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poLyrHYthm
©2006
David Pleasant www.davidpleasant1.com
“As
static it reveals the superlative combination of compounds of
matter; as a moving event it represents the most intricate time
pattern in nature. Life is exquisitely a time thing like music.
And beyond the plane of life may have come that harmony of motion
which endowed the combination of compounds with life.”
The renowned Charleston cytologist E. Everett Just said
this in the early 20th century. His statement identifies the
essential role that rhythm plays in life.
Africans
brought that idea to America hundreds of years ago. It is a
timeless acknowledgement of rhythm in the organization of being.
Africans had always expressed an awareness of that quality through
art, movement and music. Polyrhythm and syncopation
expose that awareness in many forms of African and African American
experience.
It
is not a commodity.
The
exploitation of that legacy has been captured in the Jim Crow,
minstrel show, and ragtime industries that underlie modern music
industry ethics.
It
should be remembered that the industries are not the music.
Those
industries champion ethics and individuals whose sole purpose
is to generate revenue. The foremost objectives of those companies
are not the spiritual, intellectual, aesthetic or historical
benefit of the people.
Artists
educate, elevate and motivate. The least of what they do is
to cultivate a culture of pleasure and/or diversion at the expense
of the truth.
Truth
comes first.
Africans
gave us a way to see the multi-layered authenticity of human
experience through polyrhythm and syncopation. That gift allows
us to realize a daily connection to the essential motion of
all things.
It
speaks to a depth of awareness that requires growth: growth
requires that the individual seek experience beyond the scope
of corporate product placement, pop culture mythology or crypto-racist
American education.
Syncopation
and polyrhythm requires an investment into the unseen, unsounded
qualities of expression.
That
is the place where the truth of things is mined out. American
popular forms invest heavily in the omission of material. It
is a type of sleight of hand that shields the public from gray
areas that threaten common mythologies:
“Elvis
is the king of rock”, “slaves arrived in 1619”,
“Martin L. King was a dreamer”. Behind each of those
phrases lies a wealth of material that challenges the efficacy
of the statement itself.
The
truth, like syncopation, as explained in western terms, is the
off beat: and as is implied, the off beat is the weak, ancillary
or “other” beat.
Polyrhythm/syncopation is more than a diversion
or flavor. It is a template
to understand qualities of consciousness that would otherwise
be dismissed.
It
is a purpose to seek qualities beyond the face value of conventional
exposure. The idea that music is a commodity that is either
limited to or limited by marketing and sales is an idea that
must be confronted. The Stono rebellion of 1739 dispelled the
idea that music could only be cultivated for the pleasure industries
of food, alcohol and sensuality. With
that in mind, perhaps a fresh new re-conceptualization is in
order.
Contemporary
cultures of “bling” and hyper-sexuality have had
a predictable effect on aesthetic balance in American society.
Artistic vision that promotes balance has been smothered by
marketing ethics/”strong-beats” that have monopolized
awareness. This is exactly where polyrhythm/syncopation as an
ethic supports a broader vision of what is clearly possible.
In
this respect, music is more than an aside or pass-time.
It
is a fundamental quality of consciousness that demonstrates
the ultimate potential of human awareness, spirituality and
intelligence.
©2006
David Pleasant www.davidpleasant1.com
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Excerpts
from patrick brennan artist's notes to
the drum is honor enough:
collective
improvisation is in many ways a theatrical personification of
polyrhythmic dynamics.
I'm
after orchestrating melodically - throughout an entire ensemble
- the kind of multilevelled relationships that are happening
with percussive polyrhythm.
What
humanizes sound into music are communications, decisions, arguments
and cooperations that can be inferred behind a sonic persona,
all of which is, in a single word, drama.
A
composition is a dream reenacted and reshaped in dialogue with
a community of musicians; and what especially draws me to composing
in relation with improvisation is its potential as tonic antidote
to the SameOld-SameOlds, a.k.a. the SO-SOs.
Music
is a social cooperation par excellence, as sounds become
music because of the web of relationships among people
and sonic images. Each composition initiates and depends upon
its community of musicians.
A
composition for improvisers has to provoke musicians into doing
something new themselves, which makes this closer in function
to the relationship dance music has with dancers.
Likewise,
it’s as much theatrical scripting for multiple protagonists
as it is sound coordination, with a composition acting as instigator,
mediator, provisional constitution, provocateur, antagonist
and adviser.
In
practice, composition is really just a slower species of improvisation,
and is also an awful lot more than just tune writing.
