hello and good evening. my name is bani haykal and i write music and other oddities. for today's presentation i'm sharing with you my work on music and narratives.

before i begin i'd like to state that these interpretations of sound and its use in music is purely subjective, that it is in my opinion, sonic structures can quite explicitly determine narrative specifics. my attempt to collect these ideas and thoughts are to give meaning to how i approach the music that i do, from an improvisation point of view to one which is composed. my interest is in the use of sound, even more so, music, to narrate and communicate ideas. Similar to sound design, but the difference in my work is that it is based on movements, not purely effects to further animate situations.

one of the key motivations for me was during a short stint in advertising as a copywriter. everyday it was either the radio or some horrendous internet radio blasting away. i'm quite frank about my opinions on this, you can ask my friends, but i do personally think almost everything supposedly musical that succumbs to the music business or industry is diluted noise which sounds like music, although i guess it passes as one because there are some components which might excite the listener, even me from time to time. but then again, it's not a problem, i tell myself, rather it is an evolution in music development generally. and if it is undergoing this neanderthal period, it's quite ugly and needs to brush its teeth.

before proceeding, i'd also like to share a quote. this is taken from Charles Mingus' most breathtaking and phenomenal body of work titled, "Let my Children Hear Music".

"I say, let my children have music. For God's sake, rid this society of some of the noise so that those who have ears will be able to use them someplace listening to good music. When I say good I don't mean that today's music is bad because it is loud. I mean the structures have paid no attention to the past history of the music"

Still in the first stages of research, today i will share the use of music and narratives for performance. In a way, i would say that it has to follow a relatively linear timeframe. this is because in a performance, or at least a performance in its traditional sense, it is expected to begin at some point and end at another. the progression of sitting through the narrative, or the experience itself, is linear. of course the way the story is told could be non-linear or non-chronological. i'd like to touch on 2 components tonight, one is tempo, the other tension.

TEMPO

what is tempo? why is it necessary in the first place? why the need for tempo? what happens without it? generally we can understand tempo as a means to provide a specific pace or the speed by which a piece of music is played. but this is quite a reductionist perspective, to think of it as purely beats per minute, which in my personal opinion is what's mostly giving me problems when it comes to listening to most pop music made today, maybe even more specifically dance music. in the 17th century, tempo indications were extensively used by composers, most of these words being italian. and these indicators denoted specifics. from basic indicators such as "allegro", "vivace", "adagio" etc they also have moods specified alongside the tempo as well, for example, "espressivo" which means to play expressively, "agitato", agitated, implied quickness, "sostenuto", sustained with slackening of tempo and the list goes on. in many ways, composers dealt with writing music and expressing specific tempo with moods in order to translate the appropriate tone or mood of the piece. so we could say, with regards to tempo, not only do we have a specific pace, we also would be listening to a specified mood.

Where it is tempo that we are experiencing in music, similarly we can identify it with the effect of pacing in narratives. how much details are in it, including more detail, less detail. How much the plot is segmented, unfolding of events. i'll illustrate the use of musical tempo and have you imagine the narrative. For example, listening to the following:

• - Slow / 4 notes in a bar, whole note per measure

Whilst it would carry various interpretations, the motion here is to illustrate a generally slow establishment of either a scene or character. It lacks detail, colour and dynamics. this line or motif may be repeated, perhaps even modulated, but bearing the same tempo, a specific pace is established.

If I were to re-establish that scene or character, giving it more detail. Musically, or sonically, there would be more things to listen to. So in contrast, I would swap the use of single or whole notes with chords, but is based on the same tempo, for example:

• - Slow / 4 chords in a bar / whole chords per measure

Chords used in this example sets a different tone altogether. Depending on the chords used, the experience would be altered almost quite completely, giving the character or setting more detail for one, as compared to the previous example which would be reliant on either a scale or left atonal and is relatively ambiguous.

in my opinion the use of tempo is something which contains a lot of significance in setting a scene, sonically. even if the movement were to use just 4 notes, by modulating the tempo we can quite easily notice a shift in the direction of the story. during an improvised performance, narrating a story is just like telling a story really well. and if the story teller were to continuously use the same phrases or retains the way he tells a story, it pretty much retains the same form of tension throughout. so just like a live improv performance or narrating a story, have a listen at music you have in your iphones or players and listen out for moods specified, the shifts in tempo. it's not something which requires you to be musically trained or anything, it's really just about pacing and expression. if you do have the chance, please listen to Charles Mingus' Let My Children Hear Music.

i'd like to bring your attention into crazy scientist realm. here's where i really have fun.

- Staccato / random notes / looped

- another layer of dots and angular attacks

so much chaos. what's happening? how do you make sense of it? is anything calculated?

so we understand that tempo sets the pace, establishes mood. but what happens without tempo? i imagine it'll be quite chaotic. maybe too much sounds just flying around.

but the question follows; what if that's the intention? what if the intention was to create chaos? chaos is disorder, a state where you might experience complete confusion. and it is in my opinion that even amidst chaos, you'd want to make sense of the situation. i think that as a story teller, giving the audience disorder once in awhile is a breath of fresh air. if i were to spell chaos, uncertainty, i would say that there are several ways around to building it. within tempo itself, we can illustrate just that. in fact, calculated chaos is also possible within music, with the aid of meters, rhythm, harmony. a composer could create calculated chaos, consisting of polytonality, polyrthyms, manipulating the timbre of an instrument etc etc. tempo's just the beginning.

i'll cover one more component which is relatively common in music and narratives and that is tension.

