To a New World
Original By: Wenzhi Xia
Work Description: “To a New World” is a piece of experimental electronic music I composed and produced
in Logic Pro, and mixed in Ableton Live. Inspired by the recent event of the Fukushima
water release, I came up with a storyline of humans evacuating from their polluted
environment to a new place, but ended up polluting the new place as well. The piece
features many unique sound designs based on various samples and sound effects, such
as bird singing sounds decorated with a chorus effect, and string instrument sounds that
are sent through a LFO-controlled filter. I wanted to demonstrate the process of men
polluting the world by gradually transforming my music from tonal to atonal, and from
acoustic sounding to electronic sounding. “To a New World” tells a story of a vicious
cycle, and maintained my stance that environmental protection should be our collective
effort. Structure Analysis: “To a New World” can be divided into four sections. The intro and the outro sections are relatively
short (0:00-0:20, 3:52-4:22), symbolizing environments destroyed and abandoned by men. Immediately
after the intro, section 2 (0:20-2:10) introduces a group of acoustic instruments including strings, pan
flute, and Chinese folk instruments like Xiao and Guzheng, accompanied by soft synthesizer pads; the
section sounds calm and peaceful, representing an undisturbed natural habitat at which the humans
have just arrived. Soon a more powerful synthesizer lead came in, harmonizing with the rest of the
instruments, symbolizing humans have settled down here and lived with nature healthily. Yet this
relationship did not last for long. I gradually removed the acoustic instruments towards the end of this
section, and there are only very few acoustic instruments that survived to section 3 (2:11-3:51). The
arrangement transformed from acoustic sounding to electronic sounding, and here I introduced more
sequencers, arppegiators and drum loops to show the accelerated death of the natural environment. Finally, the piece reaches its outro, which recycles many samples from the intro section, meaning that
men have once again destroyed their home, and once again have to journey to a new world.

ca ra (Cara)

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