Harmonic devices Short Ride in a Fast Machine, true to its
minimalist heritage, utilizes a
tonal language that, according to Catherine Pellegrino, "is not as neatly defined and predictable as that of common-practice tonality". Adams is known (especially in
Phrygian Gates) for the concept of "gating", which is the process of suddenly changing certain pitches in a
harmony, often based on different
modes. As seen in Example 1, the initial pitch collection of D, E, and A, as scored in the clarinets and optional synthesizers, slowly transforms over time by adding pitches. This process is a concept of changing harmony, which Adams describes as "bring[ing] in a new key area almost on the sly, stretching the ambiguity out over such a length of time that the listener would hardly notice that a change had taken place". Throughout the course of the work, Adams experiments with the idea of rhythmic dissonance as material begins to appear, initially in the trumpets, and generates a new sense of pulse. As shown below, the manifestation of rhythmic dissonance is akin to Adams's method of creating harmonic dissonance as he adds conflicting rhythms to disrupt the metronomic stability of the wood block. Adams himself admits that he seeks to "enrich the experience of perceiving the way that time is divided" within his works. Later in the work, (see Example 5) Adams introduces a simple
polyrhythm as a means of initiating a new section that contrasts the rhythmic dissonance of the first section.
Formal devices The idea of formal closure and rhetorical devices in a sense of
common practice is skewed in the works of John Adams, especially in
Short Ride in a Fast Machine. While works of common practice organize material by phrases which are separated by
cadential material, this work is in a state of perpetual motion as the additive element of harmonic and rhythmic material drives the work forward. The "gating" concept gives the overall work a sense of sectional design, but the indication of termination through cadence is something that is absent from the work until the very end, which emulates a ii–V–I cadence. In terms of defining the sections of the work, the wood block is scored in a way that creates a four-part form. The first and third parts of the work have a high wood block present in the scoring, which is contrasted by a low wood block in the second part, while the final part features the absence of wood block. == References ==