Conceptual pieces: Tonal Love and Abstracts

SSC_-_Abstracts_CMC16.mp3 Abstracts

and

SSC_-_Tonal_Love_CMC15.mp3 Tonal Love.

Both were made for the conceptual music contest held here and across other boards, a while ago. But, I mostly used that as an excuse to write something with a concept anyways.

There concept for Abstracts was "Bottom of the ocean" or that sort of thing. I pretty much tried to paint a sort of "colorful black" sort of ambient, along with references to mechanical sounds and such other stuff. There are changes and sudden movement, which I think are also characteristic of the ocean and ocean creatures. I wanted to give it a semi-claustrophobic sound, and a sense of urgency despite the fact that it's pretty slow in progression and takes it's time.

Tonal Love was based on the concept of "love at first sight" as weird as it may be, I actually took the concept pretty seriously when I wrote it. The main focus of this piece was to create complex textures and moods with just an internet handshake as my source material. I chose the internet handshake sound as a suggestion from someone else, but didn't intend this sort of context for it haha.

I took the approach of "Love on the internet", or "Digital love" and that sort of thing. How does that actually translate into music, well, I don't know exactly. I simply tried to write something I liked, and didn't think too much about binding what I was writing to the concept. I think the only really concrete factor is the choice of sounds, but the actual composition isn't so clear in any direction or another.

One thing I can say about the piece that I really love is the analog sound of it. Since the handshake is recorded from an analog device it's got such a round/smooth sound, and when it distorts it's pretty neat.

So enjoy some non-baroque-sounding music from me this time~

Abstracts definitely gave me that underwater feel; like I was exploring the ruins of a sunken oil tanker, and things are cracking and groaning under the water pressure as you move through it. Sounded like early Tangerine Dream with Allan Holdsworth playing chords over it.

I really like how the second piece starts off. I feel as if I'm trying to dial a telephone in a sea of green jello.

Thanks! Well, Abstracts is more.. hrm, atmospheric oriented. Tonal Love is more experimental and "in it just for the sound." So, yea!

PS: Nice description, hehe. When I wrote it though, I only had the chords I play on guitar at the start, and I didn't have anything in mind other than that. It's fun seeing how people's imaginations work if you give'em room.

Abstracts is a really nice blend of sounds. Very good sense of contrasting strata floating around. I can't say I was completely sold on the "mechanised" aspects, but the rest demands the listener's attention well and is rather creative.

I didn't get a sense of any over-arching logic to the form/structure, it just seemed to start off at A and end up around G. Maybe I'm not grasping it properly, but I would have liked to hear more structural underpinning to the material. A restatement of one of your original ideas, maybe? Only a minor point, and I can also appreciate that the quasi-narrative feel may have been a deliberate choice.

As for Tonal Love: wow, haven't heard the sound of a modem dialling up in a while.

To be honest, I couldn't really grasp this one. I did get a vague outline of what you might have been trying to communicate, but that only really presented itself towards the end, and right when I was becoming transfixed (during that growing wall of static, which I assumed would be the dark climax of the work), those falling dialling sounds showed up, and the effect was lost. But your description above suggests that you were simply trying to organize sound, in which case, bully to you, and a toast to Cage.

Originally Posted by Mike

Abstracts is a really nice blend of sounds. Very good sense of contrasting strata floating around. I can't say I was completely sold on the "mechanised" aspects, but the rest demands the listener's attention well and is rather creative.

I didn't get a sense of any over-arching logic to the form/structure, it just seemed to start off at A and end up around G. Maybe I'm not grasping it properly, but I would have liked to hear more structural underpinning to the material. A restatement of one of your original ideas, maybe? Only a minor point, and I can also appreciate that the quasi-narrative feel may have been a deliberate choice.

As for Tonal Love: wow, haven't heard the sound of a modem dialling up in a while.

To be honest, I couldn't really grasp this one. I did get a vague outline of what you might have been trying to communicate, but that only really presented itself towards the end, and right when I was becoming transfixed (during that growing wall of static, which I assumed would be the dark climax of the work), those falling dialling sounds showed up, and the effect was lost. But your description above suggests that you were simply trying to organize sound, in which case, bully to you, and a toast to Cage.

Well, I don't work with much structure in a classical sense, I rather form different sections which are interconnected in some way by various factors but they are also very different. I like to do contrasts one right after the other, disorient. That's what Tonal love has, it has a "modular" structure, and there is a pseudo-climax but I kill it halfway (the white noise wall), because it's time to move on (so to speak.) It also has the thing where the wall of static swallows the totally distorted and messed up-now sounding dial and tone noises which were before so clean (only to come back abruptly for the ending, tripping over itself and stopping suddenly, as if it made a last attempt to get attention. lol.)

There's a lot of subtle things here and there tonal love which I doubt is easy to just "hear", but it took me a little to get everything how it is and it wasn't easy.

As for Abstracts, I wanted it to have a sense of motion, but a slow/heavy motion. Like it was struggling along to get anywhere, but it didn't matter because speed wasn't the emphasis. So, having a structure where I'd take anything that had already passed was out of the question, since I wanted to just make it like a moving landscape in that sense.

There's a lot of techniques in both which are hard to hear as such, such as how the drums in Abstracts are using messiaen inspired valeur ajouté style rhythms (that's why one beat always comes a little "slow",) and in tonal love there are a lot of cluster play, specially cluster walls where bits and ranges go missing and come back, etc etc.

It's all really combined to give both a certain character, rather than simply putting stuff in different ways. There's a lot of careful work with these things. Also was hard to find and pick proper effects for the guitar (which I hand-prepared) that wouldn't clash with the rest so much at the start, but then gained a solo-like character later.

But, I'm glad you liked it. :>