5:4 Guitar — June 2016
Polytemporal Isorhythmic Study
The work is a polytemporal isorhythmic study for guitars based on a 5:4 polymetric pattern, resulting in a piece formed from temporal dissonance (to use Conlon Nancarrow’s terminology (Drott, 2004, p.549)). All notes are produced by tapping (a technique where the fingers percussively tap the desired frets to sound the notes), allowing one hand to tap four beats (the ‘4-hand’) per bar and the other to tap five (the ‘5-hand’) simultaneously — In this way the 4-hand acts as a metronome. I chose to set the notes apart a perfect fifth, so as to have a consonant interval to distinguish between the two hands.
Once I had this technique I created three variations of this, each adding an additional note to the 5-hand, creating an isorhythmic pattern.
Sequence 1, 2 and 4 repeat for 16 bars until moving directly into the next pattern, sequence 3 repeats for 18 bars as it takes 3 repetitions to land on beat 1. In this way there is a high-level ‘cascading’ effect where the faster tempi cycle through the sequences faster than the slower tempi. Initially I mapped out how many times to play each sequence before moving onto the next one, however this proved quite challenging so I instead colour-coded the click tracks for each section; this meant I could simply repeat each pattern until I was able to see (and thus anticipate) the next sequence.
The tempi chosen were determined by my previously used Excel formula and I settled on the following for a broad range of tempi:
- Top left screen: 90bpm
- Bottom left screen: 120bpm (the base tempo)
- Top right screen: 150bpm
- Bottom right screen: 160bpm
The temporal relationship of these are as follows:
- Triplet minims at 90bpm = 120bpm
- Quintuplet crotchets at 120bpm = 150bpm
- Dotted quavers at 160bpm = 120bpm
At this point I did not want to vary pitches any more than I had to, and did not want pitch content to distract from the strictly rhythmic nature of the piece; in order to have four distinct yet unbiased parts I chose to use the same notes for all four tempi, separated by octaves — the 8-string guitar allowed me to achieve this on one instrument.
Upon coming to record the parts, I discovered that the performance difficulty increased as the tempi did, however this was not due to the physical technicality; moreover I found it increasingly difficult to distinguish the 5:4 pattern between my two hands at higher tempi, much moreso than recording the percussion piece. A likely reason for this is that each tempo was recorded as a full take instead of (as the percussion piece was) sequence by sequence; as I became used to the sound of the 5:4 polyrhythm the two elements became a composite. This would perhaps highlight the psychoacoustic effects of certain minimalist music, a phenomenon considered by Terry Riley; ‘the relationship of your consciousness of the tape [the looping musical element in question] would change, so that you start hearing maybe deeper into the sound’ (castlelizard, 2013). It could be said that this concept applies to the piece as a whole, in the way it might for minimalist works, this psychoacoustic composite potentially even forming the rationale for the whole piece.
With this in mind, the work presents four polyrhythmic and polytemporal layers further complicated by isorhythmic pitch content simultaneously, the result being an ‘overload’ of event density (to use the terminology of Madison and Sioros, 2014), and as stated by Zbikowski (2009) when the tempo is too fast (or in this case, the composite event density of the four tempi), ‘we will typically find some other way of organizing the events in order to create a meaningful rhythmic frame’. In this sense, the piece will present a subjective aural experience for each listener.
Zbikowski’s concepts of groove could also be considered at low-level, possibly presenting an explanation for the increase in performance difficulty with the increase in tempo; as he considers significant periodicities (tempi where listeners most readily associate groove) to be 88–100bpm, with Dahl (2014) referencing tempi extending this as far as 133bpm (Fraisse, 1982), and noting a ‘significant peak’ for effective perceivable groove at 127bpm (Moelants, 2002). Given this, it could be accurate to propose this is why I found the first two tempi (90 and 120bpm) fairly easy to perform, with the two faster tempo (150 and 160bpm) significantly more difficult — I was not able to ‘feel the groove’ of these so readily, being outside of the significant periodicity range.
The outcome of the piece I believe to be very effective; the large tessitura of pitch material differentiates the tempi, interestingly also the highest and lowest (both in pitch and tempo) parts appear to be the clearest of the parts to aurally extract, with the two ‘inner’ parts being more difficult to differentiate. The use of video again alleviated this, as I found that I was able to isolate individual notes (low-level material) aurally by watching individual fingers; upon concentrating in this way the notes would quickly ‘move to the foreground’ of my listening, providing a very interesting and satisfying psychoacoustic effect. Iyer notes the effectiveness of this type of material when referencing the work of Cecil Taylor; ‘An individual member could zero in on small regions of activity, but no single listener ever possessing one privileged listening perspective. This is the musical correlate to experiential complexity, in that there is no perspicuous vantage from which to perceive the entire event, and no particular ordered set of perceptions for the listener to follow passively in order to apprehend the ideal “work” (Miller, 2008, p.283). Another element I found unexpectedly pleasing was being able to watch the movement of the hands themselves, in particular the position shifts present in three of the four screens at 1:30, this ‘choreographed movement’ could potentially form a central idea in future pieces.
