Part 2 Notes: I found playing with the Shepard tones to be really enjoyable! It wasn't too difficult to work with, and I really like the effect of stacking multiple shepard tones on top of each other. For my final Shepard tone statement, I took advantage of the anxiety-inducing nature of the Shepard tone by layering a rhythmic clock noise over it to emphasize the passage of time, while also throwing in some ominous sounds (chip crunching through a comb filter from my homebrew assignment) to add to the intensity of the sound.
Part 3 Notes: One my favorite drops is the opening of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto. While this is not a very sudden drop, it is very effective at slowly building intensity and leading into the primary melody of the piece with very repetitive, slowly changing elements that don't subvert any expectations and lead you right where you want to go in a very satisfying manner. Another one of my favorite drops is in the 2nd part of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, where a rising orchestral scale leads into 11 powerful, sharp percussive hits in the bass drum and timpani. This drop is much more sudden, without as much slow buildup, but plays equally well into the brutal, unrefined nature of the piece as a whole. Another drop that I enjoy is from the "Test Drive" theme in the How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack. This drop actually does make use of a Shepard tone as it builds up to the climactic melodic moment, which really emphasizes the intensity of the music.
For the frequency drop, I used a sample from the opening of Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto, but added high pitched bell sounds and a growing low bass note to lead into the Piano "drop". For me, the opening chords of the concerto represent distant bells tolling, so that's why I chose to use bell sounds for this exercise. For timbre and time drop, I used a sample from a song that I recently was listening to (Cloud by Monsune) to increase the intensity of the final iteration of the chorus. I used a high-pass filter for the timbre drop, slowly lowering the frequency of the filter until all frequencies are heard. The time exercise is actually implemented as a basic drum machine: pressing the spacebar (and the z key for starting at different points in the sample) turn the opening of the musical sample into a percussive instrument that I can use to play a complex, building rhythm before letting the rest of the sample play out. The final drop musical statement combines a shepard tone with elements of the timbre and time drops.