Old Sea Shanty for a New Age Pt. 1

This track is the first half of a two-part chamber ensemble work.

Things to note about this piece:

- Much of the first half is repeated almost exactly in the second half, but with the percussion pounding crotchets, which changes the feel of everything else, making it all sound quite different from the first time through.

- In the intro, there are four instruments hocketing an ostinato of three repeated notes. This is interesting considering the research findings that our brain processes audio in parallel “streams” of information. In this example, if you are attending to the timbre stream, you will feel a straight 4/4 pulse, whereas if you attend to the pitch stream you will feel 6/8. The effect is a clash between these two streams of information, which means that whether you perceive one or the other as dominant is likely to be informed by top-down processes.

- Most of these ideas were developed at the piano with manuscript paper & a pencil. So unusual for me!

- This is just a rendering in samples - I haven’t made much effort to make it sound amazing, because it will (hopefully) be played by a real ensemble one day.

http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F16254656Old Sea Shanty for a New Age Pt. 1 by Chrisperren