CITY INSPIRED MUSIC
Minimalism
" Minimal music is a form of art music or other compositional practice that employs limited or minimal musical materials. Prominent features of minimalist music include repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones, consonant harmony, and reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units. It may include features such as phrase shifting, resulting in what is termed phase music, or process techniques that follow strict rules, usually described as process music. The approach is marked by a non-narrative, non-teleology, and non-representational approach, and calls attention to the activity of listening by focusing on the internal processes of the music "
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/minimal-music/m02r6mf?hl=en
In the modern world, most people are now stuck with repetitive jobs, following a set of repetitive tasks, stuck in a repetition. The idea of repetition in music conveys the everyday routines that characterises our modern lifestyles
In many ways, the process of minimalism reflects the way we perceive time in the city.
Electric counterpoint is a piece of minimal music for guitars. The compelling sound of the guitar produces a hypnotic effect through the repetition of evolving ostinato figures.
First song opening, the piano piece has a remarkable effect like several pianos are playing together. A simple but beautiful harmony using a rhythm evokes an array of emotion.
It is a simple yet beautiful process music has an unwavering rhythm and keeps adding tension . I found it an incredibly dramatic delight. As if city life is unwavering but keeps adding tensions. I use their rhythmic ideas and development on melody in my piece “ Concrete Jungle” Which I will describe later on…
NOISE MUSIC
In the Modern world noise is everywhere: our city streets are full of noises, cars, machines and t construction noises all blend into one musical cacophony. It is the sound of the city. At the beginning of the 20th century, The Futurists embraced the idea of a music based on the sounds of modernity. “The art of noise” is a futurist manifesto written by Luigi Nono in a 1913 letter to friend and a Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. In it argues that the human ears has become accustomed to the speed, energy and noise of the urban industrial soundscape.
“ Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men. For many centuries life went by in silence, or at most in muted tones.The strongest noises which interrupted this silence were not intense or prolonged or varied. If we overlook such exceptional movements as earthquakes, hurricanes, storms, avalanches and waterfalls, nature is silent ”
Luigi Nono
The art of noises
1913
Many composers and musicians have developed aesthetics based on noise during the 20th century and it is now a fully accepted aesthetic. We now find many examples of musicians that create beauty out of noise.
The English guitarist, Fred frith for example is a multi-instrumentalist,composer and improviser whose innovative techniques using extended techniques on a prepared guitar proposes very musical approaches to the use of noise
The guitarist Leo Brouwer is not considered a “noise” artist but his modernist approach to the guitar is in my mind connected to this aesthetic.
Leo Brouwer was influenced by modernist composers such as Luigi Nono. He wanted to write music using electronic sounds but he used the guitar instead and found ways of producing a variety of innovative new sonorities on the guitar. He used Indeterminacy techniques to create random structures surprising the listener’s expectations . This structuring of random sound events is similar to what happens in urban areas where we never know what event will come next.
Groove of the city
During the 1950s, Piazzolla consciously tried to create a more academic form with the new sounds breaking the classic forms of tango. Over the first two decades of the 21st century, the movement has grown with the creation of countless bands playing new tangos including the Orquesta color tango, whose creator Roberto Alvarez. Other bands are the Orquesta Típica Fernandez Fierro, whose creator, Julian Peralta, would later start Astillero and the Orquesta Típica Julián Peralta.
Tango development did not stop with the tango nuevo. 21st century tango is referred to as neotango. These recent trends can be described as “electro tango” or “tango fusion”, where the electronics influences range from subtle to dominant. The music still has its tango feeling, the complex rhythmic and melodious entanglement that makes tango so unique.
Gotan Project is a group that formed in 1999 in Paris, consisting of musicians Phillippe Cohen Solal, Eduardo Markaoff, and Christoph H. Muller. Their sound features electronic elements like samples, beats, and sound on top of the tango groove.
A city has a groove, in Argentina, tango is the groove of the argentine city, tango is a style of music which reflects people, tradition, music and city.
The Santa Maria at the beginning with its rhythmic bandoneon is catchy with samples and effects; the nuevo tango is a new pop. It’s a groove of Buenos Aires, music from people.
Gotan project and Piazzolla have tango as a root but both have the same innovation and revolution to the traditional tango to the new tango. They can approach the new generation of people with exciting new tango,