Chapter 5 Results

This chapter will present findings of my analytical work, alongside information I have gathered from interviews. The chapter will conclude by presenting my own compositions and how I have worked out the formal structures, and in the overarching compositional process. All the pieces that I’ve analysed can be found on Spotify and YouTube.

5.1 Results of analysis of electroacoustic works

As it came out, my analysis differs from how the composers described their conception of theform, something that Smalley says is a regular occurrence. “How composers conceive musical content and form – their aims, models, systems, techniques, and structural plans – is not the same as what listeners perceive in that same music” (Smalley, 1997, p. 107). These differences can be seen in the pieces I’ve analysed where the composers in question have also been interviewed.

5.1.1 Anchorings / Arrows – Jens Hedman, Erik Mikael Karlsson

Anchorings / Arrows is a collaborative piece by Jens Hedman and Erik Mikael Karlsson composed in 1992. In my analysis of the form in the composition, came I to a conclusion that the macroform is A, B, C, B1, A1 where the first B section could be seen as two B sections put together. The duration of the piece is 13:30 minutes long and by dividing the first B section into two sections will give all the sections fairly similar length in time.

Figure 4.5: Step 4 of analysis Anchorings / Arrows.

In my analysis I concluded that the mesoform has five different themes that I labelled from A

to E, each time a section comes back it has a great deal of variation to it, making each part in

the mesoform unique. An interesting finding in my analysis is that the A section and the A1

section of the macroform has different constructs in the mesoform. The mesoform in the A

section is A, A1, B, A2 while the A1 section in the macroform is A5, B2, A6, E1, A7. This

shows that it is possible to construct mesoform differently in returning sections of macroform

but still have coherence in the music.

By interviewing Hedman and Karlsson, I have acquired insight in how they worked with this

composition. They started by constructing the macroform according to the Fibonacci

sequence/golden ratio, and they pointed out that having a fixed form from the beginning is 

something they agree is important for the compositional process in a collaborative piece.

Karlsson says that he and Hedman wanted to create a feeling of forward motion with the

piece, that the dramaturgy should point forward. To achieve this, they had many and long

discussions and several sketches were made regarding the musical dramaturgy, before they

went into the studio and started working. Hedman says that by creating the form first, you

have a blueprint to work from, and it is already from the beginning possible to navigate in the

piece. This makes it possible to work with different parts of the composition simultaneously,

you know where you come from and where you’re going with the music. Hedman continues

by saying that this way of working makes the compositional process easier. To start from the

beginning and work to the end is something he feels is both difficult and limiting. Hedman

also says that placing gestural events in the form, creates a kind of backbone for the musical

development in the composition. After that, you only need to tie these gestures together in a

way that feels natural.

I wrote my analysis before I had interviewed Hedman and Karlsson, so I thought it would be

interesting to compare my analysis with the Golden Ratio and see how it ends up. What the

Golden Ratio analysis shows is that some parts of my analysis do indeed line up closely to the

Golden Ratio. That it doesn’t line up perfectly can be related to how I hear the form in the

piece and the fact that the composers haven’t followed the Golden Ratio perfectly, something

Hedman admits during the interview, describing how, the further the composition process

went, the less important it was to follow the structure perfectly. Regarding the topic of form

and structure Karlsson says that he has worked very differently with form and structure during

his years as a composer. Must often form and structure is about feeling right, and he claims

that “music is a feeling business”.

Figure 5.1: Golden Ratio analysis of Anchorings / Arrows

In the Golden Ratio analysis, we can see that the subdivisions of Phi line up closely with the

formal sections in the meso level. The Phi moment and one of the Phi subdivisions line up

closely with my analysis of the macroform.

5.1.2 Currents – Traffic – Jens Hedman, Paulina Sundin

Currents – Traffic (1998) is a collaborative composition by Jens Hedman and Paulina Sundin.