What
a composition does, at it fullest, is to reconsider, redefine
and renew all of the musical elements. What this can do is renovate
the underlying assumptions that improvisers are working with,
help to stave off cliché, intensify ensemble concentration,
and raise the level of improvisation from a solo/individualist
orientation to a more comprehensive and inclusive one.
Art
is also advocacy for a point of view, a way of responding to
experience, and even a proposal for how we might be. I’d
like to integrate the multiplicity, disjuncture, complexity
and contradiction of our experience into some kind of form that
can, all of a piece, get right down into the reflexes and translate
into how people can move with what happens (which is also not
such a bad definition for what a groove is...).
I try to get below surface appearances
such as styles and genres and get down to what’s happening
with musical elements at the molecular, or even subatomic strata,
before patterns and such are definitively formed.
I'm
fascinated with music’s connective tissue, with how sounds
congeal into images, with how those images dissolve and shift,
and with how musicians associate sounds, ideas and moves.
Excerpts
from patrick brennan artist's notes to the drum is honor
enough
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EMPATHY
© 2007 David Pleasant
Musicians
are aware of syncopation, resonance, harmonics and sympathetic
vibrations. Those musical and physical properties expose how
closely related things are to one another: events are to events.
They bridge past, present and future in a rough way.
A harmony of being is indicated which links things in a molecular
way. All molecules are important. Ideals of modernity often
imply that past events are some how deficient. This is particularly
true in corporate societies that insist that we throw out old
products and buy the new improved ones. It implies that past
ideas and even people are deficient or unimportant: forgettable.
Certain groups have paid a heavy price for this notion. Their
sacrifice, suffering and distress have been all but forgotten:
erased. Curiously, though, other groups have their pasts enshrined
within the fabric of everyday life and mythology.
Their presence is normal while others are of special interest.
The practice is so well entrenched that even the deprived continue
to deprive themselves: follow the narrow scope assigned by the
mainstream. Any understanding, knowledge or interest in material
beyond the assignment is immediately seen as esoteric or threatening:
or at best something to be done on the side. The lives, stories
and values of startling numbers of people are summarily dismissed.
This is so because there is not enough time or room to present
them along side of stuff that we have to/better know. That imposition
is clearly an everyday over-pressure. Syncopation, resonance
and the like expose the importance of each and every molecule
irrespective of place order. The enslaved boys on the ship;
the slaughtered Lakota villagers; the dismembered Polynesians;
the rotting African corpses etc. are not throw away history.
They resonate in each present and future moment in the same
way that harmonics and sympathetic vibrations happen in a beat.
The discrimination thereafter is in the eye, ear, mind, soul
of the beholder.
It
is curious that so many artists can find a multitude of ways
to show sexy; dirty; romantic; sensual and the like yet the
creativity to access other subject matter with the same creative
scope escapes them. The same condition exists with audiences
that expect that course. They become genuinely disaffected when
presented with other material. The Griot, Bomba, storytelling
tradition has fallen subject to material markets that insist
on music as an entertainment commodity. The present day degraded
sense of awareness requires an intense interface of action;
information and urgency. Current structures/frameworks have
overshadowed parallel orientations of history, thought and discourse
etc. such that there is no room for anything else. The theoretical
regimen of harmonics, syncopation and the like indicate that
there are truly other means of perception: and that the over-pressure
of conventional discrimination do not rule supreme. This implies
that we do more than feel for others. It implies that we feel
with others: who are indeed ourselves. This is empathy. It suggests
that both artists and participants reach beyond the most ostensible
levels: sensuality; sex. Both must invest in the contextual
resources available in each moment. Those resources speak to
how we discriminate. The investment certainly requires sacrifice.
It requires a level of introspection and discomfort: things
that counter pose industrial entertainment. If we truly feel
along with our predecessors we would have to act. There are
few things in this modern world that compare with the slave
ships, cotton plantations, cane fields, pineapple harvests etc.
of the past and those things that do should cause us to act
even more urgently.
The
advanced dismissal and/or selective presentation of the untold
stories expose fear; ignorance and indifference. Empathy would
seemingly require that a shared feeling and response overshadow
the good gig. A missed meal, last year’s i-pod or car
is the least of things when compared to dismemberment, disease,
flogging, starvation, lynching, imprisonment, kidnapping, murder
etc. It has now become normal to supplant sympathy, empathy,
interest in ancestral or contemporary misery with modern comfort
and upward mobility. Ignorance is a chosen repose.
Tendencies in the physics of music itself provide a context
for discovery on many levels.
