At-Oddness

I use predictable audible patterns as frameworks—matrixes that can then be disrupted by various elements of the texture, seeming to place them temporarily at-odds with our expectations. When I listen to music, the presence of framing patterns makes me anticipate the pleasure of hearing temporary at-oddness be artfully introduced and reconciled. Unexpectedness depends on expectations. For me, the relative absence of either framing schemas or artful disruptions creates a sense of monotony.

For example, the greatest and most affecting sensations of dissonance that I have experienced have come in passages of music in which sensations of relative consonance were used to frame that dissonance. (Mahler’s works, for example, have many such moments.)

Rhythmic syncopation provides another example. We can only perceive a rhythm as syncopated when we have a regular pulse on which to base our rhythmic perceptions. The addition of repeated patterns and a perceptible metric frame adds even more opportunities for at-oddness. Likewise the sense of coloration that gave “chromaticism” its name seems to me most pungent when experienced as a disruptive element relative to a matrix of diatonic patterns.