Currents is a composition in four movements with Traffic being the first movement, with a

length of 03:04 minutes. Hedman says that the composition is an electroacoustic tribute to 

Stockholm when the city was the cultural capital of Europe in 1998. He continues saying that

the structure for the four movements is constructed like that of a traditional symphony in four

movements. The first movement often fast and in sonata form, setting the sonic world for the

symphony and introducing important themes. The second movement is slower and often

lyrical to give contrast to the first movement and creates a reflective mood. The third

movement is usually a menuetto or scherzo, a dance movement that is lighter and lively in its

character. The fourth movement is often fast and lively, could be in rondo or a variation of the

sonata form. It finishes the symphony in a vigorous way and also concludes the previous

movements and their sonic worlds.

Sundin adds in that the Fibonacci sequence/golden ratio is the base for deciding the length of

each movement and is also used for the form of each movement. The golden ratio is used for

calculating where the highlights of the composition should occur in time. She continues by

saying that the musical material for Traffic is recordings of traffic noise around Stockholm,

that they then processed, and mixed in the program Dyaxis. They did the recordings with a

dummy head microphone that they borrowed from the Swedish Radio says Hedman. He

continues by saying that the technique of using a dummy head microphone for recording

gives a very pleasant feeling of presence, both when listening to speakers and even more so

when listening through headphones.

Hedman explains that during this era he split the compositional process in two. During the

first part he recorded and did all the processing of sound material, referring to the sound

material as Lego pieces. Dyaxis (a DAW of that era) could not process and manipulate sound

as a modern DAW, so every sound had to be processed before mixing. In Dyaxis you could

only dial in a fixed volume and a fixed panning of the sound. When a big storage of Lego

pieces was done, did he procced with the second phase of the composition process. Here he

started to place gestures, rhythmical elements and textures out in the macroform as he had

explained earlier. Hedman and Sundin worked in this way with Currents, and he adds that the

further the composition process came the looser they followed the golden ratio strictly. That’s

why the piece is not perfectly after the golden ratio when making an analysis of the finished

composition, but a lot of that structure remains in the composition.

In my analysis of Currents – Traffic, I’ve found the macroform to be in three parts. On the

macro time-scale I don’t experience that it is really a contrasting middle in the composition,

the sections are just variations, one on the other. In my analysis I have labelled the A2 section

as “mirrored” since on the next structural level it is almost a mirror of the A section. It’s not a

perfect mirror and in the mesoform and the music in itself is not a mirroring structure at all. I

was surprised to find this structural feature, and I see this as a possible technique for making

variation in the formal structure.

Figure 5.2: Analysis of Currents – Traffic.

How I have divided the mesoform has much to do with how I experience the changing

soundscape in the composition. In this composition there are a lot of hits¹⁵, for me I

experience them as a marker for new parts in the form in the meso time scale. I don’t see that

the mesoform is following a specific structure, and that’s not strange. Since from my

interviews I’ve learned that they have worked in a different way from what is more common

in acoustic music. By adding the Golden Ratio as a grid in my analysis, it’s clear that they

have used it as a basis for the structure in this composition. As they said in the interviews,

they have not followed it perfectly but used it as a framework to start out from. They have

placed out musical material in the framework and connected those objects by composing the

material between the objects until they got a finished composition.

¹⁵ An orchestra hit, also called an orchestral hit, orchestra stab, or orchestral stab, is a synthesized sound created

by layering various orchestral instruments playing a single sharp note or chord. In this thesis Orchestra hit might

be referred to as hit or hits in text and analysis (Orchestra hit, 2024, 5 December).

Figure 5.3: Golden Ratio of Currents – Traffic.

In this analysis of the Golden Ratio, I did round off the time so there are no decimals to the

seconds.

