Oneness is the fourth and final piece of the suite “Cosmology”, included in the homonymous album released by Kotebel in July of 2017.

The “Cosmology” suite is an ambitious work based on a musical representation of 4 different conceptions of the Cosmos:

• The Geocentric Universe (Earth as center of the universe and God as an anthropomorphic entity)
• The Mechanical Universe (the cosmos is a complex machine where parts interact with each other based on physical laws. God does not exist).
• The Entangled Universe (rather than isolated entities, we are actually all “connected”).
• Oneness (rather than “connected” we are really one. Like waves in the sea…)

Adriana Plaza was in charge of writing the Geocentric Universe, and created the following Main theme for the suite:

Cosmology Main Theme

I wrote the other three pieces.

Actually, the idea of the Cosmology suite aroused from “The Mechanical Universe”, written back in 2012, shortly after the release of the “Concerto for Piano and Electric Ensemble”. When I finished that piece, I had the idea of representing other cosmological conceptions. I presented the project to Adriana, and invited her to write The Geocentric Universe.

An obvious consequence of the fact that “The Mechanical Universe” was written before the other three, is that this is the only piece where the Cosmology theme is not present. To a certain extent it made some sense because in this conception of the Cosmos, God does not exist. However, I wanted Oneness to include elements from all the other pieces.

I didn’t want to incorporate any themes from “The Mechanical Universe” into “Oneness” because I didn’t want to contaminate this work with ideas that suggest the opposite of what oneness means. So, the way to include “The Mechanical Universe” in “Oneness”, was timbrical. I incorporated in “Oneness” 2 distinct sounds from the AniMoog synthesizer, used in “The Mechanical Universe”. Here are the 2 sounds, with melodies from Mechanical and Oneness:

Mechanical 1

Oneness 1

Mechanical 2

Oneness 2

Creating a musical representation of “The Mechanical Universe” and “The Entangled Universe” was not too difficult: in “The Mechanical Universe” the pulsating nature of the main theme, the industrial sounds, the baroque emulation of computers, etc. came out naturally. For “The Entangled Universe”, it seemed natural to use counterpoint, imitation and a dense interplay between the instruments to represent “entangledness”. However, How to express the concept of “Oneness” in music?

In order to do that, I used the following concept:

So, I took that concept and applied it to create “Oneness”. The first thing I did, was to create a piano passage where the right-hand plays exactly the same melody (representing the universal energy):

Right-hand – Universal Energy

But the left-hand moves in such a way as to create constant harmonic modulations; therefore, morphing the fixed melody into different music passages (representing the different physical manifestations of that same energy):

Left-hand – Different physical instances

Then I did the same with this simple melodic phrase:

Melodic Phrase example

Listen to all the harmonic changes done with the piano, while the guitar keeps a constant pattern:

Melodic Phrase Development

After this passage, we find the first synthesizer sound from “The Mechanical Universe” in unison (being One) with the piano:

Synth 1 in unison with piano

I had represented the concept of different manifestations of the same essence with melody and harmony. Now it was the turn to do it with rhythm. This rhythmic pattern:

Rhythmic Pattern

appears throughout the piece in different settings. Now, the interesting thing to observe is that the pattern, always played by cymbals, suddenly forms part of the guitar solo in the climax of the song.

These are the different instances where this rhythmic motive appears:

Instances of Rhythmic Pattern

There is another resource that I used to express the concept of Oneness: I created two different patterns that have the same rhythm (the Universal energy) but different harmonies (different physical instances) and put them one on top of the other.

In order for the listener to understand what I’m doing, I purposely presented the patterns separately, and then combined them. You will see that the result of combining both patterns generates a different entity where each individual component cannot be differentiated easily:

Juxtaposition of Two Different Patterns

Cosmology Theme

The Cosmology Theme appears throughout the piece and is presented, for the last time in the suite, in the climax of the piece during the guitar solo:

Cosmology Theme on Song Climax

The theme appears “disguised” using a composition resource known as “augmentation”, based on proportionately increasing the duration of the notes in a melody or theme. For those of you who can read music, here’s a perfect example by the Master J.S. Bach:

The lower voice is an augmented version of the theme presented by the upper voice.

The Cosmology Theme is based on short phrases made up of two notes each. I took this melodic structure and expanded it to create the theme used to organize the main development section. The augmented/modified theme is played by these instruments, in order:

1. Synthesizer 1
2. Electric Guitar
3. Synthesizer 2 (using the second sound of the AniMoog, taken from the Mechanical Universe)
4. Flute
5. Synthesizer 2, and other instruments join to modify the theme and take it to the end of the development section.

Development based on Augmented/Modified Cosmology Theme

The Cosmology theme also appears in the beginning of the piece:

Cosmology Piece at the Beginning

The way the piece ends, is also a representation of Oneness:

The piano chords and guitar arpeggios of the beginning are restated, this time separated by the rhythmic motive. The instruments progressively start to reduce the number of notes. Observe what the synth pad is doing: with every single strike of the cymbal, a note disappears. So the whole band progressively reduces the number of notes until, at the end, a single note is played in unison by the guitar, flute and the note left in the synth pad: Oneness

Oneness Ending

You may recall the second Kotebel Corner article that appeared in the December 2016 issue: Folkloric Rhythms in the Music of Kotebel. Well, in this piece Carlos Franco incorporated yet another type of Venezuelan rhythm. It is called “Parranda”. Here’s the rhythm in its original setting, played in Paracotos, Venezuela:

And here is the Parranda rhythm embedded seamlessly into Oneness:

Parranda Rhythm in Oneness

As I have done with previous analyses, here’s the Oneness template, exactly as I originally conceived the piece while living in Washington DC, in 2014:

Original Oneness Template

Credits

“Cosmology” written and arranged by Carlos G. Plaza Vegas. © 2014 All rights reserved.

Additional arrangements by “Kotebel”. © 2017 Carlos G. Plaza Vegas. All rights reserved.

“Oneness” performed and recorded by Kotebel on April 2017.

Parranda video:
Agrupaciòn “PARRANDA PARACOTOS.”
Paracotos, Municipio Guaicaipuro, Estado Miranda, Venezuela. Dic. 2015.
Video courtesy of: Yoleine Mateus Guerrero.

Here’s the link to the whole video: https://youtu.be/Mf-bQxq6DTg

Augmentation example taken from the site www.teoria.com