Within a western music theory context, the transcription of music is one of the first steps to analyzing a form relative to the history of music. Once the form has been transcribed it can be dragged through the theoretical ringer required for validation as a ’serious music’. While the practicality of this is debatable, especially when it comes to simply listening to the music, for better or for worse it is a standard that has been upheld for centuries now. Where forms do not conform to this standard, they can easily be dismissed.
Such is the case for sample based hip-hop, which has not only been dismissed, but for many is not even considered musical. This classification has contributed to sampling being delegated to the legal realm where very little musical consideration is taken into account in rulings. But what if you could notate sampling? That was one of the questions I sought to answer through the Heads project. It was my belief that if there were a means of notating samples one could distinguish the musical contribution of the sampling artist from the sampled artist and as such determine a more equitable way of dealing with samples for both parties.
Amongst the various easter eggs in the interactive application for the Proto-Heads release are a few examples of my early sketches of sample notation for nsMpLR. These spun from improvisation sessions like 081106, where I would come up with numerous motif’s, each with the potential to be blown out into full formed songs. The notation system I developed was a way for me to transcribe some of the choice selections in these improvisations for repeated performance and composition.
An example of this is the Proto-Heads track “ooohhh0001.” The samples set was comprised of three sections from the original track, each separated by approximately fifty seconds in the original composition, the first lasting two bars the latter two only one bar in duration.
These three selections were laid out across three rows on the monome in nsMpLR (actually there was a fourth sample but it was not used in the final track). With the nsMpLR each row has eight trigger points (the green markers in the images show the default settings which evenly divide the selections into eight sections). These points can be adjusted to trigger specific notes within each of the selections; the ADSR settings for each row combined with the press duration determines how much of the selection is played from the trigger point, ranging from less than 1/32nd to the remaining duration of the selection.
These were improvised upon and from that improvisation a head was created, which is represented in the first staff group in the following image.
If you flip the images for the sample selections above 90 degrees, so that the start is on the bottom, then line them up with the first three parts of the staff group, each of the trigger points represents either a line or space on the staves, the start representing the bottom line. A note duration on the staff represents how much of the selection is played from that trigger. As such, the notes can represent more than one note (though in this case only the quarter notes at the start of the first three bars contains more than a single note from the sample selection).
Beneath the staff group is a cantus firmus derived from the sample notation. This can be a direct transcription of the notes performed with the samples or a close derivative. In this case the opening quarters of the sample notation are omitted because the structure of the head leaves it open for improvisation, while the hits that follow are the fixed motif.
In western musical theory a cantus firmus can be understood as the start of a composition and in this case things are no different. Whether through direct transcription for multiple parts or counterpoint harmonies, this cantus firmus can be expanded into infinite compositional possibilities all stemming from a sample performance. Even further if you compare the cantus firmus with a transcription from the full song the only similarity you would find between them is the key selection. Once more something could be composed without using the samples at all and the result would be so far removed from the original sample even the sampled artist wouldn’t recognize the source.
From this simple example one can see how it is possible to create an entirely new compositional work via sampling, which stands on its own musical merits, and is distinguishable enough from the sample source to be classified as an original composition. While this wouldn’t necessarily be true for all sample based productions it does set up grounds where using samples is no different from a classical composer borrowing a small motif from the composition of another composer to create a new body of work.
If you wondering what the above notation actually sounds like with the samples you can hear it below and as a part of the Proto-Heads release currently available. Also be sure to check out the interactive application for Proto-Heads for additional early sketches of nsMpLR sample notation.
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Published under: ArtTags: heads • music theory • notation • plpheads • proto-heads • sampling • transcription
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