Cube 4: Le Temps (Time)
Notes on Cube 4: Le Temps (Time)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 4, Studio One 6.5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6.5 Professional
Number of tracks: 1st half: 17, 2nd half: 28
Sound source: MuseScore4, Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One, Maitai (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and recording period: 1st half: Feb 16 2024 - Feb 20 2024, 2nd half Feb 17 - Mar 4, Total Mix 27 May
Main tonality: Ambiguous around B major
Main scale: None
Main time signature: 4-4
Main tempo: Around 80 (from 40 to 93) beats per minute in the first half; 100 in the second half
Concept & Composition: 1st & 2nd halves are the same except how to deal with the time
(TM writes:)
This work, "Cube 4: Le Temps (Time)", is the fourth work of the project called "Le Cube Dans Mon Rêve (The Cube In My Dream)."
Its first and second halves are differently arranged, written in separate notations, saved as separate MIDI files, and finally integrated by TI; why would you guess they are? In fact, the concept is the same, as well as the music itself is. The two halves are different in terms of how to deal with the time ONLY.
In the first half, the point is the continually changing tempo, which seems to me exaggerates the phrases. I found out through writing this work that Cubism's going away from being realistic like photographs enables to make something dramatic, though all Cubism is not necessarily so. Cubism was forced to come to an end by World War I, and, therefore, I intended to write something a little bit close to our past work called "Symphony 1: World War I."
If you play some instruments, it's important to think what and how to play next (which could be physically memorised); in order to do that, the predictability or consistant tempo is inevitable to some extent. Even if the tempo changes within a piece in general, it's made happen only sometimes, otherwise the players get confused.
While I'm writing a phrase, not only in this piece, it often happens that I just want to extend some note but the time doesn't allow me to. In the first half of this work, I extended the phrases and the rhythms where I wanted to by changing the tempo, while in the second, other instruments are adjusted -- in other words, the length of the bars is sometimes extended or shortened at other.
It must be much closer to the natural human sense, in my view, since the tempo or length of the bars is variable when we hum or whistle. When we notice we've whistle a wrong tone, we often do it again at once, don't we? When we hum our favourite song, we often repeat a particular section again and again, don't we? It can be said that that sort of phenomena is a human error, but at the same time is more natural based upon the human nature.
The notion of the term "measures" or "bars" is, by the way, essentially a fantasy, existing merely to facilitate pattern creation. However, having measures does not inherently mean that sounds must be produced at each division. Generally in ancient or folk music, the notation concept of "measures" is less common if any.
The other thing that characterises the second half is what I should call "radical extension." It means that the extended positions are determined freely based on where the composer (I) or players prefer to extend radically, whereas extension in general tends to be made around the final beat in a bar. Rather, the position could be in the middle of a bar, or even around the beginning.
If you feel like extending a note in a phrase, you should go ahead and do it. If you want to correct a mistake immediately, you should do that as well. This is often the case with whistling or humming, or maybe even when singing or playing an instrument alone. The notion of measures does not apply to whistling or humming. This work does the same thing. The accompaniment simply needs to match it. Whether it results in a change of meter doesn't really matter. In the first part, the rhythm remains the same but becomes unusually slow, and in the latter part, the meter doesn't matter as the accompaniment simply keeps pace at a constant tempo.
This approach, nonetheless, isn't feasible in a band or orchestra setting obviously unless the piece was composed with such flexibility well-prepared. Well-prepared flexibility is completely contradictory. But with digital music, like what FMT produces, composition and recording occur on a very close timeline, which facilitates this process. This might have been considered before, but this particular track overtly and deliberately engages in this practice. "Cube 2" also employs this technique, but this piece specifically focuses on "time," manipulating it to an extreme degree.
Although it's a bit off-topic, concepts like relativity rarely apply to music itself. They might be used as band names or label names, but the music produced under these names tends to be quite conventional. The structure of music and methodologies of production seldom utilise such theoretical concepts, highlighting how music production largely relies on empirical and sensory approaches.
In this piece, especially in the first half, the tempo sometimes super slow like at 20 or 40 beats per minute (BPM). In the second half, on contrary, the tempo is unchanged These are developments especially of how to deal with "time" from how "the phrase extends at times and contract at other" in Cube 2.
In terms of the time, there's a story like this; in Cube 1 something is strange and in Cube 2 mashed phrases are more confusing, while in Cube 3 collages are even more so and here in Cube 4 time has been made relative at last.
Oh, dear... we are now free to use the timpani, which we weren't allowed in the past versions of MuseScore.
While I was making this, a postcard of Albert Gleizes' 'Le Dépiquage des Moissons (The Stripping of the Harvest)' was always in view.
Mixing: Solving problems with MuseScore's built-in sounds
(TI writes:)
The mix for this track was created to be 'true to the TM score and simple'.
For the first half of the song, I simply exported the individual parts from MuseScore as wavs and balanced them as they were.
The rest of the mix is just a minimal amount of equalisation to suppress extraneous bandwidth and noise, and reverb processing to create a sense of unity.
The latter half of the track is also basically MuseScore, but the lead part, guitar and bass parts are augmented with sounds created using Studio One's built-in synths and samplers.
Effects processing is also done in Studio One, with delays, reverbs and other effects applied as part of the timbre creation process.
Therefore, it didn't take long for the basic mix. However, from there, it was somewhat difficult to process the sound image and localisation of each part in both the first and second halves, and to connect the first and second halves without causing an extreme sense of discomfort.
As mentioned above, many of the parts were created using MuseScore's built-in sound sources, and these sounds are good on their own, but when combined with several other sounds, their rough edges stand out, such as the sound image being too wide (many of them are in inverse phase), noise being noticeable, and the volume and sound quality varying according to pitch. Therefore, these problems had to be solved one by one.
The solutions included the aforementioned equalisation, adjusting the width of the Pan, and steadily adjusting the volume on single notes.
In addition, the instruments in the first half and the second half are different, and the overall volume, sound quality, sound pressure, localisation and sound image are different, so to avoid extreme discomfort, total compression and processing with an imager to organise the overall sound image were used.
Visual image: ‘Silently There’
I feel from this music:
Rest
Light and Darkness
Void
Stone condensed of many long years and thoughts
Crystallized time, past and history
Awakening
Creation
The visual image: ‘Silently There’
I created this image to express silence with strength inside as if it were a dormant volcano. Crystallized histories, thoughts, emotions and eternity.
Comments