The narrow scope of the entertainment industry/pleasure industry
reduces art in to a pay and serve commodity. The soul of the
art, however, belongs to the physics of being. That being/Being
resonates in every molecule with out beginning or end. It carries
with it the harmonic of creativity that values all. Discrimination
is in the eye, ear, mind, soul of the beholder. Empathy is in
the eye, ear, mind, soul of the beholder.
©2007
David Pleasant www.davidpleasant1.com
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Excerpts
from patrick brennan notes on:
The compositional process
is interesting, and, in a way, easier to talk about than
improvising, because, whereas improvisation is concentrated
in the moment and synthetic, composing spreads
itself across time,
and is instead a more gradual assembling of discrete events,
and because of this, it's less complicated to tell a story about
it.
TO COMPOSE literally means "to
stand with".
And, in practice, all musical events are composed,
in the sense that music is social -
i.e. people stand with people:
there are relationships. To make music with people involves
some kind of concord among them.
THIS
IS COMPOSITION: people agree
somehow to together make whatever sounds
they choose in a particular way. And, this gets called MUSIC.
What
Europeans have traditionally
called musical composition,
where one composer designs sounds for other musicians to play,
is only one of many ways to do this.
IN
THE SENSE OF COMPOSING BEING AN ARRANGING
OF SOUNDS, COMPOSITION CAN BE CONSIDERED AS A KIND OF Slow
Motion Improvisation. BUT COMPOSITION
CAN ALSO BE AN INSTIGATION OF A SOCIAL
EVENT, AND THERE ARE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN
MAKING MUSIC THROUGH A MACHINE, WRITING NOTES FOR MUSICIANS
TO READ, A FIXED OR IMPROVISATIONAL
COLLECTIVELY MADE MUSIC, or INVENTING MUSICAL DESIGNS FOR IMPROVISERS.
how
sounds may be coordinated, and how people respond
to that, really interests me.
and, i explore this by Testing My Own Sensibility and by learning
from how other listeners respond to what happens.
i equally find fascinating how people who make music come to
comprehend a musical possibility and interact to let some music
happen. Both how people relate with sounds, and how people relate
with each other via
music, tells a lot about what human beings are, and might be.
Excerpts
from patrick brennan notes on: The compositional process
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Excerpts
from patrick brennan notes on Ambiance & Drama:
About two aspects OF MUSIC (one of which I call
AMBIANCE, and
the other, DRAMA):
We use the word AMBIANCE customarily
to denote the atmosphere,
the tone/flavor/mood, even the overall impression, evoked by an environment
or setting.
SOME SOUND EVENTS, SOMETIMES REFERRED
TO AS ambient music, REALLY DO FUNCTION
AS A SPECIES OF SONIC CARPETING, WALLHANGING, BACKDROP, OR EVEN
AS FILLER. Beyond the choice
of sounds for the setting, the DRAMA happens
elsewhere - perhaps in what the
listener brings to the sounds, and/or in such conjoining activities
as dance / theatre / film / a rap / spoken word /whatever.
I EXTEND THE MEANING OF THE
WORD ambiance TO REFER TO, in practical
terms, THE SONIC PALETTE - meaning
such elements as INSTRUMENTATION, OVERALL
TEXTURE & DENSITY, TEMPO, ORCHESTRATION, RHYTHMIC PATTERNS
AND TENDENCIES, PITCH/TONAL TENDENCIES...all of these aspects that make an
impression, but don't on their own convey drama
(they could just be some nice, decorative sounds,
or the wind blowing through the trees, or the hum of the refrigerator
or...).
every soundscape evokes an AMBIANCE. often, the most immediately recognizable facet of A musical genre,
or of a style,
is its AMBIANCE (RADIO DIAL SURFING IS A CLEAR WAY SEE THIS
ASPECT IN EFFECT);and, if a person's listening
settles at thE scale of a
soundbite, that might be all
one notices.
JOHN CAGE POINTED OUT THAT ANY SOUNDS, AS "sounds
in themselves," MAY REWARD MUSICAL
ATTENTION. however, sounds become MUSICAL
as a listener recognizes DRAMATIC TENSION in the relationships
AMONG sounds.
WHEN SOUNDS SHOW EVIDENCE OF attention,
intention, extension; ONE HEARS THAT people are involved AND THAT CHOICES ARE BEING MADE. oNE LISTens differently
because THERE'S A STORY TO HEAR.
