River Side in a Summer Afternoon 2002

River Side in a Summer Afternoon (2002)

Visual map of Yu-Chang Tseng's "River Side in a Summer Afternoon"


http://cec.sonus.ca/econtact/electro_shorts/sounds/DIII_023.mp3

           

After spending sometime searching sonus.ca for a piece that caught my eye, (or should I say ear) I found Yu-Chang Tseng's "River Side in a Summer Afternoon." Yu-Chang Tseng completed his DMA at the University of North Texas and has had his music performed at various festivals. Currently, He serves as a sectary to TCMA and an full-time assistant professor at National Taipei Teachers  College, Music Education Department. He intends to create a kind of landscape by  transforming some of non-environmental sounds like sounds of piano, of cymbals into sounds that one might hear at a river side in a summer afternoon. This piece caught my attention with its creative use of panning, and its extensive variety of sound material while still remaining cohesive as a complete work.

I have chosen to categorize the sounds of "River Side in a Summer Afternoon" into two main groups: natural and electronic sounds. One of the most dominate sounds in the natural sound group, for good reason, is the sound of water. The work opens up with a splashing sound which settles into a quite dripping sound in an “echoey” pipe. These splashing sounds resurface through out the work layering over the texture. The dripping sound I mention that appears at the beginning resurface in some form or another though out the piece, it is used to great effect at the quieter less dense sections. Another natural sound the composer draws on a lot is the sound of wind. It appears in many forms, sometimes it sound like wind with crashing waves and at other times it sounds like wind blowing the the trees. The wind sound effects are very interested because they sometimes with just appear out of nowhere in you one ear grow louder panning the the other ear and fade out again. It gives the piece some depth and helps to create a 3D landscape. The composer saves bird noise until later half of the piece, and uses them to create a rain forest type landscape. They begin sounding at about 1:45, and from 2:00-2:45ish there are many different bird chirping and singing like one might hear in a forest.

Yu-Chang Tseng uses many electronic sounds in conjunction with his natural sounds to create some very interesting images. The first electronic sound I notice was a shooting star type sound, it is used very sparingly, once at the beginning, at about the halfway point and finally at the end. He also uses many thunder and static electricity sounds. These like the wind sounds use the panning the great effect, the sounds will start in one ear moving to the other making it seem as if it flashed by right behind my head. At about the 0:15 point, he introduces a sonar/beeping sound, which last for most of the piece, it has a fairly strong rhythmic grove to it as it fades in and out. This along with the shooting star helps to create cohesive quality and structure to the work.

The form of the "River Side in a Summer Afternoon" is fairly simple but it works. It uses the shooting star sound from the beginning, at the halfway point and at the end to outline this structure. The volume and the density of the music gears up just past the halfway point or the “golden ratio” and then, slowly trickles out in the end in a similar manner in which the work begun. I really enjoy this work for this reason, even though texturally it is very different then any other western art music, I find it still very easy to follow and relate to because of Yu-Chang Tseng's use of familiar techniques that have been used for centuries.

Colin Taylor