MAP Project: Peter Ko — Annotations on To Become
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Annotations on To Become
by Peter Ko
To Become, A Collaborative Composition for Solo Cello - by Tiange Zhou and Peter Ko (Score and Audio below)
Overall, the piece centers around the technique of sul pont, which alters the timbre of the cello to produce a tone some would describe as more “glassy”. This tone is produced through a specific combination of string contact point (typically close to the bridge), speed of the bow, and weight/pressure of the bow, which results in the higher harmonics/partials being brought out more strongly over the fundamental pitch.
This piece takes sul pont, on the open G string, to an extreme, displaying how the performer can to some extent influence which partials are brought out. The first three sections are essentially that of a progression, where we gradually work our way to higher partials, sometimes at the complete suppression of the fundamental. The important thing to note here is these variations in timbre are accomplished solely through the bow alone, with no influence from the left hand.
The following sections thereafter feature the left hand working in various ways to indirectly influence the sul pont tone, by plucking notes on other strings and influencing other points of sympathetic resonance. We eventually return back, home, to a more conventional tone, but now with the knowledge and experience of having explored the different parts of the instrument’s resonance the comprises its whole; the parts that become the whole.
As a general note, the length of each section does not strictly follow what was in the score.
Section 1: 00:05 - 01:30ish
Start the piece with playing in sul pont on cello G string, and try to trigger more fundamental pitch and less other partials
To start with, I positioned my bow to a contact point close to the bridge, with generally a lighter weight and somewhat faster bow speed. Subtle alterations and inflections of these parameters altered which partials came out more, influencing the timbre of the sul pont
As a side-note, around 00:31, I rotated my head around a bit as I was playing, and you can hear how the audio “panned” accordingly to how the binaurals were positioned on my ears, which highlights the spatial nature of how one can hear things. Generally speaking, I’ve noted that my head will more or less position itself automatically in a way that I find intuitively well “EQed”
Section 2: 01:30ish - 03:30ish
Keep playing sul pont on G string, about two times of the previous duration, and trigger a bit more partials
In general, to get higher partials, I am slowly working my way to a contact point closer to the bridge, with perhaps a lighter pressure from the bow.
Section 3: 03:30ish - 06:01
Keep playing sul pont on G string about the same duration of the previous phase with much less fundamental
At this point, I am very close to the bridge of the cello. The way these partials are being brought out are mostly via intuition, with very subtle inflections to my physical approach.
One of my working theories is that some of these higher partials can only be brought out strongly via the sustain and resonance of some of the lower partials, although I am not 100% certain of this.
Section 4: 06:01 - 08:04
Take a deep breath and keep playing sul pont on G string about the same duration of the previous phase with mostly higher partials continuity, but add short pizzicatti
Section 5: 08:04 - 09:45
Keep playing sul pont on G string with long pizzicatti associated with glissandi
Section 6: 09:45 - 11:04
Keep playing sul pont on G string with alternations between mid and higher partials with lots of vibrations
The way I interpreted this passage was to try using vibrato at various locations on other strings that weren’t being played, to influence it via sympathetic vibrations.
For example, right at the start of this section, I placed my finger where G2 would be located on the C string, and vibrated. The result was the fundamental frequency suddenly blooming out as a result, even though I was continuing to play sul pont on the G string alone.
Generally speaking, the lower frequencies were more easily influenced by this method than the higher frequencies, along with pitches that corresponded to the lower order partials.
Section 7: 11:04 - 12:11
Keep playing sul pont on G string with various types of tremolo and trigger more fundamental frequency
I opted to keep the sustain of the bow, and created a tremolo-type effect by rapidly pressing/depressing on various notes of other strings.
As a result, you can hear the “clicking” from the string hitting the fingerboard, which would sometimes result in some notable sympathetic resonance, and sometimes not
Ex 11:10, you can hear how that tremolo really influences the tone due to strong sympathetic resonance
Section 8: 12:11 - 13:13
Play col legno on G string with different pitches
Col legno, meaning to play with the wood of the bow rather than the hair, produces a similar altered timbre effect to ponticello due to how the wood of the bow does not engage the string as efficiently as hair does, and thus pulls out the overtones in an unbalanced way.
One aspect of col legno that often goes unnoticed is that a second noticeable pitch is produced, that of a more gristly timbre, which correlates to the point of string contact that the wood of the bow engages with.
Ex: 12:20: you can hear this rapid gliss in pitch, that corresponds to the bow shifting its contact point from the bridge to the fingerboard
Section 9: 13:13 - End
Play sul pont on cello G string, and try to trigger more fundamental pitch and less other partials
To end the piece, I took the liberty of moving away from sul pont, and I actually moved the bow to sul tasto (see ~13:45), which means to play above the fingerboard. Here, the string is looser, and also is “shorter”, so the combination of the two leads to a very limited production of higher partials.
Afterwards, I brought the bow back to a more normative contact point, in the middle of the string between the bridge and fingerboard.
A final note I’d like to make is that while the binaural microphones were great at capturing my perspective of the sound, I do feel as if it doesn’t quite capture the entirety of the aural experience. Specifically, there is a spatiality to the sound from the cello that I experience when playing it live; the vibrations from playing the instrument, which comes in contact with my hand, my chest, my legs, and even my feet that feel the vibrations transmitting to the floor, all of which influence my listening, are all either lost in translation, or “flattened” to fit within the speaker’s/headphone’s output.
The embodied listening of the live experience is perhaps ‘uncapturable’ in that sense. However, I will say that the binaurals are still very interesting and effective in adding depth and dimension, in capturing some dimension of spatial perspectival listening!