Study 3 – pulse and sustain

This is a short study focusing on two features: pulse and sustain. The idea is also to move through the continuum from free flowing speech towards the more quantized quality of formalized music.

The directly transcribed melody is accompanied by a pulse derived from stressed syllables, keeping an averaged tempo as a reference and rhythmic counterpoint to his rubato sentences. After a while the pitches are sustained and overlapping, and then spreading from one pitch into a chord of the lower partials. These are sustained and overlap in a round-robin way, creating a harmony of different partials from the most recent pitches. The imposed sustain is then abandoned, and when the pulse enters again the last section contains a gradual move towards quantizing the rhythms metrically relative to the averaged pulse, with different subdivisions for the partials, ending with sustained whole note chords.

The source is a man proposing on a live television reality show. Unsure of the answer he will get he is taking his time to nervously formulate his question.