EA - Rosetta soundtrack (the making of)
Community 1 memberThe challenge...
The call of the European Space Agency was a brilliant way to disseminate the Rosetta Mission. It was about the submission of a video that will awake "Rosetta" space-craft from deep space hibernation. Inspiration was the only ally and the beginning of a race against time.
Rosetta and Philae near the comet
Click here to see the animation of their journey: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Rosetta/The_long_trek
The idea...
The idea was to compose a unique musical piece inspired by certain numbers related to the Rosetta Mission. Number 3 was a key number representing the 3 gravity assists that Rosetta received from Earth. By dividing a string length by 3 and playing either portion of 2/3 we get the interval ratio of the 5th interval in relation to the fundamental (the whole string length). Music had to be not more than 90 seconds. Mr Oded Ben Horin was kind enough to send me a melody by a young girl from Norway, that responded to all these numbers.
Two of the fundamental proportions within 'Tetraktys' in Pythagoras' Monochord, 1/1 (Fundamental/Tonic, First, Ist/ A), and 2/3 (2nd Harmonic/Fifth,Vth/ E)
The early-sound of a student...
Apart from the essential audio process of an on-line flute recording, small deviations on tuning were left untouched (in exchange I chose to reduce the volume) in order to highlight the characteristics of a student's sound. The early sound of a flute student orbiting from one side to the other symbolizes the unique struggle of each and everyone of us towards the journey of knowledge. Science and humanity will always be a student in front of the miracles of the Cosmos...
The praxis...
1) 00:00 - 00:22 Introduction
The fundamental note of the theme A (La) begins with the Contrabass section suggesting the Erebos. I chose the opening motive of three notes A-C-B implying the triangle that points out to the rest of the theme. The same motive as it raises higher by the violas and the violin sections, it is transposed to the 5th interval which is the middle of a full octave. Without reaching the full tone but only the dominant, introduction ends with the motive in diminished 7th.
The dominant is the second most important degree within the octave. According to the Pythgorean scale 5th interval is expressed by the ratio of 3/2 which is also the Time Signature for the Theme.
2) 00:23- 00:41 Theme (by Oda Rolfsnes)
The full theme is introduced with a simple Piano sequence. Strings are devided in two sections. The first section assists the theme with long notes and the second begins a rhythmic game on 7 notes that suggest the "Hemiolion" . Hemiolion is the relation between ratios 3/2 and 2/2 (Ευκλείδου, Κατατομή του Κανώνος).
00:27- 00:30 First Hemiolion (3/2, 2/2)
00:36 - 00:39 Second Hemiolion (3/2, 2/2)
3) 00:41 - 01:03 Theme recapitulation (flute by Eugenia Veskouki)
The theme played by the early sound of a flute-student is barely heared as it passes from one side to the other. The sound makes a 360 degrees orbit symbolizing the struggle and the challenge for human knowledge and the devices sent to the universe in order to achieve it.
00:44 - 00:53 & 00:54-01:03 Theme cut in half
The sympraxis
The heart of this creation was the asynchronous participation of two students who had seen each other only through videoconference.
In the Spring of 2013, "Write-A-Science-Opera" project produced the student's Opera "Pappa Kom Heim" ("Daddy Come Home"). Oda Rolfsnes from Norway and Eugenia Veskouki from Greece both took part on this during a live videoconference linkcast between pupils from Norway, Greece and Cyprus. For more information on the event please visit this page.
For the EA-Rosetta soundtrack Oda's melody was sent as an MPEG4 audio file which was digitized with MuseScore open source notation software. The material was then recorded live by Eugenia in Greece on an online environment with me as the teacher. This recording was processed to blend with Virtual Studio Technology (VST) audio samples of a real symphony orchestra (in Soundfont file fomat) using two Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) environments (Audacity, Cubase LE4).
A practice is born...
Music collaborations from a distance is already common practice in DAW environments. This practice could successfuly assist parts of the "Let Us Share The Music" Good Practice where synchronous music collaboration is not possible.
Rosetta theme in progress
See the WINNER video...
You can see the video on the following link: