# Group 16 - HUM-274 Project, final essay

## Milestone I

Our overarching inspiration is that of the dream. We would like to describe in music the multiple steps of a dream, namely the descent to the dream world, its random-like structure, and the rise from sleep back to the real world.

> [name=johentsch] Great idea!

We choose to grasp this idea by decomposing the piece into three main parts.

> [name=johentsch] Decomposing might be not the right work for a piece that doesn't exist yet. How about "divide"? Or you add something that is being decomposed.

First, the introduction will feel like a transition from the real to the imaginary world, a descent, fall. The auditor should feel like a snowflake gently falling into an indistinguishable mass, slowly preparing for the rest of the unpredictable story that is yet to happen. To achieve this, the piece will begin with a slow-paced *crescendo* to represent the smooth invitation to the sleep, combined with a *rubato*, *i.e.* the pace of the music will gradually increase;

> [name=johentsch] "rubato" designates constant alterations of a steady tempo in both directions. If you're music is getting faster, you would speak of *accelerando*.

furthermore, the pitches will go from high to low, in order to, again, picture a descent. The last decision is justified by the fact that higher pitches sound like they are spatially high and vice-versa. The notes will probably use non-diatonic scales, *e.g.* a whole-tone scale, and the arrangement will remain quite simple limiting itself to only a few instruments, to catch the lightness of the beginning of sleep.
Then comes the dream itself. As anyone has already experienced, this part can seem random, although it never really is. We have decided to create different parts/sub-sections that hold potentially very different emotions; thus, we do not impose an outcome onto the dream with respect to feelings. To choose transitions between these different states, we will use a probabilistic approach, with some transitions being more likely to happen than others. This way, again, the structure in this section will not seem deterministic and rather random (although probabilities will encode plausibility).The listener should feel uncertain about what will happen in the next few seconds, and this will be achieved mostly through rhythm and time signatures, because too brutal changes in tone might sound too disorienting/incoherent.

> [name=johentsch] That's a very interesting problem you set for yourselves: Presenting incoherent things in a coherent manner. Very curious to see your strategies later on!

Finally, the auditor should emerge back to the real world. This, in contrast to the introduction part, should feel like uprising; more precisely, pitches will go upwards, but the velocity of notes and speed will still climb up to achieve this effect of abruptly leaving the dream. Indeed, this is a choice, since dreams can ease out, but we would like the listener to perceive a shocking awakening.

> [name=johentsch] "auditor" is unusual, "listeners" or "the audience" more standard.

The effect of the introduction is inspired by Saint-Saens' *[Aquarium](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVpl-RNzdE4)* (near 30 seconds), where the brilliance in the descent is its actually steadiness in terms of pitch. We also esteem [Paper Mario's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i13K77BAL50) (near 7:20 for example) sometimes unsettling feelings, but mostly the effort put in to adapting music to the landscape/environment; the aforementionned part has a remarkable time signature change. Finally, we will mostly use piano rolls for visualisations, because of their convenience when there are many different tracks; but pre-generated short musical phrases could be displayed with a score. Also, we will use various sound effects to achieve the dream impression, such as reverb, delay, "EQing" and panning.

# General feedback

This is a great proposal, and presented very clearly. One general point was that you could use your creativity to find means of presenting the contrast between awakeness and dream, and consequently on the descent and ascent, especially in the timbre dimension. You mention related techniques in the very last sentence, where they stand a bit unconnected. Maybe you could move them up in the text and elaborate a bit. It's OK to speak of the effects in general terms as you do but it would be great if you could associate them to the sound qualities that you want to achieve with them. This is something you have done very well throughout your text, so please extend this quality to the realm of timbre/effects, rounding up the structure of the text (e.g., ending on the reference to Saint-Saëns).

# Feedback Milestone 2

> Reversing the audio results in very different sounds (e.g., a piano sound played in reverse does not sound as a piano anymore, as we have seen in class). Why do you believe that reversing the audio of the sonorities you deemed appropriate to represent the feeling of descending into the dream results in sonorities that convey the feeling of ascending back to awakeness?

> It is unclear to me how the harmonic and melodic components will interact in the “melancholic” emotion.
The sequence of emotions will be crucial for the global coherence of the piece: are you considering to have transitions, overlaps, or sudden shifts? How will you avoid boredom? What justifies that a section ends where it ends (and not earlier or later)?

>What is missing is also a deep reflection on what you find beautiful or expressive in the structures you produce, and an effort in emphasising and exploiting those specific features. We will want to see extensive discussion of these aspects in the final essay, as they are completely lacking at this stage.

>It’s good that you have thought about how your structures will change as the piece unfolds: make sure these changes are effective and audible when assembling the piece. If they are not effective, make sure you come up with a solution to ensure there is some development in the piece.