Music 220a, Homework #2, Matt Wright

Musique Concrete etude for Oud and Tape

I recorded a variety of samples of myself playing my Turkish Oud. For example, here is a short sample of a stacatto high D harmonic played 1/3 of the way up the G course.

I composed a tune to be the basis for this etude. I decided to break from computer music tradition by using rhythm, in this case, 7/8. I also wanted to stay somewhere in the aesthetic universe of music that is normally played on the oud, so my piece is modal (with a D tonic), uses quarter tones (E and B half-flat), and uses modal modulation rather than harmony.

The tape part, after an introductory opening gesture, begins as accompaniment to the tune, along the lines of how one oud player might accompany another. The tune “wants” to repeat after it gets to the end, but when the A section returns, the tape part becomes more processed, more electronic sounding, and more dense, until it is drowning the live oud player. Mainly I used layering, transposition, looping, a little phasing, and incessant tweaking of amplitude envelopes.

With luck the live oud player should be able to hear the penultimate gesture and stop the piece in synch with the tape.

Stereo Mix of the Tape Part

Audacity Project of the Tape Part

Score for the live oud part