I am going to try a new kind of article today... an in-depth single-track analysis. Some of the music I like appeals to me for very specific reasons. While I was watching the movie Amadeus, it occurred to me that I could probably appreciate opera music much more if I could think of it in the terms Salieri describes it with. So I will be doing some of these in the hope that it opens up some new musical doors for a few people.
For my first attempt, I will be doing Orbital's "Planet of the Shapes" from their 1992 self-titled album (the brown one... they have three self-titled albums of different colors). One of my all-time favorite pieces of music from any artist, this is a 10-minute Ambient Techno epic with some very interesting sonic texture choices. The mixture of hard techno drum sounds with floating flute and sitar is very interesting. However, I'll be focusing more on the track's rhythmic content.
Here's a link to Orbital's SoundCloud page with the track in question so you can hear the specific parts I'll be talking about:
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/02-planet-of-the-shapes
Much of Orbital's music densely layers its sound, with lots of intricate details in both the rhythms and the sounds themselves. This particular track is one of the best examples of Orbital's skill with rhythmic layering, which is why I chose it for this article. Understanding how this one works makes much of their other work more accessible.
After the intro at 0:58, the music starts in earnest with just an isolated bass line. It's fixed already, and never changes. Without any other details around it, it's hard to make sense of its phrasing (where it begins and ends becomes entirely unclear after one repetition). Once the beat arrives at 1:44, we can tell that both the beat and bass line have 16-beat phrasing. The core composition technique that underpins almost everything in this track is now present. The bass line and the kick drum play off each other in an intricate way. The way I focus on this is to play along with the bass line in my head and hear how the beat fills in between it, continues its phrases at times, or has gaps in sync with it at others. Then I focus instead on the beat, and I hear the bass line interacting with it. The experience of the music from these two perspectives is different, and that idea carried out on other bits and pieces of it throughout is what makes it all so amazing to me. After becoming aware of these different perspectives, listening from a global perspective is like looking at a forest from above but still being able to see the individual trees at the same time.
At 2:01, the snare drums and a couple hi-hat sounds get added in. 2:15 adds in some subtle extra bits with an occasional longer-echo snare and a heavier accent kick drum on beats 1 and 3 of each measure.
Often in the various forms of Techno, chunks of the music are taken out and put back in again to give a sense of how they add to everything else going on. At 2:30 the rhythms all drop out, and there's a cacophonous break. 2:45, and the rhythms return, plus an extra tambourine, and at 3:15 the cacophonous part drops out. Up to this point, there are lots of different rhythmic interactions to listen to and already I find it very interesting.
But then 3:30 drops the rhythms entirely and enters the first floating part with the appearance of the flute. Now they're putting the "ambient" in Ambient Techno with a gigantic contrast to what's gone before. At 3:45, the sitar appears. The flute and sitar aren't sharply tied to all the other rhythmic details that were going on, so they float among the trees in the forest of the background when it returns at 4:15. This is where the track develops some emotional punch. The stark contrast between the floating parts and the intricate rhythmic parts just melts me.
At this point, all the elements have been present, and the track continues by modulating these and combining and recombining them in different ways. At any one point in all this, focusing on any one element will highlight how everything else interacts with it.
I think all of this is deliberate on the part of the Hartknoll brothers. My evidence is the vocal sample (which I deliberately ignored so it could be a punchline) that we hear at the start and end of the track. From the movie "Withnail and I" (1987) we hear this: "Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day". If we imagine looking at just the clock, as the day passes it will occasionally sync with the time correctly; that experience is watching something stationary as something in motion occasionally matches with it. If we imagine watching the light outside, periodically the clock will match it; the experience of watching something changing to occasionally match something stationary will be a different one. But overall, they are the same thing just viewed from different perspectives.
It was Orbital's album "Snivilization" (1994) that first made me aware of this way of hearing music. I'm sure I was doing this sort of thing before, but becoming aware of it made a big difference. Not long after, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was suddenly better able to appreciate Jazz!