5.1.3 Now – Curtis Roads

Now (2003) is a composition by Curtis Roads, premiered 1 May 2004 at the Sonic Arts

Research Centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The composition is found on the Point Line

Cloud album released in 2005 (Curtis Roads, n.d.). Roads (2015) says that all the sounds in

Now is purely electronically generated and originates from an impulse generated by him in

1999. This impulse was granulated into an 800ms sound object. By granulating this sound

object, he created the musical material for his piece Volt air III (2003). By granulating

material in Volt air III, he created Now. He did the same process on Now to create Never

(2010) and did it again on Never to create Always (2013). Regarding this process he observes

how, “like objects in an abstract painting, the sounds are not necessarily recognizable in terms

of a familiar reference; any resemblance to the external world is purely coincidental” (Roads,

2015, p. 5).

Making an analysis of the form in a piece like this when all the musical material are derived

from the same source isn’t an easy task and if someone else did the analysis the outcome

would probably be entirely different. In my analysis, I concluded that the macroform consists

in four parts, which I labelled Intro, A section, B section and A1 section. In the next level in 

the analysis, is just a reduction of the information in the mesoform for me to easier be able to

identify parts in the form that I feel has more connection to each other. This is a way for me to

come to a conclusion about how the macroform is.

Figure 5.4: Analysis of the formal structure of Now (Roads, 2003).

How I came up with the mesoform in my analysis has much to do with the extrinsic

connections I got from listening to the piece, together with hits, shifts between wet and dry

sounds, tempo and overall pitch of the material. In this composition I would say that the

importance is the sound object and the micro timescale. Roads has worked in great detail on

those levels and spatial placement of sound objects is done with great consideration. In this

composition I’m hearing my two speakers as two different instrumentalists playing together in

a contrapuntal way rather than speakers just reproducing sound. This creates a completely

different soundscape from the other compositions that I have made an analysis of in my

thesis.

5.1.4 Suite 600 – Erik Mikael Karlsson

Suite 600 is the third track on the album 2600 Virginia Avenue released by the record label

Komplott in 2011 (Komplott, n.d.). Karlsson says that this album is minimalistic, and he

worked intuitively on the form. The sound material is almost exclusively made on a

Synclavier 3200-system from New England Digital. He describes how the material is derived

from the strings inside of a piano, from several analog synthesizers that had been sampled, a

vocoder and rain that he recorded in Berling during the 1990s. The composition was mixed in

a Pro Tools system in his own studio in Malmö.

My analysis of Suite 600 shows indeed that the composition is minimalistic, and I have

pointed out a layer in the macroform as Minimalism that runs through the entire piece. I have

still created a lower-level macroform divided into four parts. A section, B section, A1 section

and C section. The division is based on thematic events in the composition: the first A section

has a vocoder singing Why don’t you love me? This is followed by a lengthy synthesizer solo

in the B section which is followed by the returning A1 section with the same vocoder lyrics to

it. In the final section C, the vocoder changes lyrics to Who am I? A very dramatic change for

a minimalistic composition.

Figure 5.5: Form of Suite 600.

In my analysis I have a third layer of the macroform showing the different densities in the

texture. Suite 600 starts with a long crescendo in the texture leading up to the synthesizer solo

with a very thick texture where much is happening in the soundscape. After the solo the

textures thinness down a bit but will eventually go back to a thick texture when the vocoder

comes back in. When the C section enters, we’re getting a thinner texture that eventually goes

into a very noticeable decrescendo in texture leaving us with only rain sound before the piece

ends.

The mesoform is divided into sections that I mostly divided based on when different

instruments are added or taken away, sometimes I could feel and hear a change but not point

out exactly what had been changed in the somewhat busy soundscape. In the mesoform some

sections have fairly similar length around 20 seconds, but some parts standout as longer and

shorter. This probably is because Karlsson has worked intuitively with the form and musical

material. In my reflections regarding the mesoform I wrote that having these sections in

different length helps to diminish the feel of the music just being copy pasted. It feels more

alive and natural in a way, more interesting when you can’t predict where the changes are

going to happen. This reflection is of this piece and how it uses minimalism, that generally is

music based on just repetition with very small almost unnoticeable changes when listen from

start to finish. But when skipping in the track the listener will hear a great deal of change in

the soundscape.