Cube 6: L'Avant Et L'Arrière (Front And Back)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 4, Studio One 6.5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6.5 Professional
Number of tracks: 53
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One, Maitai (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition
and recording period: Apr 10 2024 - Apr 16 2024, Aug 25 - Aug 26
Opus Number: 113
Main tonality: Ambiguous between G major and E minor
Main scale: Ambiguous based on G major scale and B Phrygian mode
Main time signature: 5-4
Main tempo: 100 beats per minute
Concept: Developed from Maurice Ravel
(TM writes:)
This track, "Cube 6: L'Avant Et L'Arrière (Front And Back)", is the seventh work of the project called "Le Cube Dans Mon Rêve (The Cube In My Dream)."
After creating Cube 5, I thought my experiments with "Music Cubism" had come to an end. It was around this time that I happened to listen to some of Ravel's piano pieces, such as "Pavane pour une infante défunte (Pavane for a Dead Princess)" and "Menuet sur le nom d'Haydn (Minuet under the name of Haydn)," and was deeply moved. Ravel is often mentioned alongside Debussy as a representative composer of modernist music, but I had never actually studied Ravel in detail before. This experience inspired me to buy scores for about ten of his works and closely examine their structure.
"Pavane..." is alleged to have been inspired by a portrait of Margarita Teresa painted by Diego Velázquez, which was sent to France. Although this story is unrelated to Cubism, exploring such connections between visual arts and Ravel's works has also been another part of my motivation to delve into him.
Every piece of his music is magnificent. It's incredibly intricate, and the atmosphere it creates is truly wonderful. Although I already knew this, what I found additionally fascinating was the structure. By structure, I mean he often employs tonalities centered around the white keys, such as G major, and makes frequent use of major sevenths and ninths. However, while the key and chord progressions are well-crafted, they lean towards being scale-based. For example, even in G major, melodies can be written in the B Phrygian mode, meaning it doesn't adhere to the classical relationship between key, phrases, and harmony. This was something I didn't know.
I wondered if it was possible to evolve that structure into something new. Due to a lot of trial and error, there were many pieces of music that didn't make it to completion, but when combining the methodology of Music Cubism, especially in terms of chord progression and harmony composition, a completely different atmosphere emerges compared to the beauty exuded by Ravel's music. This piece was created based on that principle.
Starting with Impressionism in fine arts in Cube 1, the methodology from Cubism has been applied to create the approach of "Music Cubism" from Cubes 2 to 5. Then, this methodology was further employed to apply the concepts of musical Impressionism in a Cubistic style in Cube 6. This is somewhat akin to ships using satellites and communication to determine their exact location at sea. We are navigating the uncharted waters of Music Cubism, situated somewhere between the ports of Impressionism and dodecaphony. Only by measuring our position against the benchmarks of fine art's Impressionism and Cubism has the sea begun to be visualised.
(Well, if you're asking whether we'll also make Music Fauvism, I'd say probably not, considering we already have genres like heavy metal. Just joking.)
Composition: Transformed folk music and altered rondo
(TM continues:)
In overall, this is diversion from Ravel's structure to FMT's somewhat new style, similarly using the sevenths and nineths but virtually not containing the thirds. A chord rooted in G, for example, comprises G, D, F# and A. You could say it's "D on G," in which you might wonder if there is a tonality or not.
Chords like this progress along the G major scale. So, when the root is A it's harmonised with E, G and B: Em on A. The G component is the minor seventh from A in this case, rather than the major seventh. While G is the third to E, the third to A, meaning C, is omitted. Is there a tonality? It seems to sound a little bit minor, doesn't it? Quite ambiguous.
FMT has very often generated ambiguous tonalities by omitting the thirds with frequent use of suspended-second or suspended-fourth chords, but in this work how to make it ambiguous is slightly different, though the suspended second and nineth are similar. Well, in this case, I should say it's more of the "suspended nineth."
The reeds play, nonetheless, nearly the F# Phrygian mode, similarly structured to Ravel. The difference is that it misses B so that it sounds a bit like folk music and that it has C# while Ravel's typical B Phrygian mode doesn't. And neither does G major. Thus, I intended to make the reeds like folk music but of nowhere.
One development from this method is tension chords. Ravel often used major seventh and nineth chords like G, B, D, F# and A, while here I use DM7 on G instead, which is G, D, F#, A and C#. C# is the augmented eleventh note to G and, again, a component of the F# Phrygian mode. So, that's the point where #F Phrygian and suspended-nineth tonality are bridged. That's why it sounds a little strange but not very strange.
Well, even more precisely, although the bass follows the G major scale (with one sharp of F#), the guitars and keyboards play D major scale (with two sharps of F# and D#). You could say it bridges the Phrygian and G major, but also you could say this is structured with double scales like in Cube 5. Or, it could be a "floating feel" throughout if you'd like.
In a cafe I often call at, the floor inside the bar counter where staff are working is lower than this side where customers are around -- by 10 centi-meters or so? Something like that. It looks very different world inside there; that's similar to this piece.
As I referred to folk music of nowhere above, I designed it to symbolise an aspect of Cubism in which such artists as Pablo Ruiz Picasso and Amedeo Clemente Modigliani had adopted African sculpture. Even though Cube 2 is based on Picasso, folk features are not suitable there in my view. This track is also a bridge to Cube 2 as well as to our past series called "The Anomalous Folk," which was all about "folk music of nowhere."
