The Fragmented Characteristics Of Pop Music And Percussive Instrumental Sounds

The dissertation analyzes an interactive electronic composition Ever Expanding by American composer Dan Vanhassel. The piece is composed for flute, cello, percussion and live electronics. The dissertation aims to analyze through these parts:musical structure, MaxMSP organizational structure and trigger mode, motive quotation methods and timbral features, supplemented by experiments on common acoustic instruments. As for motive quotation methods and timbral features, the author uses the fragmented characteristics of pop music and percussive instrumental sounds for interpretations. Part of the analysis contentions applied to my degree compositions.The dissertation consists of foreword, three chapters, epilogue and two appendices.The foreword contains background of selected topics, an introduction to the composer and the composition.The first chapter is divided into two sections. The first section analyzes musical structure of the composition by means of dividing periods, interprets the trend of development and how the material comes together. The second section deconstructs every module of MaxMSP patch of the composition, exploring the variety of musical elements that the trigger modes bring.The second chapter discusses about rhythmic patterns, harmonies and timbres of the composition and summarizes how they are quoted and developed, the "fragmented" trigger mode in MaxMSP in particular.The third chapter concludes the percussive sounds and their effectiveness in the composition, and discussed further on the experiment of percussive sounds on common acoustic instruments. At last, the function of percussive instrumental sounds and its relationship with fragmented characteristics of pop music is discussed. The definitions of fragmentation, characteristics and percussive instrumental sounds are provided in the beginning of the second and the third chapters.The epilogue reaches a conclusion that the composition is meant to fit into the new music genre which encompasses a wide range of music genres, development skills and technical processing methods. The intergration of all of such roots in the background of the composer.Appendix I explains the relationship between the dissertation and my degree compositions.Appendix II illustrates the original context of the word fragmentation.