BUT WHAT ARE THE PIECES (or, the explanation and context of all the shenanigans).
01: HUH?
When the themes of investigating language became clear in the creation of HW¸ the idea of starting with a lecture made sense. It’s an easy way to introduce the themes of the show without plainly stating the intention. The idea to satirise and make fun of people who are more conservative in their perception of language, not willing to change their language with the moving world, derives from my experience on the internet, where that sort of rhetoric in its most toxic form is pursued. I feel at times, Huh? is cathartic, which is a bonus.
This originally was a gradient, then a graph, and now a more convoluted graph with more information in the graphic. The staves are still there to keep the impression that this is still music, no matter what it ends up sounding like. The graph is also strangely right to left, challenging ideas that the graph leads to pitch, something that is always prominent when a graph enters a graphic score. Additionally, the 0% and 100% are intentionally vague, allowing for the musicians to interpret the meaning to anything they wish. You may notice that this is a piece where everyone has the same score, and that's because I wanted a sort of thematic unison; not playing the same notes, but within the same mindset.
It starts off simple and calm, with the lecture postulating about the beauty of language. The sounds from the ensemble are spaced and ambient, living in the background. This serenity is broken when the lecture turns into a satirical rant about how the "intolerant left" are destroying the beauty of language. To be clear: I am all for the destruction and mangling of language, it is what the show is about, this is about making fun of people with this mindset. As the "lecturer" continues, the ensemble behind gets louder, more dissonant, more harsh. It eventually ends up with Izzy screaming, trying to talk over the music, before being cursed with the inability to form words. This causes the lecturer to go insane, and to clearly go through the first 4 of the 5 stages of grief. As they move to anger, the music builds to a climax, before simmering down to nothingness, once the lecturer gets onto their knees in the bargaining phase. Seeing how they clearly demonstrated emotions and intentions, they go into a state of shock before going into the fifth stage: acceptance, and the music stops.
Huh? is represented by the colour of red, a colour representative of both love and hate.
This originally was a gradient, then a graph, and now a more convoluted graph with more information in the graphic. The staves are still there to keep the impression that this is still music, no matter what it ends up sounding like. The graph is also strangely right to left, challenging ideas that the graph leads to pitch, something that is always prominent when a graph enters a graphic score. Additionally, the 0% and 100% are intentionally vague, allowing for the musicians to interpret the meaning to anything they wish. You may notice that this is a piece where everyone has the same score, and that's because I wanted a sort of thematic unison; not playing the same notes, but within the same mindset.
It starts off simple and calm, with the lecture postulating about the beauty of language. The sounds from the ensemble are spaced and ambient, living in the background. This serenity is broken when the lecture turns into a satirical rant about how the "intolerant left" are destroying the beauty of language. To be clear: I am all for the destruction and mangling of language, it is what the show is about, this is about making fun of people with this mindset. As the "lecturer" continues, the ensemble behind gets louder, more dissonant, more harsh. It eventually ends up with Izzy screaming, trying to talk over the music, before being cursed with the inability to form words. This causes the lecturer to go insane, and to clearly go through the first 4 of the 5 stages of grief. As they move to anger, the music builds to a climax, before simmering down to nothingness, once the lecturer gets onto their knees in the bargaining phase. Seeing how they clearly demonstrated emotions and intentions, they go into a state of shock before going into the fifth stage: acceptance, and the music stops.
Huh? is represented by the colour of red, a colour representative of both love and hate.
02: (THERE'S A MAN IN MY) CAN OF BEANS.
This was the first piece I wrote out properly, so it has also gone through the most changes. Can of Beans was an evolution of a tune I’ve had written down about a year ago as folk song about a metaphorical can of beans left on the windowsill for uncountable years, acting as this eldritch object. That morphed into the absurdist question of “what if a little man lived in a can of beans?”, and I tried my best to answer in song. Originally, it was a text score, but through a couple more iterations, it became a graphic score. Something fun about having it as a text score previously is that the form of the piece is unique, as a collection of repeated phrases used repeatedly, instead of flowing from bar to bar.
The story of Can of Beans is that our unnamed protagonist has this eldritch can of Heinz beans that holds some sort of small humanoid figure within: the Man in the Can of Beans. No earthly predators such as humans or birds of prey cannot find him, but something unnameable, something unknowable, can. How the protagonist came into the possession of the can of beans, no one knows. One night, the Man in the Can of Beans starts chanting over the can, summoning different, seemingly absurd, and random ingredients into the can, which summons an exact replica of the protagonist. This doppelganger stares at our protagonist, before leaping quickly towards them, and filling their mouth with an ungodly amount of beans, essentially drowning them, and taking their place.