If you'd like to hear other works by Orbital that can be analyzed this way, try these:
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/01-the-moebius (1991)
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/03-sad-but-true-feat-alison (1994)
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/06-adnans (1996)
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/02-pants (2004)
For my first attempt, I will be doing Orbital's "Planet of the Shapes" from their 1992 self-titled album (the brown one... they have three self-titled albums of different colors). One of my all-time favorite pieces of music from any artist, this is a 10-minute Ambient Techno epic with some very interesting sonic texture choices. The mixture of hard techno drum sounds with floating flute and sitar is very interesting. However, I'll be focusing more on the track's rhythmic content.
Here's a link to Orbital's SoundCloud page with the track in question so you can hear the specific parts I'll be talking about:
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/02-planet-of-the-shapes
Much of Orbital's music densely layers its sound, with lots of intricate details in both the rhythms and the sounds themselves. This particular track is one of the best examples of Orbital's skill with rhythmic layering, which is why I chose it for this article. Understanding how this one works makes much of their other work more accessible.
After the intro at 0:58, the music starts in earnest with just an isolated bass line. It's fixed already, and never changes. Without any other details around it, it's hard to make sense of its phrasing (where it begins and ends becomes entirely unclear after one repetition). Once the beat arrives at 1:44, we can tell that both the beat and bass line have 16-beat phrasing. The core composition technique that underpins almost everything in this track is now present. The bass line and the kick drum play off each other in an intricate way. The way I focus on this is to play along with the bass line in my head and hear how the beat fills in between it, continues its phrases at times, or has gaps in sync with it at others. Then I focus instead on the beat, and I hear the bass line interacting with it. The experience of the music from these two perspectives is different, and that idea carried out on other bits and pieces of it throughout is what makes it all so amazing to me. After becoming aware of these different perspectives, listening from a global perspective is like looking at a forest from above but still being able to see the individual trees at the same time.
At 2:01, the snare drums and a couple hi-hat sounds get added in. 2:15 adds in some subtle extra bits with an occasional longer-echo snare and a heavier accent kick drum on beats 1 and 3 of each measure.
Often in the various forms of Techno, chunks of the music are taken out and put back in again to give a sense of how they add to everything else going on. At 2:30 the rhythms all drop out, and there's a cacophonous break. 2:45, and the rhythms return, plus an extra tambourine, and at 3:15 the cacophonous part drops out. Up to this point, there are lots of different rhythmic interactions to listen to and already I find it very interesting.
But then 3:30 drops the rhythms entirely and enters the first floating part with the appearance of the flute. Now they're putting the "ambient" in Ambient Techno with a gigantic contrast to what's gone before. At 3:45, the sitar appears. The flute and sitar aren't sharply tied to all the other rhythmic details that were going on, so they float among the trees in the forest of the background when it returns at 4:15. This is where the track develops some emotional punch. The stark contrast between the floating parts and the intricate rhythmic parts just melts me.
At this point, all the elements have been present, and the track continues by modulating these and combining and recombining them in different ways. At any one point in all this, focusing on any one element will highlight how everything else interacts with it.
I think all of this is deliberate on the part of the Hartknoll brothers. My evidence is the vocal sample (which I deliberately ignored so it could be a punchline) that we hear at the start and end of the track. From the movie "Withnail and I" (1987) we hear this: "Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day". If we imagine looking at just the clock, as the day passes it will occasionally sync with the time correctly; that experience is watching something stationary as something in motion occasionally matches with it. If we imagine watching the light outside, periodically the clock will match it; the experience of watching something changing to occasionally match something stationary will be a different one. But overall, they are the same thing just viewed from different perspectives.
It was Orbital's album "Snivilization" (1994) that first made me aware of this way of hearing music. I'm sure I was doing this sort of thing before, but becoming aware of it made a big difference. Not long after, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was suddenly better able to appreciate Jazz!
If you'd like to hear other works by Orbital that can be analyzed this way, try these:
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/01-the-moebius (1991)
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/03-sad-but-true-feat-alison (1994)
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/06-adnans (1996)
https://soundcloud.com/orbital-4/02-pants (2004)
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