One hears the CHOICES along with THE SOUNDS; and CHOICE IS DRAMATIC because
it's a gesture of DETERMINATION in the context of
what otherwise appears to be INDETERMINATE, unknown, unpredictable.
THIS TENSION, this give & take push
& pull dialogue BETWEEN COMPOSER AND SOUND, is the primordial,
archetypal, tone of the aspiring-playful PROTAGONIST HERO in relationship with WHATEVER THERE is TO contend with.
That's drama.
...and this is why music
gets INTERESTING: what's that person doing?
what's that person gonna do? how? WHY?
who? AND SO FORTH...ITS HUMAN INTENTIONALITY (and concurrent uncertainty)---somebody
MEANS to do this. This MEANS.
A listener feels this
intentionality so
ROUTINELY (as this ambiance pervades all
music - with varying degrees
of emphasis) that it's distinct
personal humaness often
may barely be even thought of
.
Back to AMBIANCE and DRAMA: ambiance can
be considered as the effect of
sound, whereas drama is
the impact of the weave of human decision
(i.e. composition) among sounds.
I LIKE ALBERT MURRAY'S PHRASE
antagonistic cooperation (in The
Hero and the Blues) FOR THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN protagonist AND
obstacle, where obstacles
(as resistance is necessary to the
emergence of any form) PROVIDE
THE HERO WITH THE opportunity to
extend beyond "routine conceptions
and achievements."
I LIKE ALBERT MURRAY'S PHRASE
antagonistic cooperation (in The Hero
and the Blues) FOR THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN protagonist AND
obstacle, where obstacles
(as resistance is necessary to the
emergence of any form) PROVIDE
THE HERO WITH THE opportunity to
extend beyond "routine conceptions
and achievements."
murray's phrase inverted -cooperative
antagonism, would also describe what i'd
find an optimal relationship between composition and improviser.
A composition can exert pressure -
can focus, demand, goad, prod, incite, entice, encourage, provoke,expand,
invite an improviser to invent at a more comprehensive level
than perhaps on other occasions. Monk, Mingus, and
Charles Moore have been, for me, influential examples of this
possibility.
IN BASKETBALL,
THE REAL BEAUTY OF THE GAME CAN BEGIN TO HAPPEN WHERE THE cooperative antagonism OF
AN OPPOSING TEAM SUPPLIES JUST ENOUGH tension - contrariness, resistance, AS WELL AS, actual
or potential,chaos -
TO CREATE AN OCCASION FOR THE KIND OF PLAYING THAT WOULDN'T BE ORDINARILY
A PART OF WARM UPS, or of a routine rehearsal. A GAP ASSERTS
ITSELF,INSERTED BY RESISTANCES, active with tension - a space
to leap across, people on their toes... . What's next? The players
have to IMPROVISE.
Tension, which literally means
the tautness that
results from stretching, is
characteristic of coherence.
COOPERATIVE ANTAGONISM SEEMS TO ME TO HAVE ALSO BEEN a basic
constructive principle in JAZZ
IMPROVISATION.
A group of individuals cooperate AS AN ENSEMBLE, but
each individual is, at the same time, ANTAGONISTIC in distinguishing HIMorHERSELF from
other members OF THE ensemble (as well as from every
other musician who's ever played),
BY INDIVIDUAL COMPOSITIONAL CHOICES AND INSTRUMENTAL touch (oneself is a unique
persective and assemblage). the engagement of
multiple protagonists would naturally generate some tension.
individual identity is also defined thanks
to the contrasting tendencies of other
voices. each musician's clarity
and distinctness (an antagonism) augments
and clarifies, by contrast, the concurrent moves, ideas &
sounds of the other musicians.
INSTANCES OF COMPETITION, OF MUSICAL PRESSURE,
ARE SETTINGS WHEREIN MUSICIANS MAY
EACH EXPAND CREATIVELY BEYOND THEIR PREVIOUS, AND POSSIBLY HABITUAL,
THRESHOLDS (AS NO TWO VOICES
ARE THE SAME AND NO ONE CAN ACTUALLY BE
SOMEBODY ELSE, "BEST" HAS
TO HAVE A PRETTY LIMITED & RELATIVE
MEANING IN THIS CONTEXT. THIS IS WHERE COMPETITION MAY INVERT
ITSELF FROM AN ORIENTATION TOWARD WINNING
& DEFEATING INTO AN OCCASION WHEREIN
EACH INDIVIDUAL MIGHT RIDE THE ATMOSPHERE OF CHALLENGE TO FURTHER
SUCCEED AS ONESELF).
