The Music of Tan Dun

In our class we have often discussed what it means to "compose" a piece of music in different contexts. In the Western sense, composition implies some sort of organized musical notation, usually on staff paper. However, much of the music in the Eastern tradition relies on composing and sharing orally. As technologies have developed over the years, the approach to music, both in the East and the West has changed significantly. Tan Dun, in a recent composition entitled "Internet Symphony No. 1 "Eroica," has utilized the increasing interconnectivity of the internet along with "Mash-up" technology to create a new kind of composition, one comprised of many individual video recordings of musicians from all over the world into one work.

Tan Dun is the first composer to pursue a project like this, and his success has effectively set off a social and cultural bomb in the music community and the world a like.

Here is the final product:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC4FAyg64OI

A Reflection on Asian Music

The style of music that interested me the most this semester was Gamelan music. I have always been a fan of minimalism in Western music, including composers like Steve Reich, John Adams, and Philip Glass, and I feel that Gamelan music reinforces and justifies the concepts behind minimalism, emphasizing the presence of motion without the presence of harmonic progression. In fact, many modern minimalist composers, including Steve Reich and Philip Glass, have even composed new works for Gamelan ensemble. While it lacks harmonic progression in the Western sense, Gamelan relies on cyclical phrase structure, layering, texture, and timbre to give the music its sense of movement. I was also intrigued by the arrangement of instruments in the Gamelan ensemble, it being almost exclusively percussion (xylophones and gongs). The combination of the repetitive rhythmical layers and the saturating timbre of the gong puts me in an almost meditative state. However, just as crucial to the music as timbre is the specific tuning. Tuning the instruments in a Gamelan ensemble is a tedious process, though it may not sound that way to Western ears. Traditional Western music is based on a 7 note scale consisting of whole steps and half steps, a whole step being the sum of two half steps. These notes exist within the space of one octave. Gamelan music, on the other hand, primarily uses two scales: slendro and pelog. Slendro is a scale with five notes within the octave, all of which are evenly spaced. To Western ears, this sounds quite bizarre. In fact, because the 5 notes are evenly spaced within the span of one octave, many of the notes exist in between the notes of our Western scale. When I heard Gamelan music for the first time, I was perturbed by the music sounding "out of tune." I later learned that it was not in fact out of tune, but tuned to a scale very different from our own that my ears were simply not attuned to. However, since then I have learned to appreciate the "shimmering" quality produced by the unique tuning. It adds a different element to the music that is generally absent from Western tradition.

Javanese and Balinese Gamelan

The most obvious difference between the two Gamelan examples is tempo. Javanese has a generally steady rhythmic structure (melodies being largely quarter notes and eighth notes), while Balinese Gamelan plays more with fast gestures through interlocking parts and rhythmic complexity. Also, Balinese Gamelan seems to put more emphasis on the xylophone instruments as soloistic, rather than only part of the ensemble as a whole. While the Javanese example relies on a well-blended sound created by all the instruments together, the different instruments in the Balinese example seem to fade in and out of presence, being soloistic at times and in the background at others. Different xylophonists tend to exchange virtuosic solos in a call-and-response type manner. The Balinese example also contains more silence than the Javanese example, so many entrances of the instruments are unpredictable and provide a kind of a surprise effect. There are also more featured instruments in the Balinese example, like the flute and a stringed instrument that is likely the rebab. The instruments in the Javenese example were primarily percussion.

Playing in the Gamelan ensemble was a great experience, and I am very pleased with how it went. Having a history in the Suzuki method, I am accustomed to learning music by ear, so it was nice to translate that into an Eastern context. I especially enjoyed when I and a fellow student were given a kotekan part, that is, interlocking parts. Initially, it was quite difficult with the addition of the dampening of the keys, but I got used to it after repeating it many times. This was my first experience playing Eastern music in an ensemble, and it surely will not be my last

Beats of The Heart: The Two Faces of Thailand

On the topic of the music of Thailand, the musical genres in reference fall upon a broader spectrum than typically thought of in the context of Eastern music. Thailand's music is a miraculous display of the blend of Eastern and Western tradition, with Western forms present through Thai genres of all social backgrounds. Rather like conditions in the United States, in Thailand, one's musical taste depends heavily upon their socioeconomic status. For example, in the US members of the upper class are more likely to attend the Symphony than someone who requires low income housing. If you live in the projects, you may explore musical forms that are more immediately accessible to someone with a low budget, such as rap or spoken word. In Thailand, music is socially divided in much the same way. While Western forms like jazz are popular among the upper class, and even performed and composed by the king himself, those of low socioeconomic status find more in common with the Luk Thung style of music. However, contrary to what you may assume, Luk Thung music, while stylistically very different from the straight Western music that is popular among most of the upper and middle classes, still contains very tangible Western influence. The style is very expressive, and often has a slow tempo and heavy vibrato. Luk Thung music, like rap music, speaks more clearly to a certain demographic. The music reflects the hardship associated with living a rural, impoverished lifestyle. In this sense, people from rural areas seem to be more emotionally connected to their music than the upper class, given much of the music that is considered "high art" in Thailand is not based in Thai culture. And still, I find it surprising that the Western influence is so present in Luk Thung. It seems to me the lower class would want to somehow separate themselves and their art forms from that which is considered high culture, but Western tradition still found its way into the countryside. In one scene in the film we see a small group of young women singing a Luk Thung song. The song is performed on all Thai instruments and in an Eastern modality, but the singer rocks back and forth with a microphone in a poppy manner singing in a style that resembles American pop vocals. Thailand, for a country that is severely culturally divided, contains elements of Western tradition through the majority of the population, despite social class.