Can of Beans is heavily inspired by B-horror films like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, They Live and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, very silly horror movies that I can actually watch, being the scardey cat I am.
Can of Beans is structured thusly: it starts with a bass solo based on the Fm(maj7) chord, the chord found in all Bond films, and gives the audience a feeling of mystery, of which this piece is. After two bars, the drums kick in, signalling the vast vibe change to a pseudo-metal vibe, before everyone starts. This is below a sample of an old Heinz beans ad, where two kids are debating what makes Heinz beans so special. The sample ends with the mysterious and offsetting phrase "special sauce", which can be implied to be a multitude of things. The IML section starts with open repeats, as Izzy dances around before becoming the characters of the "narrator" and "victim". The narrator sets the scene, while the victim is the one with the Can of Beans. Who says which, or if the two characters are combined is something left intentionally unclear. The victim should not know so much about the beans, but they do... how?
After the second verse, a bass solo enters at the bridge as everyone but the drums fall out. The drummer and bassist (Kevin Huang and Lucy Browning) have known each other for a long time, so letting them do their thing is something that I feel confident about. There are a lot of triplets abound the song, which reflects the title of the song: Can of Beans (123). After the bass solo, the character is just the victim, without any guidance of the narrator behind them, as the music starts off soft, and slowly but surely moves up in intensity as the bean person becomes more prudent in the story. As the bean person lunges, it kicks back into the IML section as the ensmeble plays with a new intensity. Then the song ends with a 1-2-3-4, for this is a rock tune at the end of the day, so ending with a pastiche I think is cheesy enough to work.
Can of Beans is represented by orange, a colour often attributed to horror, and is the main colour in the marketing of Heinz Beans. The IMLs are messy and disorganised, as is the mindset of the victim throughout the piece.
The story of Can of Beans is that our unnamed protagonist has this eldritch can of Heinz beans that holds some sort of small humanoid figure within: the Man in the Can of Beans. No earthly predators such as humans or birds of prey cannot find him, but something unnameable, something unknowable, can. How the protagonist came into the possession of the can of beans, no one knows. One night, the Man in the Can of Beans starts chanting over the can, summoning different, seemingly absurd, and random ingredients into the can, which summons an exact replica of the protagonist. This doppelganger stares at our protagonist, before leaping quickly towards them, and filling their mouth with an ungodly amount of beans, essentially drowning them, and taking their place.
Can of Beans is heavily inspired by B-horror films like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, They Live and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, very silly horror movies that I can actually watch, being the scardey cat I am.
Can of Beans is structured thusly: it starts with a bass solo based on the Fm(maj7) chord, the chord found in all Bond films, and gives the audience a feeling of mystery, of which this piece is. After two bars, the drums kick in, signalling the vast vibe change to a pseudo-metal vibe, before everyone starts. This is below a sample of an old Heinz beans ad, where two kids are debating what makes Heinz beans so special. The sample ends with the mysterious and offsetting phrase "special sauce", which can be implied to be a multitude of things. The IML section starts with open repeats, as Izzy dances around before becoming the characters of the "narrator" and "victim". The narrator sets the scene, while the victim is the one with the Can of Beans. Who says which, or if the two characters are combined is something left intentionally unclear. The victim should not know so much about the beans, but they do... how?
After the second verse, a bass solo enters at the bridge as everyone but the drums fall out. The drummer and bassist (Kevin Huang and Lucy Browning) have known each other for a long time, so letting them do their thing is something that I feel confident about. There are a lot of triplets abound the song, which reflects the title of the song: Can of Beans (123). After the bass solo, the character is just the victim, without any guidance of the narrator behind them, as the music starts off soft, and slowly but surely moves up in intensity as the bean person becomes more prudent in the story. As the bean person lunges, it kicks back into the IML section as the ensmeble plays with a new intensity. Then the song ends with a 1-2-3-4, for this is a rock tune at the end of the day, so ending with a pastiche I think is cheesy enough to work.
Can of Beans is represented by orange, a colour often attributed to horror, and is the main colour in the marketing of Heinz Beans. The IMLs are messy and disorganised, as is the mindset of the victim throughout the piece.
03: HYDROPHILE.
Fun fact: these are the earliest lyrics I wrote, about a year ago at Meltham station. I was reckoning with my new fear of water, and thought it would be an interesting idea to write in the opposite of my own voice, i.e. confident and infatuated with water. Lyrics and speech are always viewed as a personal thing, so to distance yourself far from your own language is such a strange and uncanny thing to do, and was a very weird thing to do. In terms of lyrics, there is no real narrative I kept in mind, it's just chaos.