THIS IS A COOPERATIVE antagonism: ensemble/individual conflicts are
INTEGRATED as EACH
IMPROVISER CHOOSES compositionally IN REFERENCE
TO THE OVERALL SOUND OF THE ENSEMBLE.
THIS IS ALSO RITUAL:
drama; ENACTMENT OF
ORIENTATION & ATTITUDE.
going a little further TO THE DISPOSITION
OF SOUND ARRANGEMENT IN SO MUCH AFRICAN AND AFRICAN DERIVED
MUSICS, the common application of interlocking & contrasting
RHYTHMS, CALL/RESPONSE,
MUSIC/DANCE, SOUND/GAP COMES ACROSS TO ME AS PERHAPS YET ANOTHER
EXAMPLE OF THE WORKING PRINCIPLE OF COOPERATIVE
ANTAGONISM, where very often intruments
relate by means of how they differ (while
in reference to a composite sonic image),
rather than homogenize,
and with just the appropriate attention, each part clarifies the others - there's an expanded space between assertion
and accomodation, (like moving from
2D to 3D): even the silences
(the gaps!) are set on fire.
It might also be called SWINGING., (,. - #@^
...aS if this musical syntax itself leans toward an ambiance
that nurtures the kind of tension that is concurrent with relaxation...and
this also refers to improvising and to drama and & + etc...
.
Excerpts
from patrick brennan notes on Ambiance & Drama
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Events
©2006 David Pleasant
www.davidpleasant1.com
A fractal design unloaded as an on screen computer pattern evolves
in to perpetual geometric designs. The computer typically expresses
the pattern as forward or backward moving palates that change
into countless asymmetric systems. Since the patterns change
on each beat as geometrically diverse phenomena should not the
beats, moments, times themselves unfold with the same asymmetric
diversity as the design? How would that type of phenomena be
unloaded as a temporal event? Since time and sound are 3+ dimensional
events, then how would the fractal-quality of moments get unloaded
given that the computer outlays events in uncompromisingly even,
equidistant distributions in time? Do moments/times observe
the same propensities of matter and energy concerning fractals?
How can the size, shape, content of a moment be expressed? If
moments are indeed, fatter, skinnier, fuller, longer, broader,
as suggested by the diversity of fractals, then time is different
in each moment. And the portions used to measure it, as predictable,
equidistant events, are insufficient. The portions assigned
to it fail to reckon with its true condition.
If we assume that moments, like people, at least in the eyes
of God, are equal, then moments have a diverse range within
a quantitative and qualitative palate of existence. The value
of which cannot be summed up by standardized measures. Some
portions stand like bricks while others behave like bubbles.
Grid measures are great ways to quantify bricks, but bubbles
escape such rigors. The Earth itself behaves like a bubble.
Ever so often the grid model has to be adjusted to accommodate
the orbit and shape idiosyncrasies of this planet. The Earth
"misbehaves" because it does not fall into the perfection
of precise equidistant arrangement. The suggestion here though
is that it is not Earth that misbehaves. It is, however, that
Earth, like metric and sonic time boils. The bubbling over of
stuff does not indicate a deficiency in the stuff as much as
it indicates a deficiency in the pot used to contain it. Containment
may indeed be the problem.
Bubbling presupposes a level of unpredictability. This runs
contrary to the very idea of measure and containment; the nature
of which is to predict paths and outcomes. The presumption of
unpredictability falls into the same condition: "I predict
that it will be unpredictable". So it is with capturing
or containing the true nature of time. Time oversteps the specificity
of the grid. It does not behave like an immutable fixture. Like
sun light, it appears to be constant yet beneath lies a sea
of boiling permutations: a mass of layered, multi-dimensional
energetic events. Time may actually possess an elastic quality
that operates with out the regularity and/or predictability
of standard measure. It seems as though pots or bricks or grids
may be ill-suited ways to qualify all events. There may be other
means to appreciate existence and condition in the universe
that value the inhale, exhale, strobe or pulse of a dynamic
presence. The sloppiness/raggedy-ness of phenomena that bulge
over the grid marks invite a perspective on time that appreciates
syncopation.
In this way, a bulging flap of event could indeed arch over
into another grid and touch another event. This idea suggests
that ways of feeling time may be just as profound as measuring
it and that syncopation works as more than an embellishment
or ancillary provision in time. The geometric possibilities
that underlie fractal designs may be as prevalent in the temporal
patterns thought to frame them. And that the frames themselves
are not frames at all. They are truly events with the same propensities
as matter and energy.
