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Marlon Bundo

Fabulous Phoebe and the Two Uncles

Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like

Chapter 2

This variation is a canon in unison. That is, there are two voices (plus a bass obligato), the second of which plays the same line as the first voice, but one bar behind.

I had found it challenging to hear the two voices independently, so I tried this experiment: I recorded each voice separately onto separate tracks, then panned the first voice to the left and the second voice to the right. In this way, it's much easier to hear each voice as independent and easier to hear how the two voices interweave to form the whole.

I made the recording using GarageBand and the built-in Steinway Grand Piano software instrument. In other words, it isn't a real piano, but a MIDI instrument. I like the outcome of the experiment, though, and so I can imagine trying this with a real piano.

Variation 3

Marooned

Electrician

Variation 6

This is another experiment in separating the voices of a contrapuntal work for piano. Here there are four independent voices, which enter in this order: Alto, Soprano, Tenor, and Bass.

To make it easier to hear them distinctly, each voice is panned to a different location in the stereo spectrum:
- Soprano: soft right
- Alto: hard left
- Tenor: hard right
- Bass: soft left
I chose these stereo positions in order to maximize the "distance" between voices, with the idea that voices that are closer together with respect to their ranges should be farther apart with respect to their stereo positions.

This track also represents my initial experiments in manipulating the tempo slightly to give a more natural playing feel. In particular, I reduced the tempo slightly in the final fraction of a beat before important cadences, as I do when I play the piece at an actual piano. The idea is to stretch out the anticipation of the resolution of the cadence, and I think it's pretty effective.

Fugue in C Major

2020-07-19 (rough mix)

Alex Basson

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