The piece starts with me as the eponymous Hydrophile on the floor after attempting a back-flip, which cues everyone into swirling madness, like getting caught in a whirlpool. As it dies down, I get up and cue the band into a drum solo and then into the first verse, which is fairly short in order to introduce the main feature of the piece: the two Hydrophile sections, indeterminate loud messes of sound, reflective of the chaos and fear that the feeling of the sea brings within me. Then, with some strange transition music, which loosens up the piece in a thematic sense, making this piece feel as liquid as possible, it goes back into a verse, which has doubled in length. The first stanza is inviting the audience into this realm of thought, while the second pushes them back, alienating everyone but the Hydrophile in the song, before entering the second Hydrophile section, which the Hydrophile tries to rope in the band by counting in tempo, but the band does not follow. The Hydrophile got what they wanted, to be alone, but not like this...
The rest of the piece is frantic and messy and ever-consuming, in which the Hydrophile, too engulfed with their love of water, metaphorically (or literally) drowns in their sorrows.
Hydrophile is blue, like the ocean, water, and on a more esoteric sense, coolness and calmness. The IMLs are, reflectively, curved and flowing.
The piece starts with me as the eponymous Hydrophile on the floor after attempting a back-flip, which cues everyone into swirling madness, like getting caught in a whirlpool. As it dies down, I get up and cue the band into a drum solo and then into the first verse, which is fairly short in order to introduce the main feature of the piece: the two Hydrophile sections, indeterminate loud messes of sound, reflective of the chaos and fear that the feeling of the sea brings within me. Then, with some strange transition music, which loosens up the piece in a thematic sense, making this piece feel as liquid as possible, it goes back into a verse, which has doubled in length. The first stanza is inviting the audience into this realm of thought, while the second pushes them back, alienating everyone but the Hydrophile in the song, before entering the second Hydrophile section, which the Hydrophile tries to rope in the band by counting in tempo, but the band does not follow. The Hydrophile got what they wanted, to be alone, but not like this...
The rest of the piece is frantic and messy and ever-consuming, in which the Hydrophile, too engulfed with their love of water, metaphorically (or literally) drowns in their sorrows.
Hydrophile is blue, like the ocean, water, and on a more esoteric sense, coolness and calmness. The IMLs are, reflectively, curved and flowing.
In a week in September, I got really into Toki Pona, or “the language of good”, a constructed language (or conlang) by Sonja Lang. With philosophies of Taoism and linguistic relativity, and with features such as a 200-word dictionary, nine consonants, and an extensive and creative use of compound words.
Pali Wawa Tawa Moli (La Pali Wawa Tawa Ali), which translates to Confident Action to Dead, Confident Action to Life or Dare to Die, Dare to Live is an experimental piece written predominantly in IMLs. The lyrics, which are shouted and raised to a scream, translate to a calm explanation on what Toki Pona is. Having a voice detached to its meaning is one of the most off-putting verbal choices to do, but through the obscurity of the language, no one knows the wiser.
Each part for the ensemble is derived into 5 sections, and though their tone indicators are different, they are similar enough to fit together. The first section is unknowable, alien, strained, written to make people feel uncomfortable. The second is based off of words I associate with freak-folk music, like the oeuvre of Richard Dawson, which I was listening to a lot during this piece's creation. The third is to use nervous energy, to feel tight and without trust, to have no knowledge of the future. The fourth is a reflection on the colour white, of it's emptiness and "purity", which is then disrupted with the final attribution, which is shared by everyone: noisy, which goes to the end of the piece. Each section between the parts have different times, meaning people will be arriving at different sections independently. I like this, it rings out the monotony that is hard to get away from in this sort of music.
It would be unbecoming of me to not mention the two great sources that helped me a BUNCH when writing this piece: the free toki pona cheat sheet by blinry for a constant reference when translating in words, and the Live Toki Pona Sitelen Sitelen Renderer by Olaf Janssen to make sure I wasn't screwing up both the grammar of toki pona, but the additional visual grammar of sitelen sitelen (which I still definitely messed up).
Pali Wawa Tawa Moli is coded with the colour of purple, often depicted with ideals of wisdom and magic. I see Toki Pona as a wise language, promoting happiness and simplicity, while this piece sounds like an intricate spell or hex from wiccan traditions.
