شيء من شيء ~ Paradigm Shift

Something can’t be made from nothing. So what’s it from?
Something’s from something.

Download Links

Sheet music, replete with broken Unicode Arabic;
Mspaint image, replete with broken pixellated Arabic;
Finale file, replete with broken Unicode Arabic.

Description Lecture

You know that old children’s book, Something from Nothing?

An old man gives his grandson a new blanket as a baby, but over time, the blanket gives away to wear. However, the old man makes a new jacket out of the blanket’s material that his grandson gladly wears. Over time, the jacket wears out, but the old man can still make a vest. The vest becomes tattered and from it he makes a tie, but the tie becomes torn and from it he makes a handkerchief. When even the handkerchief is in rags, he finally makes a button from the remains, but his grandson loses the button.

After realizing that not even his grandfather can make something from nothing, his grandson realizes that he can make a story from his memories of the blanket. Or something cheesy like that. IT’S HEARTWARMING, ALRIGHT, EVEN THOUGH I DON’T REMEMBER THE ENDING

Anyways, as the book says, you can’t make something from nothing. Everything has a start, a beginning, an origin. Actually, wait, that’s not what the book says. What the books says is that you can always make something with the power of ~IMAGINATION~

This piece started off randomly. Completely randomly. Using Davy Temperley’s Melisma Stochastic Melody Generator, I created an eight-bar, most dissonant and atonal melody with no proximity and the most varied rhythm; basically, a melody as non-melodic as possible. You see it as the first eight bars in this composition’s sheet music. Of course, the original was more dissonant. Changes just had to made made! Rest assured, the only changes were chromatic – no note names were changed. Rhythm also stayed exactly the same.

Huh er what how does this relate to Something from Nothing? It doesn’t, yet.

Anywho, the second eight bars are based completely on the first. It sounds much better, since it’s not as random. The third eight bars are based on the second eight, but not the first (this requires wiping my memory of the first eight bars, but I HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY). The fourth are based on the third, the fifth on the fourth, etc. In this exquisite corpse-esque fashion, by the penultimate eight bars, the melody (and harmony) is completely different from the first eight, cause it wasn’t based on the first. Finally, the last eight bars are based on both the first eight and the previous eight.

The cycle is linked. From an abstract randomless, a melody appears. A paradigm shift.

Originally, I wanted to make this /seem/ like a paradigm shift, starting with one abstract melody, and inserting enough subliminal tonality so when the notion is recapitulated, the mind would take over. A different hearing of the same subject. Of course, this was not to be; I should not have made the second eight bars as tonal as they were. There’s a huge leap between the first and the second eight bars that make them sound completely unrelated. Regardless, something new has been created.

But from nothing?

No. The melody, the harmony, this entire piece – it was already present, present in its abstract randomness.

Something was created, from Something else.

شيء من شيء Shy’ Mn Shy’. Finale hates Arabic and won’t let me Arabicize. Neither will Adobe Reader. YouTube screws up my Arabicness because by putting the Arabic in as a video title, it flips the entire sentence right-to-left. I should not have chosen this language. But what does it mean?

You can guess.

Dead Lines

I’m just adding this in so that you can see how all the bold text are DLs. I BET YOU DIDN’T NOTICE until now. Also: similar to my previous (next?) composition, I actually composed this long ago, but waited all the way until now to record because I’m a lazy fuck and also because I just found out that this thing even existed today and finally also because it’s MUSICAL MONDAY even though it’s Tuesday and y’know what, just go away

P.S. That mspaint image took me like, fifteen minutes to draw. Effort, man
P.P.S. Thank God I made that Pace post, otherwise I’d spend another two hours on finding another audio extractor
P.P.P.S. I made tons of mistakes here and I also made tons of MISSED TAKES but nobody will ever notice because who notices these things
P.P.P.P.S. Yes, this was an experiment in corpse exquisiteness