acoustic/cognitive issues that are investigated in his etude include blend and spectral emergence. In a similar manner to Sit’s approach, and even with more complexity, Gutiérrez’s report is elaborate in describing everything in the etude (with the exclusion of final section C, which is pending), dealing with numerous foundational psycho-acoustic and cognitive principles that are mentioned in Prof. Stephen McAdams’s terminology, and are applied both in the horizontal and vertical space. This kind of approach results to an elaborate analysis that certainly exceeds the boundaries of what this assigned post-recording report was considered to be. As a matter of fact, it speaks in a very informative way on all the above- mentioned issues by itself. Despite the uniformity and extent of the topics that are covered, it seems that section B lies in the center of the composer’s interest, as he devotes a whole chapter to the detailed analysis of it. This section combines the timbral combinatory strategy that first appears in the opening of the etude (m. 1-8) with pitch transitions. It is of particular importance for the composer because it underscores one of the main objects of the study’s observation, which is the relationship between voicing and sonic quality of a chord. In the analysis of its last part (m. 41-52) a thorough investigation of every single aspect of the following bars is pursued: 41, 45, 47, 49, 50-52.
Felipe Rossi
On the other hand, the multi-movement piece of Felipe Rossi, being the longest of all compositions in this project, is based on the exploration of auditory grouping in combination with the combinatorial design theory applied to composition. Each of its movements explores a different psycho-acoustic phenomenon, including a wide variety such as Webernian Klangfarbenmelodie (II. Mutant prose m. 24-26), timbral emergence (V. Trap m. 6-7 and 12-13), timbral augmentation, and integration and segregation among others. In his report Felipe Rossi avoids focusing on 1-2 cognitive/psycho-acoustic topics and prefers to inform us more globally about his intentions, in the form of structured program notes. His observations in relation to the movements of the piece are accurate and concise.
Ioannis Mitsialis
Last but not least, my own undertaking deals with the phenomena of stratification and partial/complete masking as a central focus, but it also incorporates other phenomena that have significant weight in my research, such as intended ambiguity in perceptual grouping and the role of extended performance techniques in musical streaming. In my Timbral junctions I develop a structured fluctuation between fore- and background events, based on a matrix of cyclic nature and applied to the domains of pitch, duration, dynamics, register and timbre. Concerning the instrumentation domain, and always guided by this matrix, I handled this quartet less as an ensemble and more as one single hyperactive instrument, exploring the virtuosity of each one of its parts at a high level, in combination with the extensive use of extended techniques. This approach created musical layers that explore the fecund space in-between blending and segregation. My
More detailed evaluative results of this pursuit are included in my individual post-recording report.
In summary, it was a great pleasure for me to be assigned the role of curation and evaluation of the 11 post-recording reports of my colleagues composers and friends at UCSD. One report (Tiange Zhou) is still pending, as the complications of the COVID-19 situation on the recording process at the end of last WQ prevented her from receiving the investment on the careful structuring of the piece’s dimensions proved fruitful as it protected the streams from becoming indiscernible or perceptually confusing. However, in the final section of the work (m. 96-105) this aspect is less clear than intended, despite the time-consuming carefully structured and well-balanced communication between these music layers. recording of the 2nd updated version of her piece, which she needs in order to shape her report. The whole process of reading the reports and listening to the recordings, along with the study of the scores, was very informative and I am particularly thankful to Professors Roger Reynolds and Rand Steiger for giving me this wonderful opportunity. It worked as a valuable “school” for me, particularly because of the flexibility, which one needs to develop when dealing with a big group of people from different areas of expertise and with diverse interests and idiosyncrasies.
A Report on the UCSD Winter Quarter 2020 Timbre Etude Recording Process
The Winter Quarter seminar began with the idea that we would proceed in three phases:
Rehearse, record, and edit all 11 graduate student compositions that emerged from the Fall Quarter seminar.
Meet to listen, analyze, and critique these pieces, particularly in regard to the extent to which the pieces did or did not meet the goals of the projects as articulated in the composer's proposals.
Create revisions to some of the pieces, and then record and edit them.
This plan might have worked if there were fewer pieces, but early on it became clear that there was not enough time for the performers to practice, rehearse, and record 11 ambitious pieces, followed by post-production, to enable us to fulfill all of our goals. We decided instead to focus entirely on getting the pieces recorded and edited, and then, time permitting, record some revised passages. The seminar did meet twice to discuss a few of the pieces, but the other recordings were not completed in time to be discussed in seminar. There were however a few remaining sessions at the end of the quarter that allowed us to record revisions. All of the recordings are now complete (with one exception that still needs to be edited) and are included in our documentation. After post-production was completed, all of the composers wrote final reports reflecting on the process and these are surveyed and contextualized in section C of this report.
There are a few additional issues I would like to comment on.
Microphones: during the original sessions in March 2019, an omnidirectional mic (Schoeps MK 2) was used on the violin, while cardioid mics were used on each of the other instruments (including a stereo pair of cardioids on percussion). This became a little problematic later, as balancing violin against other instruments during the mixing (against trombone especially) proved difficult as there was no isolation of violin. It also pushed the balance of the ensemble image to the left in terms of sound energy. Accordingly, we decided to use a cardioid mic on violin for the Winter 2020 sessions.
Mixing: given the goals of this project we decided to establish a standard mix that was used for all recordings. Composers have the option of requesting the stems from their piece to do a custom mix for musical purposes, but we wanted to have an objective standard in the initial recordings to be able to compare and analyze the projects.
Conductor: while normally a quartet would not require a conductor, and in some musical contexts it could be argued that the performance would benefit from chamber-music style performance, we determined that for the sake of efficiency it would be best to have all the pieces conducted so that the performers didn’t have the additional burden of learning how to coordinate with each other without a conductor, and so that rehearsals and recordings could be conducted efficiently.
Concert: in retrospect, I think that rehearsing and performing a concert first before recording would have several benefits, including making the experience more natural and gratifying for the performers, and also producing more “musical” and less “clinical” recordings.
Future Plans
At UC San Diego we plan to have a more limited set of goals for the 20/21 academic year, followed by another round of seminars and recordings in 21/22. This year (assuming our plans aren’t thwarted by Covid-19 restrictions) we would like to work on expanding the ensemble paradigm to include more instruments and developing a standard for the integration of electronics. Last year in Paris we discussed the idea of a scalable ensemble, with the original quartet at the center with the same setup, and then with additional quartet layers that would allow for ensembles of 8 and 12 instruments. We also propose to add an additional layer of microphones expressly for the purpose of applying digital signal processing to the instrumental signals. Rather than try to have a mic plot that works both for recording and signal processing, it will be better to have two layers of mics each optimized for the specific purpose of recording or processing.