Introduction to Electronic and Computer Music

Individual Project #2

GOAL: Working alone and using Pro Tools, create a short piece using a small collection of sounds.

· Open the Pro Tools session “Project 2,” located in your folder.

· Using only the sounds provided in the Pro Tools session, create a short piece (at least 1 minute long).

Note that although you cannot bring in any new sounds, you may use the digital signal processors to manipulate the sounds in addition to the processors in Pro Tools.

I will grade you on

· your creativity, including the extent to which you are able to manipulate the given sounds,

· the technical ability demonstrated, including logical use of the software, and

· general musical elements of the piece, including form, the mixture of variety/similarity, density, use of the stereo space, use of dynamics, and the ability of your piece to hold a listener’s interest.

To hand in:

· A CD-R recording of your finished Pro Tools session,

· the folder name of your Pro Tools session in your computer folder, and

· a typed/word processed paper with a short description of what you did and, if desired, a program note.

NOTE: For all projects, there is a ban on the use of overly repetitive patterns. This includes drum loops or repetitive beats and all but the most limited forms of ostinati.

A word on composing:

There is no one right way to compose a piece, but below are some ways of thinking that may help you.

· Consider your piece like a story (or a movie), where the musical ideas are characters and the plot is what happens to those musical ideas. This creates change (because things happen to your musical characters), which helps create form, and keeps your piece going somewhere.

· Think of a starting point and then think of an arrival point (this could be the end of the piece or the end of the section). Then think of how to get from one to the other. For example, the piece could begin softly, in a high register with bell sounds, and the first section could end loudly, in all registers with lots of different kinds of sounds. I could gradually expand the pallet of sounds, begin to include lower and lower sounds until all registers were present, and then increase the dynamics suddenly near the end of the section. Or, alternately, I could begin to include very low bell sounds, and gradual have the registers meet each other in the middle while the dynamics gradually get louder and louder, and only add very short hints of other timbres until near the end when those other sounds would take over. And so on. In any case, however, you should avoid simple linear changes as they tend to become predicable.

· Think about things the timbres share and try to use that common ground to relate them to each other, or to move from timbre to timbre in the piece. Conversely, think about what is different about the timbres and use that contrast to build your piece.

· Must pieces start somewhere, go away and come back; a simple formal diagram of this is ABA’. (The “prime” after the second A indicates that it is not exactly the same as the first A.) After creating your A, or even a part of it, you can begin to think of what will be different in your B, and also what won’t be different. Also consider how you can move from A to B and back to A (suddenly? gradually? in between?).