TENSION

setting the scene: the man is the protagonist in this scene.

the man lost the love of his life. struggles through drugs and depression and finally hears her voice across the street. it's raining. he forgot his umbrella, dashes out to the streets. he battles through the rain, bad traffic and the urge to pee, then sees her silhouette just inches away. steps up to the sidewalk, wipes his brow. he sees her. she sees him. the first in a very long time. with a gun.

tense huh?

now this would be a really wonderful scene to score or just design. aside from the fact that i wrote that, it's really just the use of tension and a bit of dry humor. there's a phrase for such a moment happening here. it's called a build up. and tense situations usually happens when there's a huge build up and you don't know what's about to happen next. he trudges along bad weather, crazy drivers, crazier bladder and finally the girl. and everything was so sweet until she held that gun to his head. you could say the boy released his tension when he saw the gun.

musically or just sonically we could anticipate a whole bunch of things happening. adding layers to create that much needed build up. deconstructing that scene, we start with the lonely boy. just as what we talked about in TEMPO, we want something to illustrate that.

- slow / whole notes per measure

it's dark, isn't it? design a background for this scene; rain. sound effects.

- guitar dots / teasingly

he hears her voice across the street. of course not literally we start disguising our voices, but generally setting up a significant moment in this scene. in this instance;

- violin bow / once

now he's rushing out the door, lots of movement going on. the general build up scene.

- everything goes crazy tense

he steps up to the sidewalk and sees her for the very first time.

- reverse loop / volume stays on half

and then… the gun.

- stop loop / dissonant chord

-PAUSE-

my interpretation of that moment was to bring all these harsh noise and terrible sounds to empathize with the protagonist until they make contact and that tense situation happens.

this is called dissonance, which means a set of notes or series of notes put together that doesn't sound very pleasant. seeing that it's not a happy ending just yet. something's unresolved.

the use of dissonance, which is the contrast of consonance, elevates the build up to a point which seems uncomfortable. if not given the context of the narrative, you would hear sound after sound after sound followed by that uncomfortable chord. and i believe that there's where the music experience or component comes in. without giving any context and just listening to sounds or organized sounds, how do we as listeners make sense of the things we are listening to?

if we were to read a book, or listen to a spoken word recital, chaos, tension, green grass and butterflies at war might easily be addressed or translated to the audience. we listen for phrases or sentences which shadows the things we are certain of. sonically, we are given an abstract environment almost completely and we process that and experience something which is unique to our interpretation of that sound / movement. it's like if i listen to a Maroon 5 song; all i feel like doing is slitting my wrist after he explicitly force feeds us the fact that he moves like Jagger. because an interpretation of the music language can quite consistently be ambiguous, my interest as one who's narrating stories with sound / music, is to have as close an interpretation as possible so it doesn't remain completely ambiguous, however abstract it might be.

and as always, in the wise words of Frank Zappa, "Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best."

thank you and happy holidays.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/relook-ways-handle-religion-race-issues-012456725.html

maybe it might be too soon to say this, but perhaps there really is no sane voice in mainstream media any more.

be serious, man. consider how the writer eloquently phrased the title; Relook ways to handle religion and race issues.

and if you look to the 3rd subchapter, and with much depth he calls it "Questions to Ponder," of his pseudo-intellectual, attempt-to-make-your-dog-stop-licking-itself guide / gibberish / or what would people call it, "article?", i cannot help but think of a gargantuan speech bubble emerging from the depths of that chasm in his head which houses... something... going, "holy carpal tunnel, i need to finish this article by this evening or i'm not going to be able to sleep because i've not shed wisdom upon the world. but more importantly, i think i can kinda use the money to buy that new Dan Brown book. and a moleskin because i'm a serious writer. netbooks are so 2009, iPads are so last month."

Mr Loh carefully constructs his paragraph. with such finesse, he goes tapping on his keyboard;

"these incidents have also opened up an opportunity for the government — and indeed all of society — to take a long hard look at itself and consider some questions:"

and then, he breathes in. bites his fingernails and attempted the inevitable. the questions to ponder came to existence.

am i to believe that the Chinese race cannot be discriminated against? what did he actually mean by asking, "What are the areas which discriminate against the non-Chinese races?" 

"Have we allowed the non-Chinese races to have avenues to speak their minds.." bla bla bla, holy mother goose, am i to believe that Chinese people have avenues to speak their minds freely and openly so that non-Chinese people can understand what they face and address those collectively? and by the way, just who was he referring to as "we" in these questions?

"Have we treated them right... / Have we heard them..." really? this heap of idiocy got published?

this is an article with no real aim or context, if anything else, it excelled at pissing me off. and maybe for having properly used the grammar and spell check on word doc plus word count.

and also, religion? you had it covered where? when you say non-Chinese are you referring to Christians? someone who looks like a Muslim? sorry, maybe i'll design that so you may understand it better; someone who may look like a Hindu but may not be a Hindu?*

or did they not cover that in whatever college you went to? that race and religion are very different things? someone, check his diploma.

this was quite a disgusting waste of space on the web. but if it's any consolation, you're a necessity in creating some form of discourse due to your success at sucking and making money at the same time. a miracle of the 21st century.

go sell insurance. at least if you're intending to tell people what to think, they too can make some money eventually.

*this was a cheap shot as Mr Loh wrote a sentence which read; "policies may look right, but they may not be right". applause for the attempt if you please. or publish me.