Secluded Garden

Yeah, I agree it sounds like it could do with some material around it for "padding out" purposes. Perhaps it could work as a prelude of some sort. Perhaps I'll make an album-length compilation of this kind of music when I have no more work to do...

Thanks for listening, glad you liked it.

To all the people who describe this as "avant-garde": I think the reason this piece is here is because it's electronic and not avant-garde. I don't see why it would be considered avant-garde today.

Nevertheless, as an electronic piece and a nice idea behind it (sounds like what Schaeffer did with the bell sounds in the early 20th century ), I find it immensely beautiful.

I have never heard any of your music before, Mike (or if I have, I must have forgotten about it - sorry ) , but this is incredible. It's very simple, pure and ethereal. And it just is. It is always interesting to take things and make them not sound like things (like placing an e-bow on a harpsichord - my teacher wrote a piece like that) and I think the piano has a lot of sound to offer in that (my favourite echoing sound from the piano is to silently depress as many of the lowest notes of the piano you can -place arms on the black and white keys respectively), and then play really loudly an A minor chord a few times, then stop and listen to the result (works best on open grand pianos). I find this sound so magical, that I keep doing this for a long time before I start playing.

Now, back on your piece I really enjoyed listening to it, and I am definitely going to be listening to it for a long time (until I fall asleep - didn't sleep last night >_> )

When was this written and which program did you use?

Thanks very much for commenting. I'm so glad you liked it.

I think the piano has a lot of sound to offer in that (my favourite echoing sound from the piano is to silently depress as many of the lowest notes of the piano you can -place arms on the black and white keys respectively), and then play really loudly an A minor chord a few times, then stop and listen to the result (works best on open grand pianos). I find this sound so magical, that I keep doing this for a long time before I start playing.

Funny, because I became quite interested in that concept when I was finishing up A Level Music around the age of 18. Specifically, I wrote a piano work which aimed to create pedalled harmonics (or whatever the term is for the sloshy sonorities you get with the pedal pressed down) which were more interesting than the notes themselves. I took this idea further by sampling the harmonics, and I did in fact create a piece from just that material. It's only about 40 seconds long though, I'll consider expanding it and posting it here.

When was this written and which program did you use?

It was written just a couple of days before I posted it. I had assignments due in, so naturally my brain was desperately looking for a creative outlet...

Hmmm...can't quite remember the compositional process, but I think I used a wave editor to create the original sample, then
Cakewalk to jazz it up with reverb, EQ etc., then Vienna for the sampling (I'm not terribly current), then Cakewalk again to incorporate the birdsong, then a bit more EQ to deal with some unpleasantly piercing frequencies. Probably the most notable element of the process was "performing" the pitch material live; I sat there clicking on Vienna's piano roll and recorded the output.

Once again, thanks for your comments, and sweet dreams.

And you think my music is not of the Norm?

I like the idea and some of it, as you said, is quite beautiful.

Ron

Hehe, probably best not to get wound up in "the norm", but I'm very glad you enjoyed it, Ron.

If you think you can or can't, you are right.

Henry Ford


Mary Kay Ash? As in the twins?

What is the world coming to?

Ron

Mary Kay Ash was an entrepreneur. I believe you are thinking of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

(Slightly off topic here...)

Sorry

As in pink cadilacs. I guess she can steal from Henry Ford as well as anyone else. I will let the thread go back to your piece now.

I just didn't want to think you were quoting the twins.

Ron

Originally Posted by jujimufu

my favourite echoing sound from the piano is to silently depress as many of the lowest notes of the piano you can -place arms on the black and white keys respectively), and then play really loudly an A minor chord a few times, then stop and listen to the result (works best on open grand pianos). I find this sound so magical, that I keep doing this for a long time before I start playing.

I agree, that sound is absolutely lovely...

...as is this piece. It reminds me of the film The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, with its sense of calm, enveloping disorientation, as it embraces the listener with its detachedness.

I only discovered this right now. Great piece! Really fascinating to listen to the changes in sound, which I hear almost as a "harmonic progression". I also love the concept of using a single sound as the material for a whole piece. That reminds me of some composition by someone (I forgot who, but I think it was someone famous) who made a piece out of orchestrating a single, slowed-down tone of an instrument (I also forgot what instrument it was). Could have been Stockhausen, maybe. I got to look that up.


I'd really love to listen to a longer version of a piece like this too. In that case however it would be nice to extend the pitch range a bit (looking at a sonogram it seems to pretty much stay between about 80 Hz and 1300 Hz, so you'd easily have two more octaves at either end of the spectrum at your disposal, even more at the upper end). I think opening it to a greater pitch range (perhaps only for a small section in the piece) would make it sound even richer and more colourful than it already is. That is of course just my personal opinion and may not be what you intended. I'm just a sucker for opulence

The other thing I would personally wish from a longer version would be not to keep the formal structure quite as rounded with build-up, "climax" and decrease, but have it slightly move to something different. But that again is only my personal preference.

Both my points also go against the "piece built out of a single sound" idea and may completely go against your musical intent. I guess the only reason I named them is because I like the piece so much and it comes close to things I would like to compose myself, so its natural for me to bring in my own concepts.

But maybe I'm also mentioning these things because I hear the piece quite "absolutely" and not primarily as an extended piano chord. I have no clue to what degree you directly influenced this chord, respectively the piece, but I imagine that if the piece referenced more directly to the piano, I would be less tempted to apply other musical parameters (such as formal structures) to it and hear it more as a voyage through a single tone. This is especially the case if you don't -know- how the piece was made. I suppose if I hadn't known that it was built out of a piano chord, the lack of an actual formal structure might have somewhat bugged me, but knowing it, I can listen to it from a totally different perspective. I wonder if this knowledge could be brought more out directly through the music, or at least hinted at. What about very faintly including the original piano sound somewhere for example? But of course that may easily come out too "didactic", so it's a difficult task.

But what do you actually want? Do you want it to be heard as a zoom on a piano sound, an exploration of its overtones, or do you want it to be heard as an absolute piece of music that is entirely independant of how it was created? I think those two perspectives ask for a slightly different musical approach for composing such a piece. Do you want to accentuate the origin and concept of the piece, or do you want to shape it according to general musical ideas?

But I'm mainly just babbling to myself, because I too don't really know answers to these questions. It's just stuff that interests me personally.

In any case, it's a piece I really enjoy listening to and a really nice discovery on these forums.

P.S. I also thought "what a pity!" when you mentioned that you got rid of unpleasantly piercing frequencies. I just like rough edges in music! Of course I don't know just how unpleasant they actually were.