Contemporary Music Analysis and Speculation

Nuova Consonanza - NC Berlino 1969

The piece begins with about 3 sounds occurring concurrently. I can identify a guitar or similar string instrument distinctly. I also hear a wind instrument drone. As the piece progresses, I hear random noises in the background. These begin with an object sliding down a wire, creating a downward scale effect. High pitched piano that is low in intensity is heard.

Suddenly I hear a squeaky, high pitched sound that sounds like squeaking on glass with wet fingers. This is soon followed by clinging objects such as keys. It sounds as if they are made of plastic or wood. The squeaky sound continues and becomes more regular and frequent. Added to it is a sound similar to a xylophone. I hear objects being struck that produce different tones, medium in pitch.

The mood of the piece gradually changes into a darker aura. Deeper, lower pitched percussion begins to take over as the most-noticed sound in the piece. This low percussion gets louder and more frequent, leading into some high pitched sounds that resemble an object striking wooden planks.

Soon after, I begin to notice the sound of trumpets or some other brass instrument backed by low pitched percussion, such as a bass drum. The brass is joined by what sounds like a squeaky hinge for a short time. The metal-on-metal sound heard here is very distinct. These sounds gradually fade away as the piece becomes more silent. The instrumentation becomes more drone-like, resembling the beginning of the piece.

After the period of reduced volume, I hear several instruments making short, fast sounds. The drone style continues, as the short, fast sounds are clearly the secondary focus. The first sound I identify sounds like a human blowing into a long tube. Next I hear a flute and what sounds like a high pitched electric motor speeding and slowing. This transitions into high pitched, continuous percussion, which sounds like cymbals. The brass heard before continues but now it is much more continuous and drone-like.

After a while the volume gets louder, while the sounds continue in a drone fashion. The sounds fade away, but as the piece ends I hear springs creaking and a human inhale.

As a listener I can categorize this piece into the collage category. I feel that while listening I am among a collection of objects and am free to observe any one of them at any given time.

Steve Reich - Come Out

The piece begins with a man's voice saying "I had to like open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them." At first the voice sounds closer in space. After a few repetitions, the "come out to show them" part is repeated over and over again. As this phrase repeats, I get a sensation of the voice moving from left right and then within space the sound moves farther away, creating an echo effect. This pattern continues for some time. As I keep listening I notice a strong difference between the left and right channels. The right channel is distinctly preceding the left.

As the piece progresses the speed increases. The increase in speed creates a beat effect where the voices sound almost like percussion. Another spatial effect suddenly occurs that brings the left and right channels more in unison, creating another sensation of the sound moving around in space. This time it sounds as if it moves from left to right behind my head.

As the speed increases more, the sound of the man's voice becomes more musical and less decipherable as speech. It is now very difficult to understand the individual words. The speed of the speech is still increasing. The only recognizable elements of speech are now "come" and "show".

After a while it sounds as if the speed of the repetitions are decreasing once again. Again, this affects the sensation of the sound in space. Shortly after I notice the decreasing speed, the speed increases again. This time it is faster than it was before. The speed keeps increasing to where "show" is the only recognizable element of speech.

Suddenly, a spatial effect begins that sounds like the sounds are swirling around me. Now the speed has increased so much that there are no longer any recognizable speech elements. The repetition almost sounds mechanical. My mind pictures a large saw and the back and forth sound that it produces. In addition, the lower tones resemble a large quantity of buzzing bees in a closed chamber.

The sound is still blending together to produce a more constant sound. The volume of the sound begins to slowly decrease. The higher pitched sound is more prominent and is the last sound that I notice as the piece fades to silence.

Greg Kelley - I

The piece begins with a medium high pitched tone that sounds like a sine wave. The piece progresses into intermittent distortion that gradually becomes stronger. The distortion sounds like a chain saw or mechanical, metallic sound. The distortion is lower pitched than the tone. The high pitch is sustained with no periods of silence or pauses. The piece is highly repetitive with alternating periods of the tone alone and the distorted tone. The distortion varies in pitch and intensity. Sometimes it is very intense and annoying to the listener, and other times the distortion is low intensity. During periods of high intensity it has strong bass tones and sounds overdriven.

The duration of this piece was one of my first observations. It is much shorter in length than the first two selections. I may speculate that the reason for this is warranted by