disc two track seven
Scott R. Morgan - parade
ANALYSES: written analysis visual similarity of blending spectrogram analysis
written analysis
Parade is a parade indeed. But a parade in the softest, most lucid sense,
as if a parade of pigments blurring into each other like a river, creating constantly changing colours. Or rather, very aesthetically pleasing chords of the most relaxing sort.
The pigments are samples of low marching band notes, and ricocheting clapping sounds, passed into other moving samples like relay. Slowed and stretched and constantly moving, these tones put the listener into a kind of trance, where musical harmony rules… and steam is the sweetest expression. At the end there are the echoes of a past… blurring into the present, in a kind of smoky, hazy, resolution. An enchanting journey of trails and gray. Where one enjoys not being able to see the fan's petals. Only hues.
visual similarity of blending
spectrogram analysis *
the left channel is on top, the right is on the bottom
* Yellow is the loudest, purple is silence. The higher the pigments, the higher the frequency. I'm unsure whether the line crossing both channels is a computer error, or a frequency maintained throughout. Either is possible.
Just as the piece is titled parade, one can see that the piece resembles a parade as well, when looked at from this perspective. There are floats of sound crossing the listener. It begins with two short marching band snare drum rolls - interspersed with ambient silence. And the parade begins approaching 10 seconds. The green field of grass through out the piece is composed of low droning notes, like those of a bag pipe, wobbling in their place in a kind of harmony. The blue shades on the first float, monument, event, taking place roughly between :10 and :50, are the same snare drum sounds refracted and mixed into a melange that beds the lower notes like trees cover a mountain. The mountains curls down around :50 and the drone notes remain low. Slightly after this, the first minor event takes place in the right ear. It is a sample of some sort - could be an airplane, a didgeridoo, a generator --- it is airy, and it rises then falls… generally into the next ear. The events that follow seem all to come from this sound, culminating in its possible revealing at the second largest, and last event, between 2:35 and 3:05. An airplane passing by?... the sound is squeezed and stretched, the object indifferent to the unnoticed body with ears far below that sees this passing as time itself saying "you matter not. Your memories deceive you." There is a voice that comes in around 2 minutes and fades with the piece itself. It is the composer's grandfather revisiting a place now different than his memory recalls. The voice can be seen as suspended drops or dashes above the green field. They are slightly echoed from ear to ear, and slightly undecipherable. The one thing the listener definitely hears is "it's hard to tell, where you are." And then the parade ends as it follows the airplane sound away and diminishes. For time, there is no space.
analysis by Sophia Male
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