Lorsque La Cloche Du Soir Sonne (When the evening bell rings)
TRACK DATA
Composition tool: MuseScore 4, Studio One 6.5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 6.5 Professional
Number of tracks: 31
Sound source: MuseScore 4, Presence XT, Impact XT, Sample One, Maitai (All built-in sound sources of Studio One)
Composition and recording period: Mar 10 2024 - Mar 26 2024, Total Mix 31 July
Main tonality: None
Main scale: Continuously altered
Main time signature: 4-4
Main tempo: 89 beats per minute
Concept: Hidden anamorphosis with Beethoven's Für Elise
(TM writes:)
This piece, "Lorsque La Cloche Du Soir Sonne (When the evening bell rings)", is the sixth work for the project called "Le Cube Dans Mon Rêve (The Cube In My Dream)." The title "Lorsque..." was a part of what CT wrote down in her notes as impression, and I selected it so that it implied the bell was central. I'll tell you about the details later.
You might think this is a typical FMT piece, but it's not. It features polyrhythms, vague tonality, funky rhythms, and unusual elements like other FMT works. It's NOT typical NOT because of these. Rather... If you've taken a listen, what do you think sets it apart?
As for the melody, or rather the sounds of a bell and choir, when played at a high speed (at 600 beats per minute, for example), it becomes apparent that it is Ludwig van Beethoven's "Für Elise." At first listen, you might ask, "Where exactly?"
This means that it is a musical version of anamorphosis, which is defined as, according to artificial intelligence:
"Anamorphosis is an artistic technique used to create a distorted image that appears normal only when viewed from a specific angle or using a special device. This method challenges the viewer’s perception and engages them in exploring different perspectives to uncover the hidden, correct form of the artwork. Often used in paintings and installations, anamorphosis plays with optical illusions to surprise and intrigue the audience."
Hans Holbein's anamorphic work, "Die Gesandten" (The Ambassadors) from 1533, inspired the idea of musical anamorphosis. While not having seen the original in London's National Gallery, where it's owned and exhibited, I have visited the gallery several times. Well, although I might have seen it, I had not recognized it at those times.
Similar anamorphic techniques were employed in the "Auditory Art For Visual Arts" series with the piece "Artless (featuring The Windscale Blues Experiment)." It features a segment from Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" reversed and played at a much faster speed. While that track was only a partial experiment, this time the concept is more central. "Artless" was followed by the "In The Mirror" series, which focused on symmetry rather than expanding on anamorphosis, so this time, I'm exploring that direction further.
The reason I chose "Für Elise" was simply because it is well-known. However, before I even started composing, and as I was embedding it, I realized how deeply romantic the piece is—a thought that is quite unromantic in itself.
I often think that FMT is doing the exact opposite of Romanticism. That is, I am not particularly interested in expressing personal emotions through my artistic endeavours. I clearly avoid doing things like expressing specific emotions with certain melodies and harmonies. While I occasionally engage in such expressions, the reason I don't actively pursue them is because, even today, music is largely (or excessively to me) about the expression of personal feelings. I want to create music that I've never heard before, so I'm not strongly drawn to those conventional expressions.
Our Music Cubism is complete in Cube 5, as the title implies in "Synthétique (Synthetic)", many developments from Music Cubism are made in the rest of the series from this work. I could sense how this early 20th-century art movement had a significant influence on the latter half of the same century.
In this work, in particular, we took a journey going back in time from this 21st century to the 20th at first, then, further back from the 20th century, and applying the 19th's Romanticism with inspiration from one of the 16th's Northern-Renaissance methodologies. At the same time, I infused it with plenty of FMT characteristics, such as groove, atonality, and complex scales, all based on the methodology of Music Cubism. But at the same time, I kept the composition itself simple.
On the other hand, here in the 21st century, I wonder where the musical intrigue has disappeared to.
Composition: How to accompany and hide the anamorphosis?
(TM continues:)
In the Cube series, there is a consistent yet restrained minimalism. However, within this expression, where small, unpredictable movements and developments occur, there is a subtle and deeply moving quality that closely aligns with my aesthetics.
"Für Elise" is written in 3/8 time. If you stretch each beat to fit the 4-bar pattern based on 4/4 time, which forms the foundation of the piece, the alignment happens every 12 bars. While this doesn’t create the sensation of polyrhythm in the traditional sense, the concept is similar to polyrhythm. Therefore, I have designed the development to align with the bell that rings roughly once every 1 to 3 bars.
This is then layered with another polyrhythm—a clear dotted eighths polyrhythm played by the guitar, bass, and drums. But, bear in mind, this polyrhythm is just secondary.
Unlike visual arts, such as painting, where you can step back to gain an overview of the work, music is much harder to perceive from a distance. The fact that this piece uses the motif of "Für Elise" in an anamorphosis-like manner illustrates this concept.
The bell sounds once per bar, sometimes ringing and sometimes not. If you listen normally, you wouldn't recognize "Für Elise" in that sound. The piece is composed in a way that seems to accompany the bell, yet fundamentally, it doesn't truly accompany it.
