. : John Cage : .
In 1951, Cage was given an English translation of the I Ching — the Book of Changes
The I Ching is an antique Chinese document that presents an ancient Chinese philosophical system and serves as an oracle of divinations (Gann 149).
This book forever changed Cage’s compositional techniques. Cage used it, “every time I had a problem. I used it very often for practical matters, to write my articles and my music—for every-thing” (Gann 151).
Cage employed the I Ching for nearly every major work he composed following 1951. He would assign durations, dynamic markings, pitches, meter, and other musical features to the numbers 1-64 and use the I Ching’s coin-based deliberation technique to make decisions on which elements would go together to create a piece of music. The first result of the I Ching process, used by Cage, was the indeterminate
piece Music of Changes, in 1951. This landmark work also was the first piece to be
contrived entirely by chance operations.
'An Air Of Serendipity'
In 1951, Cage was given an English translation of the I Ching — the Book of Changes
The I Ching is an antique Chinese document that presents an ancient Chinese philosophical system and serves as an oracle of divinations (Gann 149).
This book forever changed Cage’s compositional techniques. Cage used it, “every time I had a problem. I used it very often for practical matters, to write my articles and my music—for every-thing” (Gann 151).
Cage employed the I Ching for nearly every major work he composed following 1951. He would assign durations, dynamic markings, pitches, meter, and other musical features to the numbers 1-64 and use the I Ching’s coin-based deliberation technique to make decisions on which elements would go together to create a piece of music. The first result of the I Ching process, used by Cage, was the indeterminate
piece Music of Changes, in 1951. This landmark work also was the first piece to be
contrived entirely by chance operations.
'An Air Of Serendipity'
The Ideology:
We have been looking into how this technique could emulated and used functionally within musical creation. Lets say for example, there is a predefined treatment (or application fx for an instrument) that is imposed on the sound for a 'Violin'. This can be recreated using a laptop and software (Ableton) that will emulate John Cage's I Ching. The point of this experiment is to show how a predefined process methodology can be ultilised contextually for musical composition. Moreover, this can be a proverbial 'way of life' for musical creation. As a result of this process, a single line for violin, for example, can have an expansive collection of audible variables, permitting interesting musical results.
Flow Chart - This will show a visual example of how this process can be employed. Each roll of a dice can result in numerous flow chart diagrams for such a s simple musical process.
Example:
Processes Applied to 'Violin' for a Six Side Dice
- 1 = Overtly Decayed
- 2 = Erosion (down sample)
- 3 = Harmonic Resonance
- 4 = Juxta Pose - Reverse Algorithm
- 5 = Saturation
- 6 = Multiband Dynamics
Pre Defined: 'Roll Of The Die'
> 1 - 3 means 'Apply Another Treatment'
> 4 - 6 means 'No More treatment Application
Therefore, a typical dice roll may occur like this
> ROLL DICE:
A '2' results - therefore a treatment needs to be added
> ROLL DICE:
Again to establish treatment ' - a '5' results, so we must add 'Saturation' to the violin line
>DO WE ADD ANOTHER TREATMENT OR DO WE STOP?
The dice rolls once more, and its a '4' - so on this occasion, not further action necessary
Interestingly, there are parameters within parameters, which can also all be defined - also, 12 sided dice (or two die!) can also be utilised.
A post of how this process influences an audio input will be blogged very shortly ;)
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