User:Hyacinth/Travelon Gamelon
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Travelon Gamelon (1978, revised 1991) is a piece amplified bicycles by Richard Lerman. The piece exists in two versions. The "Promenade" version is scored for twenty or more bicycles with riders while the "Concert" version is scored for three stationary bicycles with six performers. In the promenade version the pitches produced by struck spokes are amplified through small loudspeakers, in both versions pickups are attached near the spokes (to the screw at the center of the wheel). The resulting sound has a metallic and polyrhythmic sound similar to that of the Indonesian gamelan orchestra. As Lerman (2008) explains, "I realized that bicycles sounded similar to real Gamelan Music [sic] and was inspired to create this work. A bicycle was a gamelan that one could travel on.....".
As such, the piece, like its name, claims similarity to gamelan in sound only, though the hocket like effects and coordination of two performers on one instrument indicate a knowledge of and actual influence from Indonesian music. A Balinese Gamelan group also performing at the EXPO 86 in Vancouver expressed to Lerman their "pleasure and surprise at the piece" and its similarity to the gamelan's sound. (ibid)
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[edit] Form
Formally, the piece consists of five sections. Each bicycle has a duet or "'solos' with different rhythmic material. A more improvisatory middle section explores many other sounds from the bicycle" (ibid) including bowing on the spokes and striking the frame. The third section is "a retrograde canon of the first section" with the parts collapsed upon each other, aligned so that the bicycles entrances and then are staggered symmetrically.
[edit] Pitch
Each performer's material in this final section is identical (though the number of times each pattern is repeated is reduced), creating a stronger sense of return after the dramatically timbrally different improvisatory section. However, variety is created in the pitches each performance due to differences in the bikes used and different spokes struck.
[edit] Timbre/Reception
My roommate's son, Bastion, who is in pre-school, said that is sounded like the robotic music in the movie Robots and really wants to see the piece performed again. The timbre, however, is extremely varied as it depends upon the bikes and their condition, especially that of their spokes. For comparison Lerman played us a version recorded in X where the cobblestones abuse of bike wheels created a skronkier, more horn like, sound than the metallic and percussive sounding bikes in our Missoula performance. Lerman said in his presentation with my composition class that he thought of bicycle spokes, and many objects, as strings on stringed instruments that have been warped, damaged, or altered in some manner.
Interestingly, Lerman studied with Alvin Lucier, composer of Music On A Long Thin Wire.
[edit] Rhythm
Bicycle one is a canon in which the first bicycle plays the beginning of each measure, then divides the measure equally by successively larger integers. The time signature in the traditional notation is 3/4 thus at first one plays beat 123, then 12&3, 123, 1a2&3e, and so on. By the time the first performer or wheel has reached five beats in a measure the second wheel has reached three beats, and at the climax of their "solo" they play eleven against twelve.
Bicycle two is somewhat simpler, being based on one polyrhythm, three against four. The first wheel builds up to a pattern in four: 1e&a2e&a3e&a. The second wheel builds up to the same pattern, but placed as an anacrusis, emphasizing the hocket like effect.
Bicycle three is more strictly a hocket, with the parts building up in number of successive beats (1e&a2e&a3e&a|1e&a2e&a3e&a) and the second being placed as an anacrusis to the first.
[edit] Notation
The piece is notated it to ways, one traditional and a graphic notation devised by Lerman to assist nonmusicians with performance of the piece during his travels. The traditional one line percussion notation uses a time signature of 3/4 (sixteenth notes: 12) due to the frequent use of 3 against 4 (lowest common denominator: 12). The more complex polyrythms are notated with tuplets.
The graphic notation provides a circle for each measure or rhythmic pattern. Beats to be played are indicated by lines drawn at the appropriate spot each twelfth of the way along the circle. Thus three quarter notes in traditional notation provide a pie of three equal slices in the graphic notation. One may further visualize the rhythm by marking spokes of the bike with tape at the appropriate intervals such that if you spin the wheel once a measure you may strike the marked spokes. Being practiced in reading traditional notation all the Missoula performers chose to do so but the graphic notation with the piece indicates the possibility of a human Rhythmicon.
[edit] Harmony
N/A
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- Lerman, Richard (2008). "Travelon Gamelon" program notes. Missoula Art Museum. April 19, 2008. Missoula, MT.
