Introduction

Nature

When you hear the word “Nature”, what kind of image do you have in your head? Maybe one will associate it first with materials or phenomena in nature such as water, earth, wind, fire, lightning, mountain, ocean, sky, and so on. Maybe another thinks of creatures and plants such as animals, insects, trees, and flowers. Or even someone has a bigger idea such as stars, planets, nebula, and the universe. Here is the definition of nature in the dictionary. 

1. The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.
2. The basic or inherent features, character, or qualities of something.1

This definition of nature is very extensive in that it can contain almost everything in the world except human creations and cultures. When I think about the feature of nature, I have a certain concept in my head which is unsystematic, asymmetrical, spontaneous, flexible, and variable, even though modern science is discovering that nature is designed precisely and has a well-systematized structure.

Nature in the music

The fundamental of sound generation is based on the vibration of air which is a natural phenomenon. "Sound propagates through the air or other mediums as a longitudinal wave, in which the mechanical vibration constituting the wave occurs along the direction of propagation of the wave."2 It can be measured with mathematical systems and operates precisely. All the musical instruments are designed by this principle but applied through different materials.

Since humans have a limited capacity of sense, the things we can perceive in nature are also limited. In sound, humans cannot capture all the frequencies, and furthermore, it is difficult to recognize all the micro noises in one sound. In rhythm, we divide time within our cognizance and it produces segmentation. Between each segment, it contains smaller units which humans cannot categorize, and consequently, we feel natural features because of what we cannot recognize. Since natural features compose a compound of complexities that humans cannot define, our ear and brain rather understand and accept them as sounds which are irregular and variable. In consequence, humans are able to perceive and understand natural sounds and soundscapes that are more unsystematic and asymmetrical than our systematized music. For that reason, I would like to take such sounds and soundscapes as a point of departure for a new kind of music.

I extract natural properties that influence my musical work. I categorize them into two groups, a major and a minor group. The natural features in a major group are irregularity, coincidence, and chaos which are the most influential figures in my musical concept. They are characteristics that take a huge part of my idea of free improvisation. I apply them to the composing method as a bigger perspective such as the structure and direction of the music. The minor group contains other natural traits which are flexibility, variability, impreciseness, and continuity. I use them as a smaller perspective such as sounds, techniques, and phrases. 

My aim

In this research, my aim is to investigate how to use musical parameters in a way that articulates the features of naturalness rather than conventional approaches that have systematical and mathematical characteristics. I apply this naturalness to the parameters of sound such as texture, timbre, pitch to explore diverse ways of expressions that allow describing various sounds from the actual world. Also, I use natural features as a composing method that emphasizes irregularity, coincidence, and chaos, meanwhile those elements harmonize and integrate to create complete music. In the project, I combine those two aspects, sound and composing, and produce the musical concept which I call “Natureous music”. It is finalized through the album recording session.

The term natureous is not in the dictionary. There is the word “natural” which is the adjective of nature. In the dictionary it says “1)Existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind. 2)In accordance with the nature of, or circumstances surrounding, someone or something.”3 The term “natural” gives the impression that something is alike or in nature. If I call my musical concept “natural music”, it can be interpreted that the music imitates sounds in nature or uses tools from nature as instruments. However, my main focus is an unconventional approach by using unsystematic and asymmetrical elements from natural sounds and soundscapes. So, to convey my idea of music inspired by the chaotic and coincidental characteristic of natural sounds, I have invented the term natureous music.

This thesis tracks the journey of my musical development and the work process in sound and music-making, what elements I got affected by and what knowledge I gained from the different sources. During the process, one idea has progressively influenced another, resulting in a metamorphosis of my musical perspective and style, thereby creating a specific direction of my music-making process and arriving at the concept of natureous music.

Artificiality

Human-made music has a system and a notation of it. The traditional notation system of western classical music is systematic, mathematical, and segmental.  It has the advantage to notate the equal-tempered scale and clearly divided rhythms. However, it is difficult to write notes that are not consequently placed in a mathematically precise ratio. Some other noises which include ambiguous pitches or sounds are almost impossible to write down. Also, it is problematic to show different rhythmic nuances such as layback in jazz. This notation system allowed the music to develop on the theoretical aspect in sequence like building a house with bricks one by one. However, because of the limitation of expressional capacity, occidental music has missed another factor, naturalness which I demonstrated on the left.

Since the 20th century, with the development of contemporary music, there are many composers and musicians who are focus on different approaches to the music and use their own notation system to complement it. One example is “Graphic notation”.

Graphic notation. A system developed in the 1950s by which visual shapes or patterns are used instead of, or together with, conventional musical notation. Graphic scores tend to fall into one of two categories. First, there are those which attempt to communicate particular compositional intentions. Second, there are those in which visual, often aesthetically pleasing, symbols are presented so as to inspire the free play of the performer's imagination in unstipulated ways.4

In my project, I used the notation which is inspired by the one with linear graphs to show the structure and dynamics of the music intuitively. I add the examples in chapter 5.