The stuff which gives the moment its density is syncopation,
polyrhythm and poly-meter. The quality of that density does
not belong solely to the rigor of duration. This idea unmasks
conventional limitations on time, rhythm and syncopation. It
brings particular pressure to bareon the idea that syncopation
is an interruption. That is that it breaks, disrupts or destroys
expected pattern and hampers flow and continuity.
Syncopation harmonizes flow and continuity. It does the same
for moments that fractal design does for 2 dimensional patterns.
Each beat, like a person, has insides. Those insides allow for
multiple conditions of being. Those conditions are simultaneous
events. Western views place time as a frame for things to happen
within. The standardization of this model can impede a broader
awareness of time: an elastic, dynamic condition of being.
Syncopation offers a way to experience time with out the burden
of the frame model. If a blues harp solo were taken and placed
in a sonic fractal model would it be recognized? Does the inner
condition of the solo work only in a particular sequence? Does
the inner condition flow in only one direction: like Morse code?
Can the solo, when expressed as a single moment or chord be
expressed with the same impact as a sequential event? Does a
lack of relevance to the listener reflect upon the material
or the predisposition of the listener?
A standard practice in improvised music is to use consequent
8th notes evenly distributed in 4 beats.
If a pie is cut in to 8 slices or cut like a puzzle it would
remain the same pie. It would be the same if cut into 15ths,
13ths, 17ths etc. The pie flavor would not change even if the
pie were mushed beyond recognition and spread over a mile. As
a mush or slice the pie is the pie. The pan is the frame. When
that frame is eliminated expectations about the pie change.
Syncopation supplies the means by which all parts of condition
can be unloaded. It supports the idea that unexposed material
matters. Sonic events happen with in a matrix of overlapping,
simultaneous condition.
The cosmic improvisation that underlies existence, that is the
re-organization of molecules from one moment to the next, supports
pattern. It allows for pattern to exist. Its symmetry, however,
defies conventional notions of pattern as steady, consequent,
predictable, containable events, in which case, pattern is no
more important than the creative condition which allows it.
The trusted reliable, replicable, solidity and symmetry of material
pattern resonates within a wave of un-metered, un-measurable,
unpredictable, asymmetrical mush.
A fractal design in black on transparent sheets stacked 100ft.
high looks like one giant black blob. The blob, like the1st
note of the compressed blues solo, owes no respect to the original
as the 1st pattern in sequence. The layered design is in itself
a single expression/event. The beginning and end as a consequence
of pattern or sequence is irrelevant. The example points up
how the mechanics of syncopation as a condition of consequent
motion, pattern or sequence is eclipsed. The perception of motion
as a directionally specific, patterned event is eclipsed by
vertical time which suspends moments as perpetual, fluid, elastic
condition. Syncopation, poly-rhythm, rhythmic harmony in this
way compete with notions of direction, measure, duration, consequent
linear pattern as defining features of time. It highlights the
conditions of molecular vibration as a single perpetual event
much like a soup or mush. That event suggest that pattern, cadence
and/or sequential measure neatly verify only the most obvious
uniform events and that highly expansive moments of extreme
differentiation in motion/rhythm characterize events: patterns
and sequence do not create meaning. Condition is meaning. Fractal
time may indeed exceed present assumptions concerning the uniformity
(sequence, symmetry, measure) of moments, whereat, qualitative
differences in pattern may also play out in temporal realizations
of duration: time and duration may be different.
A fractal design unloaded as an on screen computer pattern evolves
in to perpetual geometric designs. The computer typically expresses
the pattern as forward or backward moving palates that change
into countless asymmetric systems. Since the patterns change
on each beat as geometrically diverse phenomena should not the
beats, moments, times themselves unfold with the same asymmetric
diversity as the design? How would that type of phenomena be
unloaded as a temporal event? Since time and sound are 3+ dimensional
events, then how would the fractal-quality of moments get unloaded
given that the computer outlays events in uncompromisingly even,
equidistant distributions in time? Do moments/times observe
the same propensities of matter and energy concerning fractals?
How can the size, shape, content of a moment be expressed? If
moments are indeed, fatter, skinnier, fuller, longer, broader,
as suggested by the diversity of fractals, then time is different
in each moment. And the portions used to measure it, as predictable,
equidistant events, are insufficient. The portions assigned
to it fail to reckon with its true condition.
If we assume that moments, like people, at least in the eyes
of God, are equal, then moments have a diverse range within
a quantitative and qualitative palate of existence. The value
of which cannot be summed up by standardized measures. Some
portions stand like bricks while others behave like bubbles.
