concepts and elaborations

When I am WithYou – Charles Dodge

“When I am With You” by Charles Dodge is a composition made of a modified speech sample. A very digital sounds voice says, “when I am with you I am two places at once.” The whole song is a phrase spoken by this digital voice. All of the sounds in this song are similar, and this creates a cohesive feel to the song. However, this also gives some redundancy to the song. The composer changes the pitch of the voice to add some variety to the work, but even with this change the whole orchestration of the work is very repetitive. There are not very many traditional elements to this work, except for the notes and scales that the voice climbs towards the middle of the song. Aesthetically, I think the composer was going for a robotic feel to the work. The work seems to tease and challenge the human voice by repeating things very quickly and going very high and low, something that would be impossible with an unaltered human voice. I think this help to fulfill the idea of a robotic entity performing this work. I can see how this would be an important experimental stage in the creation of electronic music, but I don’t see it as something pleasing to listen to.

Come Out – Steve Reich

“Come Out” by Steve Reich is a song using a looped sample of the phrase “come out to show them.” It is repeated and looped very quickly. The composer starts to offset the phrases to first create an echo, but the offset eventually leads to a rhythm of sounds. Towards the end of the song, the words are inaudible, but the rhythm and melody are still there. This work is very innovative in my opinion, because it creates an entire composition out of a half second sound sample. Although the song is repetitive, the offset of the sample creates aural interest in the song. After the words become inaudible, the rhythm and the melody of the song still carry it. The artist seems to be going for a very haunting aesthetic, and I think this is achieved by only the use of human sounds to create a song that is very inhuman sounding as it progresses. I think this is very successful song. Not only does it utilize a very unique approach to creating a composition, it does so in an attractive and aesthetically pleasing way.