Pali Wawa Tawa Moli (La Pali Wawa Tawa Ali), which translates to Confident Action to Dead, Confident Action to Life or Dare to Die, Dare to Live is an experimental piece written predominantly in IMLs. The lyrics, which are shouted and raised to a scream, translate to a calm explanation on what Toki Pona is. Having a voice detached to its meaning is one of the most off-putting verbal choices to do, but through the obscurity of the language, no one knows the wiser.
Each part for the ensemble is derived into 5 sections, and though their tone indicators are different, they are similar enough to fit together. The first section is unknowable, alien, strained, written to make people feel uncomfortable. The second is based off of words I associate with freak-folk music, like the oeuvre of Richard Dawson, which I was listening to a lot during this piece's creation. The third is to use nervous energy, to feel tight and without trust, to have no knowledge of the future. The fourth is a reflection on the colour white, of it's emptiness and "purity", which is then disrupted with the final attribution, which is shared by everyone: noisy, which goes to the end of the piece. Each section between the parts have different times, meaning people will be arriving at different sections independently. I like this, it rings out the monotony that is hard to get away from in this sort of music.
It would be unbecoming of me to not mention the two great sources that helped me a BUNCH when writing this piece: the free toki pona cheat sheet by blinry for a constant reference when translating in words, and the Live Toki Pona Sitelen Sitelen Renderer by Olaf Janssen to make sure I wasn't screwing up both the grammar of toki pona, but the additional visual grammar of sitelen sitelen (which I still definitely messed up).
Pali Wawa Tawa Moli is coded with the colour of purple, often depicted with ideals of wisdom and magic. I see Toki Pona as a wise language, promoting happiness and simplicity, while this piece sounds like an intricate spell or hex from wiccan traditions.
05: WHAT?
The final piece to be conceptualised, and a culmination of all the ideas I had left. Framed in this “live questions for a higher power” segment, What? is a piece about questioning everything and getting nothing back. This uncertainty of the voice is reflected in the uncertain feel of the piece, trying to do everything, jumping from genre to genre, but never really finishing either section, not answering the question put out the musical form. This was the most fun I had writing lyrics. The ska segment evolved after making a segment “fast disco”, which ended up sounding a lot like ska.
This starts with a plea to... anyone, really, and that defines the chorus. This writing style, with repetitive lyrics going on and on is in part reflective of Lucy Dacus, a musician who makes music very different to this, but something that I thought of doing. Without a direction, the piece goes hayywire, jumping from a riser similar to music found in house music to some grungy metal, which then inexplicably goes into ska, in which I sing about God taking over the world and removing our free will without question. There's no real time to delay on that, as the riser begins again, and the questioning chorus pops back in. This builds into a lacklustre clarinet solo, which brings the audience into questioning as well.
After a few lines of scatting, the band is brought into yet another genre in the form, a free lounge jazz segment, where I impersonate Frank Sinatra impersonators, and talk directly to the audience in a way reminiscent of a host of a TV show, or Ferris Bueller, taking the time to introduce the band and make sure people are all ready for the finale. The finale is this grandious 3/4 rendition of the question chorus, which represents both this fall into madness and this growth into a clear ending. After the 16 bars finish their second time through, everyone goes silent, I look back to them and say "huh what?" because I think I'm clever, and there are two more bars of music and then the show finished, crowd roars in appreciation that it's over, Obama is there, etc.
What? is represented by the colour green, which signifies luck and safety. The use of green is ironic, using this often positive colour to represent something so strange and
This starts with a plea to... anyone, really, and that defines the chorus. This writing style, with repetitive lyrics going on and on is in part reflective of Lucy Dacus, a musician who makes music very different to this, but something that I thought of doing. Without a direction, the piece goes hayywire, jumping from a riser similar to music found in house music to some grungy metal, which then inexplicably goes into ska, in which I sing about God taking over the world and removing our free will without question. There's no real time to delay on that, as the riser begins again, and the questioning chorus pops back in. This builds into a lacklustre clarinet solo, which brings the audience into questioning as well.
After a few lines of scatting, the band is brought into yet another genre in the form, a free lounge jazz segment, where I impersonate Frank Sinatra impersonators, and talk directly to the audience in a way reminiscent of a host of a TV show, or Ferris Bueller, taking the time to introduce the band and make sure people are all ready for the finale. The finale is this grandious 3/4 rendition of the question chorus, which represents both this fall into madness and this growth into a clear ending. After the 16 bars finish their second time through, everyone goes silent, I look back to them and say "huh what?" because I think I'm clever, and there are two more bars of music and then the show finished, crowd roars in appreciation that it's over, Obama is there, etc.
What? is represented by the colour green, which signifies luck and safety. The use of green is ironic, using this often positive colour to represent something so strange and