The folk music section is made of scale music rather than chordal one; I intended to avoid making this whole track chordal. It's rare that we FMT create chordal one, though sometimes we do as in "Train From The Airport," several tracks from the "Boyhood Skies" project and "Lovesome Liverpool," etc. Especially in the track "Train...," I used a similar chord (ie, G# on C#).
So, in this way, this work is all about "what developed from Ravel, doesn't sound like him eventually, but truly developed from his structure." It's similar in terms of how to adopt Cubism paintings into Music Cubism. It's not about copying the surface, but bringing the structure, which is why this music seems like structurism. It's likely to make it a bit complicated, but I would say, the essence of Cubism is to focus on the essence or structure of things or people, and that's what Cubism and FMT have in common, in my view.
I pursued a section structure or development flow that is quite unconventional. In principle, sections consisting of three to four bars in 5-4 time signature alternate one after another. This is an advanced version of the rondo form used in "Lorsque La Cloche Du Soir Sonne (When the Evening Bell Rings)." In a traditional rondo form, the structure usually unfolds as Section A, Section B, A, C, A, D, etc; moving between the central section and many developments. In this piece, however, it develops as a variation of the rondo form, such as A-B-A-B-C-B-C-B-..., where section B repeats and plays the central role, following alternating preceding sections.
Of course, I've never heard anything quite like it either. Sections that closely reflect the style of interludes appear twice as well, which is probably also quite uncommon.
Also, I must mention that the tempo in this track remains unchanged. While there are countless such pieces in the world, it's quite rare for FMT. There were some early examples, but the decision to keep the tempo constant in this piece was intended to connect to the next work to be released later. Actually, the next one is currently in production, and while it's uncertain whether this connection will work, that was the intention. Perhaps this will be explained in the notes on it.
My hypothesis is that today's listeners have become too accustomed to one-tempo songs, which might unconsciously generate a sense of stability and reassurance. This is in stark contrast to Cube 4, where the tempo was frequently and significantly altered and in effect the time was stretched and compressed.
Towards the end of this piece, I was just going to make impactful, complex ending, but deleted it all at last and left it quite simple by practicing a learning from Ravel's feature of "elaborate but casual."
One day just after this track was complete, I looked at real "Le Dépiquage des moissons (Harvest Threshing)" by Albert Gleizes and I felt it was so cool. Not only is it so, but perhaps all Cubism works are cool. In the art history, there was no motives to make it "cool" before Cubism or other movements around that period, wasn't there? (To me, Joseph Mallord William Turner could be an exception.) I'm quite happy to make it "cool" as well.
In this track, we may have expended somewhat more effort on sound design and mixing than in other pieces, but TI's expertise truly shines through.
The title was decided upon after completion, as out of the many options that CT ingeniously considered, this one best matched the transformed rondo and double-scales structure, along with its folk-music-of-nowhere elements. The working title during production was "20240406 Cube 6 from Ravel."
Tone creation & Mixing: "Complicated things to sound simple..."
(TI writes:)
The original score created by TM has not been modified for this song either. All the tones were set by TM in MuseScore and exported as WAV files.
The only new sounds created here are the filtered synth bass that appears in the middle of the piece, the Strings tone that reinforces the Contrabass and Cello ranges in the Strings part, and the bell sound that appears in the break before the ending.
However, simply balancing them as they are would result in a sharp sound that would be very difficult to hear, so I worked on rounding off the sharp parts and harmonising them without destroying the atmosphere of the original sound.
Specifically, I spent a lot of time and effort on the compressor, EQ and saturator settings, listening again and again to create what I thought were the best settings.
For the compressor, I set the attack of most parts at the fastest possible speed, and I also applied 2-4 times the amount of compression to destroy the attack.
In extreme cases, to use a voice analogy, it is like cutting down to the point where ‘the attack of the consonants is gone and only the vowels are left’.
The release time was also pulled to the very limit of the length of the track so that no notes are buried and no notes protrude. The compressor is Studio One's most orthodox type (it does not simulate any particular actual device, but is purely dedicated to compressing the sound).
As for the EQ, it is not used to emphasise certain bands, but to cut the bands (mainly low frequencies) that the tone does not need.
On top of that, I set the volume fader automation in detail to get the right balance at the right place and timing.
I also apply a cassette tape simulator or analogue record simulator to the Flute, Electric Piano and Strings in general to shake up the pitch.
(However, the hissing noise heard in this song is derived from the MS timbre and not from these simulators).
It's like I did a lot of complicated things repeatedly in order to sound simple.
"Answer of Mad Dream Before Rebirth"
(CT writes:)
As I was listening to ‘Cube 6: ‘L’Avant Et L’Arrière (Front And Back)’, I felt absolute freedom. The music was extremely free. At the same time the sound has a sense of good tension. It made me feel much freer and I felt very smooth and easy. I went into a trance. I was just creating without thinking. Dream and Reality. Although I could also say that I was very focused on a creation which was about to be born.
The visual image: ‘Answer of Mad Dream Before Rebirth’
It expresses freedom and quiet destruction in dream and reality. It’s off and twisted. It's calm like before a storm. It is my desire to break reality with quietness. It’s broken and reconstructed for the coming future.
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