This approach is consistent with the concept of "minimal on basso continuo" that we have consistently explored in past FMT albums, particularly in "Auditory Art For Visual Arts." In that album, the bass line is constructed from minimalistic repetitions, while the higher parts do not accompany it at all, creating a similar effect. However, in this piece, the lack of accompaniment is even more pronounced—or at least it appears to be—since the music seems to distance itself entirely from the faintly and occasionally ringing bell (though it only appears to do so).
"Für Elise" begins with the famous phrase of E, E-flat, E, E-flat, E, B, D, C and A, in A minor. The E-flats are Beethoven's symbolic, decorative notes off the tonality, which was a bit challenging in "Lorsque...." I just intended to remove the tonality and make an interesting structure when it descends by half a note from E. The guitar starts with a short note of C-sharp, as if it denies being in A minor, along with the dyads of D & A, G & A and G & F etc.
Then, in the next bar, where the bell plays E-flat, the short-note guitar transposes down by half a note, while the dyad guitar does up by half a note. That's why I can't say exactly what the tonality and scale are; you could say it begins with the Hypo-Phrygian mode from C-sharp without tonality and transposes to something with no name. With such a progression, "Für Elise" is concealed but preserved as well as accompanied.
There's also another thing. It's well known that "Für Elise" is structured in a rondo form (essentially, an A→B→A→C→A→D... pattern). Similarly, this piece adopts a rondo-like structure, albeit unrelated to the "Für Elise" motif. The initial pattern reappears multiple times, gradually changing shape, while various different patterns are interspersed throughout.
However, since Hans Holbein painted *Die Gesandten* (The Ambassadors) in the 16th century and Beethoven composed "Für Elise" in 1810, there's no direct historical connection to Music Cubism. For this reason, I didn't include "Cube" in the title, even though the piece shares similarities with other tracks in this series. I won't go into detail here, but I encourage you to discover these connections for yourself.
Although this isn't an answer to the quiz, this work is designed to be particularly groovy, which is rather a different point from the whole series. Although such other tracks as Cubes 1, 3 and 6 (yet to be released) are also groovy, FMT-esque funky groove would be gone if the album didn't have this piece. But the problem is that odd beats should be central in music Cubism and eventually I intended to put funky groove into this non-Cube work. Or, you could also say I was used to engage in music Cubism at the sixth track and able to afford it, or you could say I just missed funky groove. All of these are quite true.
The sound of the bell is soft and distant, yet it suggests something special. To emphasize this, all instruments other than the bell, such as the guitars and basses, are arranged and treated like percussion.
It's good to have written the production notes. Otherwise, I doubt anyone would ever notice that "Für Elise" is embedded in this work. Well, that in itself is quite interesting, though.
Tone creation and mixing: No tricky effects
(TI writes:)
This track was practically finished at the end of March. So I have already listened to the track many times since it was completed for me, and when I looked at the Studio One track sheet again to write this note, I was surprised at how simple it was.
I usually keep notes for this Note and for communication with the TM as I create, but there were almost no notes. That's how simple it was.
There are not that many tracks, and there is no evidence of any tricky effects. However, I thought the placement of each sound was quite elaborate or detailed.
This is because there are only a few notes, and most of the instrumentals are guitar, which intertwine with each other to create groove, so you have to make sure that the notes don't overlap.
The range of the guitar is, of course, the same for all the parts, and they all sound at the same time, so if you place them in the same place, there will inevitably be places where you can't hear them.
These adjustments are made using only the pan and the effects pedals gate and EQ.
This time, of course, with the pan, the gate setting was very important. In particular, the adjustment of when the sound disappears.
The guitar-like character should not be lost, but if you leave the release as normal, the rhythm will inevitably lose its sharpness.
It is necessary to make adjustments so that the sound naturally retains a guitar-like resonance and reverberation, but also intertwines well with the other sounds.
The only thing left to do is to place the bell sound, which is ringing throughout, in the back, to clear the contradictory requirement of it sounding far away, but still being heard well. This was probably the most difficult part. This was done by using a compressor to suppress the attack, adjusting the threshold and release time to give the feeling of sounding distant, and using the sidechain function of the Dynamic EQ to cut the overlapping bandwidth on the other side only when the sound is sounding, using the Dynamic EQ's sidechain function to cut the overlapping bandwidth on the other side only when the sound is sounding. Adjustments are made.
The tones were basically the same as those created in the MuseScore score created by TM. I also used an amp simulator for the guitar and bass to create a live-like soundstage.
However, for choir in the middle, I used a preset sampler tone, but sampled CT's voice from the Cube 5, edited the waveform to make it a sustained sound, and played it simultaneously with the high frequency part of the preset sampler sound.
This is just because the preset choir sound is monotonous and I wanted to give it some variation, and also because I thought it would be good to have one more track with the CT voice in it.
Title & key visual by CT
I moved to Paris in 1992. It was my first autumn in Paris. I was at a park where autumn roses were at the end of their bloom. It was a cold evening. I remember that I felt lonely and felt I was a stranger there. I was feeling melancholic then.
Comments