The pitch and timbre of the resulting sound are determined by the source material unless the grain duration is too short and a broad-band spectrum results. The stereo tape is a mixdown from an eight-track original which includes four stereo pairs of the granular material, and therefore the vertical densities of sound are around 80 at any one moment, and the horizontal densities range from quite sparse through to 8,000 events per second at the very end. Microscopic timbral changes that normally go unnoticed become evident with the repetition of the overlapping grains.
Formant regions become especially pronounced.
The analogy in the work is between the sampled visual image of the statue and the sampled vocal sound as the source of the synthesized music. Each is based within the human dimension but the transformation techniques extend them towards the epic and the supra-human, as at the end of the first movement. In the second movement, the Scherzo, the statue is given a head, though rather androgynously, and the phonemes in the tape part are detached and realistic. However, each image accumulates again into more elaborate patterns that mask the source. A new kind of machine emerges that releases the earth-bound images into upward flight, a metaphor perhaps for the technique of granular synthesis that seems to break into a new sonic domain.