Music & Cogitation

.forum - week seven.



Today Sanad showed us a track he made called "The Disaster of August 30th," which was composed in a experimental and electronic vein. It was quite a good effort on his part, particularly as he mentioned he had spent little time on it. Once again the mixing and compositional ideas were great, however the area which I struggle to grasp in Sanad's pop music is the structure. While Stephen admitted to grasp some kind of a plot or story - a narrative - out of the piece, I must admit the flow of the piece on a meta-level was too hap hazardous. On a more micro-level the actual transitioned were composed quite nicely, I am just unsure about why they occurred where they did in the larger structure of the piece. Nonetheless, it was a promising work.

Edward Kelly presented an impressive Max/MSP patch, which iterates dots along a series of parabolas. I should congratulate Edward effort in refusing to shy away from the mathematics of Max, something I tend to do.

John Delany's piece "BinHex_25-06" (full marks on title) is quite an impressive one. It uses many different SuperCollider UGens as different sound sources - instruments for the music. I think the problem with the work is that while most of these sources are fantastically captivating - they bring the audience into the dark atmosphere - there are a couple that do not, and in my opinion detract from the piece.

.sources.

Whittington, Stephen 11.09.08 "Student Presentations," Forum of EMU, Adelaide University.

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