In revisiting this prompt I wanted to focus more on how I find participatory discrepancy effective rather than how it applied to the pieces we listened to for the original blog prompt.

I think participatory discrepancy is a fascinating concept. The idea of purposely making elements of a piece not quite line up to create an effect is an idea I had never really considered until this prompt, I had never even heard the term before reading the prompt. I had noticed sometimes in pieces when certain things wouldn’t quite line up, but I never knew there was a name for it or how composers use it and create some of the most intriguing sections of their piece using participatory discrepancy.

I think that participatory discrepancy is best used in small amounts, it works well to create a funky section of a piece for variety, when it’s a small section in a ew that lines up otherwise it draws the listener in and engages their ears in a new way because it is so different from what they have heard up to this point in the piece. When participatory discrepancy is used too much in a piece, or if nothing about the piece lines up traditionally it becomes overwhelming to listen to and tends to turn people away from listening to it. This is what I found with Polacca when we originally did this blog prompt. Nothing about this piece ever settled and it was more unnerving to listen to than intriguing, if I’m being completely honest I was hugely relieved when it stopped because I found the participatory discrepancy to be so over used that it ended up just being hard to listen to. As much as I didn’t enjoy listening to the piece, my point in saying this is less to bash on the piece (I’m sure some people enjoy listening to it), but more to express the importance of have stability somewhere in the piece so that the chaos can be appreciated and not dreaded.

Participatory discrepancy, like most things, is best in small doses so it stays something special and good rather than something used to exhaustion.