Grid measures are great ways to quantify bricks, but bubbles
escape such rigors. The Earth itself behaves like a bubble.
Ever so often the grid model has to be adjusted to accommodate
the orbit and shape idiosyncrasies of this planet. The Earth
"misbehaves" because it does not fall into the perfection
of precise equidistant arrangement. The suggestion here though
is that it is not Earth that misbehaves. It is, however, that
Earth, like metric and sonic time boils. The bubbling over of
stuff does not indicate a deficiency in the stuff as much as
it indicates a deficiency in the pot used to contain it. Containment
may indeed be the problem.
Bubbling presupposes a level of unpredictability. This runs
contrary to the very idea of measure and containment; the nature
of which is to predict paths and outcomes. The presumption of
unpredictability falls into the same condition: "I predict
that it will be unpredictable". So it is with capturing
or containing the true nature of time. Time oversteps the specificity
of the grid. It does not behave like an immutable fixture. Like
sun light, it appears to be constant yet beneath lies a sea
of boiling permutations: a mass of layered, multi-dimensional
energetic events. Time may actually possess an elastic quality
that operates with out the regularity and/or predictability
of standard measure. It seems as though pots or bricks or grids
may be ill-suited ways to qualify all events. There may be other
means to appreciate existence and condition in the universe
that value the inhale, exhale, strobe or pulse of a dynamic
presence. The sloppiness/raggedy-ness of phenomena that bulge
over the grid marks invite a perspective on time that appreciates
syncopation.
In this way, a bulging flap of event could indeed arch over
into another grid and touch another event. This idea suggests
that ways of feeling time may be just as profound as measuring
it and that syncopation works as more than an embellishment
or ancillary provision in time. The geometric possibilities
that underlie fractal designs may be as prevalent in the temporal
patterns thought to frame them. And that the frames themselves
are not frames at all. They are truly events with the same propensities
as matter and energy.
The stuff which gives the moment its density is syncopation,
polyrhythm and poly-meter. The quality of that density does
not belong solely to the rigor of duration. This idea unmasks
conventional limitations on time, rhythm and syncopation. It
brings particular pressure to bareon the idea that syncopation
is an interruption. That is that it breaks, disrupts or destroys
expected pattern and hampers flow and continuity.
Syncopation harmonizes flow and continuity. It does the same
for moments that fractal design does for 2 dimensional patterns.
Each beat, like a person, has insides. Those insides allow for
multiple conditions of being. Those conditions are simultaneous
events. Western views place time as a frame for things to happen
within. The standardization of this model can impede a broader
awareness of time: an elastic, dynamic condition of being.
Syncopation offers a way to experience time with out the burden
of the frame model. If a blues harp solo were taken and placed
in a sonic fractal model would it be recognized? Does the inner
condition of the solo work only in a particular sequence? Does
the inner condition flow in only one direction: like Morse code?
Can the solo, when expressed as a single moment or chord be
expressed with the same impact as a sequential event? Does a
lack of relevance to the listener reflect upon the material
or the predisposition of the listener?
A standard practice in improvised music is to use consequent
8th notes evenly distributed in 4 beats.
If
a pie is cut in to 8 slices or cut like a puzzle it would remain
the same pie. It would be the same if cut into 15ths, 13ths,
17ths etc. The pie flavor would not change even if the pie were
mushed beyond recognition and spread over a mile. As a mush
or slice the pie is the pie. The pan is the frame. When that
frame is eliminated expectations about the pie change.
Syncopation supplies the means by which all parts of condition
can be unloaded. It supports the idea that unexposed material
matters. Sonic events happen with in a matrix of overlapping,
simultaneous condition.
The cosmic improvisation that underlies existence, that is the
re-organization of molecules from one moment to the next, supports
pattern. It allows for pattern to exist. Its symmetry, however,
defies conventional notions of pattern as steady, consequent,
predictable, containable events, in which case, pattern is no
more important than the creative condition which allows it.
The trusted reliable, replicable, solidity and symmetry of material
pattern resonates within a wave of un-metered, un-measurable,
unpredictable, asymmetrical mush.
