[microsound] musical structure

[Jaime Munárriz Ortiz]

I've been quite obsessed with this subject lately. I've developed some 
theories, quite coincident with the ones being exposed at his list. 
Background / foreground, planes, lines and dots. Geometric elements that 
appear over a fuzzy landscape. Evolving clouds over rigid objects. I 
think we are developing Kandinsky's system, trying to establish the 
basic elements that make sound [or music].
Form, as evolution of the sonic material in time, has made me look for 
old books on music theory, finding powerful and funny ideas like that 
the perfect sturcture is ABA... ¿?
Reading "The study of counterpoint" by Fux and "Formalized music" by 
Xenakis at the same time has been exciting and really thought provoking. 
Form, as an structure developed into time, seems the articulation of 
these basic elements and the frame that articulates it's relationships. 
It is always present, and can be simplified with theories, but real 
composing is always a more rich and complex phemomenom. Theories seem a 
nice start point, but the real and dirty work of composition is always 
much more strange and difficult. Ideas that looked nice on paper seem 
dull and graceless when materialized. I always get on playing and 
manipulating sound in unnplanned ways, and it is then when I get to an 
interesting point.
As said before, this theories are a good starting point, a generative 
way of thinking, but they are just the first steps for the real 
work.Geometric scores have opened a new field for my work. Form 
structured in oposing parts, with different tempos and signatures, has 
make me jump out of continous evolving pieces. Macro and micro 
structure, and it's relationship, demand attention to the material in a 
very special way. All this thinking processes enrichens the composer and 
it's music.Theories are good because allow us to see things from a 
different perspective. Just don't stay there for too long, or you'll 
just repeat the same ideas forever.

Jaime Munárriz