Acoustic Resonance - Resonance in Musical Composition

Resonance in Musical Composition

Several composers have begun to make resonance the subject of compositions. Alvin Lucier has used acoustic instruments and sine wave generators to explore the resonance of objects large and small in many of his compositions. The complex inharmonic partials of a swell shaped crescendo and decrescendo on a tamtam or other percussion instrument interact with room resonances in James Tenney's Koan: Having Never Written A Note For Percussion. Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster regularly perform in large reverberant spaces such as the 2-million-US-gallon (7,600 m3) cistern at Fort Worden, WA, which has a reverb with a 45-second decay.

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