Hill 1 Jen Hill MUCP 4680 01 November, 2013 Appalachian Grove I (Laurie Spiegel) While she was working

at Bell Laboratories with Max Mathews in the early 1970s, Laurie Spiegel composed a series of three pieces for his GROOVE (Generated Realtime Output Operations on Voltage-controlled Equipment) program. The first in this series of pieces is titled Appalachian Grove I, and was composed in 1974 (the subsequent pieces being Appalachian Grove II & III). Mathews program worked so that a score could be played by the computer on a analog synthesizer while the performer manipulated certain aspects of its nature in real time. Additionally, the parameters can also be modulated with automation performed by the computer program. In the case of this piece, it is difficult to know which parameter controls are automated and which are being manipulated live by the composer herself. Spiegel, a skilled performer on lute and banjo, composed this piece after attending a fiddle festival in North Carolina. Its impossible not to hear the influence of folk music in Appalachian Grove I and the voice of J.S. Bach (whom she as repeatedly cited as an influence) that become apparent through the resulting complex pointillist polyphonic texture The pitch material along with the steady sequencing of notes with their unusual accent placements creates a really unique counterpoint within a single instrument that is simply the result of whatever algorithm had been programmed in the system by Spiegel. In addition to the peculiar counterpoint formed by the accents of certain beats, the stereophonic spreading of the tones is a source of great interest and it further warps how listeners perceive the steady stream of music. Because of they way notes are organized by the computer, the ear tends to objectively pick up certain patterns. For example, there are several instances where there will be many uninterrupted repetitions of the home pitch that serves as a sort of tonal backbone. The listeners ears are drawn to these brief moments of clarity in the otherwise unpredictable landscape of Appalachian Grove I. Since the piece as a whole leans toward a more homogenous texture, her/GROOVEs counterpoint becomes the focal point and further draws attention to the small changes over time in timbre and the duration of tones so that the overall depth becomes thematically important. The pitch material is derived from a natural minor scale, which unfolds in time throughout the piece. While this process is taking place, Spiegel is also manipulating the lengths of the various notes, which gradually get longer throughout the piece. The development of the piece in this sense in especially interesting because the listener gets to hear the counterpoint diversify and thicken in real time via the automation of the computer. Simultaneously, the filtering of the tones goes through several changes over time, back and forth from saw to sine. Based on what Ive read about her performance technique with the GROOVE program, Spiegel was probably controlling the level of the lo-pass filter live herself, in addition to controlling to

Hill 2 overall volume of the tones. The piece culminates volume and intensity-wise approximately 30 seconds before the end; at this point there is a return to the melodic material present at the beginning of the piece when the only pitch playing is the home pitch tonal center. To end the piece in the last 30 seconds, Spiegel shortens the duration of the tones and increase the level of the lo-pass filter to remove the higher overtones. Thematically, the piece ends in a very similar place to where it began. Because this piece has such a clear geometric shape to it (rhythmically and harmonically), I wanted to see how easy it would be to follow along with as a spectrogram and it ended up being very clear, which retrospectively should have been an easy call.

You can really see the attack and duration of each note as well the places where she uses the lo-pass filter. The techniques she used were just immediately more clear. I also learned a lot of things from the spectrogram that I missed listening to the piece. For example, the second half of the piece isnt really louder or more dense, its just that the fluctuations in duration and wave composition are more frequent and intense.