9/15 - Tension and Release

Have you ever sat in a left turn lane and noticed that your turn signal doesn't match the turn signal of the person in front of you? I guess I might be a little OCD, but doesn't it kind of make you feel good whenever they line up, even if it's fleeting?

Well, that video is like that feeling, but how I would guess taking a psychedelic drug feels like, and then turning it into music. It's quite a trip.

That piece was written by Conlon Nancarrow, a young jazz trumpeter turned composer whose ideas were beyond the performance level of any human being that ever existed and will probably ever exist. His works were originally attempted by performers, but their inability to meet the technical demands forced him to switch to player piano and some other, more mechanical mediums.

Both voices play a cycle of 54 notes, and once they reach the end, they start over again. The first voice starts at a rate of 37 notes a second, while the second starts at a mere 3.5 per second. As the piece develops, each voice slows down or speeds up until the two line up for a split second, and then the second voice careens off into mind-blowing oblivion.

The best part, for me at least, is when it all finally lines up, and you can see it; there's a little tick mark on the edges of the scroll about halfway through the piece. That moment is when all of the tension, which is built up through the fury of notes in the upper range, slowing down over time and meeting the lower voice in one, or maybe two unison notes, that moment is when the tension releases. That release and that feeling is one of my favorite things about music.

Hopefully I don't always start with the most extreme example in these posts. But this is what attracted my attention. All of his player piano studies sound like noise at first listen, and it takes quite a bit of analysis to understand what is going on.

This feeling of tension and release happens all the time in music, whether you realize it or not. Certain chords lead to other chords because of the notes that make up the chords, and some chords fit better with others because they have a better resolution. Symphonies usually have a long cadence of tonic and dominant chords back to back to back in succession because they indicate finality; after all of the development, something so straightforward signals the end of the tension, the release. And diminished chords work so well because they are composed of minor 3rds, and those minor 3rds can not only lead to many different chords, but any resolution from a cluster of minor 3rds will sound easier on the classically trained ears, since, under common practice, it can't get any worse.

Since I'm a percussionist, though, I'm a little more comfortable with the idea of rhythmic tension and release, and that's not something that a lot of musicians are accustomed to. The ethnic ensembles I've been a part of have been big on this idea, too, and I think those ensembles have been what have really caught my interest.

In South Indian Ensemble, and in Indian music in general, the main goals of the percussionist are to accompany the soloist while proving your mental and physical ability by playing complex patterns, seemingly ignoring metrical structure, but always landing on the downbeat, like a game. If you'll recall some posts from last year, these patterns are called tihai, and extended tihai are called korwai, and patterns to finish an extended musical phrase are called mora. Indian percussionists use tihai, korwai and mora in their accompaniment similar to a harmonic cadence in Western classical music; to show the end of a small phrase, to start a new musical idea or, with a larger pattern, to show the end of a movement or improvisatory period. I'm just starting to dip my toes into the ocean of patterns that have appeared over the centuries of Indian music, and it's already a quite confusing at times.

Since there was a larger percussion section in African Ensemble, the rhythmic tension and release had to be less complicated, but it was definitely still there. African music is full of polyrhythms, and a few of the pieces we did had one section playing a pattern in 4 over a different section's pattern in 3, while the drums played splits around both of those ideas, and Gideon was soloing (in rhythms that have meaning in the Ewe culture, remember) on top of that. Sometimes it was easy to get lost in the middle of a measure, but everything would line up on the downbeat, and if you could find that, you could get back in time.

Here's an example:
    

4s:        1          2          3         4          5         6
3s:        1       2       3      4       5      6       7       8
bell:      x    x    x         x    x    x         x    x x    x         ||
Shaker: x       x       x      x       x      x       x       x       o||
kagan:     x x     xx    xx    x x    x x   x x     x x            ||
kidi:      x x x x            x x x x            x x x x             o||
Sogo:               x x x x            x x x x             x x x x   ||

The bell pattern consists of 4 sixteenth notes, while the shaker pattern is made up of 3. The kagan plays offbeats of the shaker pattern, while the kidi and sogo trade beats of the 4 pattern. They line up after 6 fours, or 8 threes, or 24 sixteenth notes.

Some of the other pieces were in 4/4, but the bell pattern wouldn't always fall on the beat; instead it would work it's way around it, creating tension, and when it did land on the beat, on 1, of course, the tension would release.

That idea was carried over to Cuba and Puerto Rico as a result of the slave trade. When the Spanish brought African slaves, they also brought African music. The bossa nova pattern (x--x--x---x--x--), the samba (x-x--x-x-x--x-x-), the cascara (x-x-xx-xx-xx-x-x), and plenty of other patterns came about as a way of creating tension and release. To sound "Latin," you could get away with playing mostly on the beat for a measure, playing mostly off the beat for a measure, and ending the two bar phrase back on the beat. I know, that's pretty basic, but I'm just trying to illustrate a concept.

One of the biggest things that impresses me about the world of music is how cultures from completely different areas of the world can come up with the same musical concepts and apply them in completely different ways. And I've only just hit the tip of the iceberg.

M