Otto Luening's Low Speed

This piece is significantly different from the last. Most obviously, it's not using piano sounds at all. It's also about four minutes shorter, meaning it doesn't have the emotional range of Sonic Contours. It's actually quite neat. The sound is what sounds like a wind instrument, some sort of pipe. It's actually flute improvization that has been transposed up a fifth and down an octave and had reverb added. It creates this wavering sound that really reminds me of whale song (mostly because of those crazy offset sounds) right up until the end where the flute starts holding out long notes. The piece doesn't seem to have too much of a sense of change or movement. It does grow right at the beginning, but then it kind of stays the same just using that same offset reverb feel right until the end when it changes to long notes. My conclusion: It has plenty of interesting sounds, but is not terribly exciting music.

Vladimir Ussachevsky's Sonic Contours

The piece begins with a bass sound vaguely like a sonic boom. Then you hear the piano come in in chords, and then there's another boom. The song continues with the piano slowly coming in more and more, with what sounds like some cutting and splicing to create some really abrupt stops and what sounds like some reversals. There is another piano sound underneath that is powerful, long, and low. Next is a section with a lot going on with lots of different higher piano sounds that are all echoing. The bass drone sound is gone at this point. The echoing piano parts then slow down and become more sparse. A new line comes in with what sounds like a back and forth between a half-step in the piano. Then this synthesized creepy baby laugh kind of sound comes in with a reverb on it with some basic little piano runs (also reverberated) underneath. Slowly a high pitch comes in, and then the piano turns into sort of a canon. The lines of the canon are repeated and then repeated a few more times up an octave. It goes in between being really dense and busy and letting sound die out.

This piece is interesting because it draws out a lot of different emotions. It is at some points very jarring and dissonant, and other points it can feel down right creepy. The beginning is very dramatic with its booming bass drones and the very disjunct piano line that also feels kind of rushed. Than the big slow sounds (kind of like organ at about 1:45) come in as kind of a transition to this first section without any of the bass and with lots of higher themes. There's kind of a high whistling sound in the background that creates tension. The lines slow down until the half-steps and the weird laughter comes in. This section is creepy in a way I can't decribe... for some reason it makes me think of The Shining After that section is another section with a lot of reverberating piano, but this is a lot more consonant, and even though the sound jumps around in registers a lot, it has lots of scales that paint warmer, brighter colors. The ending is bright and almost sweet.