For my final project I will be showing each of you pictures and sounds from our elementary school days all the way to our college days in order to trigger a time where these pictures of sounds were relevant.
For my experiment, I will be testing your sense of time and memory and seeing if different types of music increase or decrease these processes.
I will be showing 4 sets of short slide shows (15 pictures each). The amount of time that each covers will increase for every slide show. My hope is to explain that even though one day in our lives, even one hour, may feel like an extremely long time in our heads, it doesn’t necessarily compare to the duration or importance of events in the past.
I will be displaying an experiment based off of time perception and then testing each of you as well through an interactive process to see how familiarity affects your perception of time.
I’m going to teach the more difficult concepts of time through famous time quotes. I’m going to creatively display these quotes on a 3 dimensional, interactive instrument.
I found the “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” to be a very interesting and intriguing piece of music. At the beginning of the piece, the music is very slow and is very soothing and peaceful to the ear. The alternation between the pitch of the music between being very faint and increasing volume contributed to the carefree feeling I experienced at the beginning. However, I listened to the piece a second time and the beginning almost sounded very mysterious as in the music was trying to mask something dark that was occurring. This second perception could just have been due to the mood I was in at the time. As the rest of the piece unfolded, the notes were incredibly smooth and seemed to flow together creating a distinct character to the piece. The tempo seemed to remain pretty consistent throughout but the pitch still varied enough to continue to draw the listener in like in the beginning. Unlike some of the other music we have studied, there seemed to be more of only one type instrument or group of notes being played at a time rather than various layers of music being played over one another. That was one of the main things that stood out to me. Overall, this piece seemed to coincide with the actual poem itself and brought out an array of emotions when I was listening to it all the way from peace and tranquility to mystery and wonder.
While I was listening to this piece for some reason I felt like I was in Greece maybe with some nymphs but I have a feeling that was because of the poem it’s self. It was like complete serenity, calm, easy, relaxed, as if I were in paradise with nothing really to think about except the scene. The soothing nature of the music is like the music played when you’re getting a massage with real long notes with little disjuct making it real flowing.
I’m undergoing the same thought processes while listening to this music as I was while I read the poem it’s based on, which I suppose is the reaction the composer intended the piece to inspire. That said, I was not particularly engaged by either the poem or the instrumental piece. The feeling I had was that I was missing something that would maybe put the pieces into an enjoyable context, such as a relaxed state of mind. In my current state of mind, I found the floral-seeming quality and classical romantic devices somewhat irritating, as if I were being serenaded by a very affectionate bug and not enjoying it very much at all.
When I listen to the Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, the first thought that pops into my head is how if I had the perfect relaxing, carefree day, I would want this to be my soundtrack. The flow of the notes sooths me in a way that can only be described through picture because words would not do it justice. After this initial thought, I listened to the song again and this time my thoughts wondered to what exactly would be in a day that apiece like this could be used to describe. Visions of days in a meadow surrounded by nothing but trees and flowers came to mind. Then I thought of the flow of a river as the music began to pick up tempo and imagined myself floating down it. More scenes entered my head as the music continued to change with the final one being showing me laying down to a comfortable sleep. Each vision was just as relaxing and realistic as the last. It is amazing to me how something as simple as this piece can make my mind race into so many different directions and make me feel so calm. The wistful, almost fairytale-esque mood that the song brings about makes me want to be in each of the situations that I envision in my head and the more I continue to listen and think about them, the calmer I become. This piece is so vivid, that the worst part of the whole experience is when you realize it is over and you are taken back to reality.
The Prelude opens with a delicate, descending flute. It seems to scale up and down in pitch in a very fluent manner, while a harp escalates the intensity of the music ever so slightly. Even the horn in the background accentuates the flute in a rather subtle way – it sounds like it is swaying back and forth. In fact, as the many strings enter, my mind feels as if it were kinetic. Yet, when the clarinet enters, the sounds seem to descend into a sort of bouncy hush; the dynamics often appear to be fluctuating from a gentle tip-toe to a moving and powerful composition. As the piece continues, I am trying to put a finger on the general tempo of the song, but it seems that the speed is constantly slowing. As I listen my way past the second third of the song, it is evident that the overall tempo and dynamics are declining. However, there seem to be short, sporadic bursts of a bubbly melody played by some sort of woodwind, which livens the music ever so slightly. Throughout the entire composition, there is a theme of cycling from slow and quiet parts to faster, more elevated styles of sound production. During the slow parts, time felt as if it were passing a bit slower and more smoothly than the faster parts, during which time seemed to speed by. Though, perhaps I am feeling this quickened pace of time during the faster sections only because these sections tend to be more succinct. Nevertheless, the piece had quite an impact on my perception of time.