A fractal design in black on transparent sheets stacked 100ft.
high looks like one giant black blob. The blob, like the1st
note of the compressed blues solo, owes no respect to the original
as the 1st pattern in sequence. The layered design is in itself
a single expression/event. The beginning and end as a consequence
of pattern or sequence is irrelevant. The example points up
how the mechanics of syncopation as a condition of consequent
motion, pattern or sequence is eclipsed. The perception of motion
as a directionally specific, patterned event is eclipsed by
vertical time which suspends moments as perpetual, fluid, elastic
condition. Syncopation, poly-rhythm, rhythmic harmony in this
way compete with notions of direction, measure, duration, consequent
linear pattern as defining features of time. It highlights the
conditions of molecular vibration as a single perpetual event
much like a soup or mush. That event suggest that pattern, cadence
and/or sequential measure neatly verify only the most obvious
uniform events and that highly expansive moments of extreme
differentiation in motion/rhythm characterize events: patterns
and sequence do not create meaning. Condition is meaning. Fractal
time may indeed exceed present assumptions concerning the uniformity
(sequence, symmetry, measure) of moments, whereas, qualitative
differences in pattern may also play out in temporal realizations
of duration: time and duration may be different.
©2006
David Pleasant
www.davidpleasant1.com |
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Excerpts
from patrick brennan notes on Pulse & Gravity:
...playing
around with sensations of moving, if
not, at the least, with thinking,
forward and backward
in a time sequence.
There
are some ways of thinking about a sounding in relation to the
gravity of a pulse.
IMAGINE
A STEADY PULSE:
AND,
IMAGINE THE MOMENT OF THAT PULSE AS CIRCULAR:
Here
are 4 orientations from which one might percieve a sounding
in relation to a pulse...
1234 1234 1234 1234 1234
A
SOUND MAY ARRIVE...
1.WITH  THE PULSE
3.OPPOSITE THE
 PULSE
4. BEFORE
THE PULSE
2.AFTER THE PULSE
Each
of these relationships carries a distinct gravitational feel.
1...
Think
about THE pulse as where it falls - - - the DOWNbeat. Think about binary yin/yang
activities such as breathing (walking, heartbeats, bouncing...) The downbeat falls (as
in the release of exhalation),
...3
but
the UPbeat lifts, and requires effort,
force, that moves against
the tendency of gravity (as in inhaling...) The upbeat/backbeat gathers tension which gets released
back into the succeeding downbeat.
...4
In
between these two poles, there's the effect of arriving, not symetrically at a 180 degree opposition
to a pulse, but,
just AFTER that
... and also just ahead
of the beat, with the sensation of fall/leaning
TOWARD/INTO THE PULSE.
...2
Sounds
that arrive forcefully just behind the
pulse tend to bounce off, SURPRISE, lift and kick... SPLASHing against
the thrust of the wave.
ONE
COULD ALMOST THINK ABOUT THESE AS BEING CARDINAL
POINTS OF SENSATION...
...and
opens up a whole subject about how the rhythmic gravitational
relationships between sounds (irrespective
of the meter and all that...) are the means by which music's
sculpturality gets
put into effect, that the kinetic shapes
are...
Excerpts
from patrick brennan notes on Pulse & Gravity
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Excerpts
from patrick brennan notes on Metagroove in "Snuck
In"
The
special momentum of Snuck In develops from the dynamic tension
among three different varieties of motion:
A
6/4 Vamp
Walking
4/4
3/4
marked by dotted half notes
Each
of these states of motion, especially when placed side by side
in contrast with each other, carries a distinctive sensation,
Vamps
often have an effect of making time psychologically stand still,
A vamp defines the size, shape and flavor of a moment, and it
keeps coming back, over and over again. Time is going around
in a circle. It doesn't go anywhere. Vamps can also function
as Spirals in which energy builds up with each repetition, much
as water accumulates behind a dam, or as a bow is drawn more
taut.
Swinging
4/4 clearly goes straight ahead. In Snuck In, the 4/4 functions
as the release of that stationary tension.
The
impact of the episodes of 3/4 feels like the brakes coming on,
of time moving almost backwards, crashing against breaking waves
and such.
Put
them all together in sequence at a quick tempo and you get an
effect different than any of these particular grooves alone,
but something that results only from their combination, Each
of the states of motion collides and ripples across each other,
as would our own listening dance/metronome sense also ripple
across these brisk alterations in pattern, (The asymetrical
groupings of 5 measures of 4/4 and 3/4 respectively makes each
of these particular episodes a bit more unstable, and the slipping
between meters arrives more unexpectedly.) The exact calibration
and total effect of these specific alternations between contrasting
rhythmic sensations, the overall rhythm of the movements between
these varying states of movement, might be called Snuck In’s
own particular metagroove.
Excerpts
from patrick brennan notes on Metagroove in "Snuck
In"
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