Acousmatic Composition

This week I got to grips with my second composition. After some playing about with it I settled on creating an ambient piece and I took what I’d done along to tutorials and the feedback was extremely helpful. I made better use of the river/water sounds by doubling them underneath at a lower pitch. I also added a few synth sounds to highlight certain features in the music. I also added a synth sound to lessen the impact of some of the wind noise on a few of the recordings. I found a synth that had an airy/breezy sound and then used this for some time in the composition to give the whole thing a feeling of unity. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to stick to the original plan of using arch form and instead went with making the most of the sounds in a progressive way.
I then went to automate and did encounter a few problems. On some of my tracks I found that there was only a single dot rather than three and on other tracks found that the sound didn’t appear to be moving as much as I would have expected. However, I did the best I could and produced something that I was happy with.
Overall I’ve really enjoyed this module, I’ve learnt so much and though it’s been hard work it’s also been very rewarding.

I played my first composition to a few friends this week and although they enjoyed some noted that something was missing. A couple of days later I was sat in the music department and saw some people playing about with the piano at the end of the hall (the one with no front to it). Some of the different timbres sounded amazing so the next day I arrived at uni particularly early and decided to make a few recordings. My plan was to transform the sounds in accordance to the rest of the composition but when I added the unedited sound I was really pleased with the effect it had against
the flute sounds. I went on to include more piano sounds at the end of the composition, shifting some of the pitches but also leaving some unchanged.
This week 045 was set up with six speakers so we could go in and try out our automation in a 5.1 setup. This was extremely helpful and I got my first composition completed.

So this week I began to actually compose my second composition. After collecting all the sounds and having previously planned out my structure I thought this time round would be a lot simpler than my first composition. I was wrong. The problems I’d had with the amount of wind in my recording soon became clear when I tried playing the sounds back to edit. I had to get rid of a few sounds altogether and the ones that were okay took a lot of editing until I was left with fragments of the sounds that didn’t sound too distorted. Once I was happy with my sounds I then altered them using ixi quarks or sampling them.
Again Heather and I have been doing a lot of setting up of the mixer in 029 so I’ve had the opportunity to listen back to my sounds in the eight speaker set-up and each time I’m still amazed at the difference it makes. I also had a little go at playing around with the automation on my first composition and found it interesting to see the different effects that can be achieved compared to diffusing with the mixer.

Over the Easter holidays I went to collect my sounds. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to go on the walk I’d originally had in mind but at the first sign of sunshine I headed to the heart of Yorkshire and went on a circular walk that would provide similar sound sources to the ones I’d planned for.
I did however encounter quite a few problems when recording the sounds. Mainly this was how much background wind noise was being picked up. However, when I wasn’t at the top of the hill I got some really good recordings of the river and the waterfall. I also discovered a water pump that could produce some interesting colours in my second composition.
In the end I got recordings of the following sounds:

• Footsteps
• Grass
• Gate being opened
• River
• Waterfall
• Water pump
• Birdsong

Well it’s been a very busy couple of weeks so this is a combined blog and is probably going to be pretty long…

Over the past few weeks I’ve helped set up the speaker/diffusion rig MANY times. Outside of setting it up in class both Heather and myself have been along to the hall bright and early the last three Monday mornings. Alongside this I was also given the opportunity to assist with the setup in the Mumford for the concert by Nick Collins. This gave me the opportunity to use some equipment I’d not yet encountered and also to see how the layout of the speakers can vary depending on the venue. Overall I now feel that I understand all the different parts of the setup process and I’m feeling a lot more comfortable in using the mixer. (This is something that eight weeks ago I never imagined I’d be saying!)

Last week in class I was given the opportunity to play my first attempt at an acousmatic composition! This was quite a terrifying experience but the feedback I got from the class was very useful and I have since been listening to quite a lot of Steve Reich.

Sketch One

For this piece the strategy I have chosen to follow is to collect sounds of produced on my flute. The main sounds I have used at present are two recordings of my flute keys and the sound of me breathing down my flute.

Sketch One

With this I plan to take on board the feedback I received and have a go at changing the sounds more frequently at the beginning and making better use of the sound that Heather picked up on in the middle of the piece.

I then plan to record a couple more flute sound and shorten some of what I have already in order for them to be included. After this I’ll work on making the structure a little clearer and then I’ll attempt to include some sound automation. (I had a go at this on Monday but I think it’s going to take me a bit of getting used to!)

Sketch Two

As I mentioned in a previous post I plan on making the theme of my second composition a journey of one of my favourite walks from home. This will give me an automatic structure which will be similar to the Arch form favoured by Bartok.

1. Beginning of journey (Sounds: traffic noise, conversation etc.)

2. The ascent (Sounds: footsteps, waterfalls, rocks moving etc.)

3. The top (Sounds: breeze, birdsong etc.)

4. The descent (Sounds: footsteps, waterfalls, rocks moving etc.)

5. The end of the journey (Sounds: traffic, conversation etc.)

As is shown above, the outer and middle two sections will use the same sound sources however in my composition I plan on manipulating them in different ways to provide some contrast but at the same time keeping a sense of unity.

Obviously with being down here in Cambridge I haven’t yet had the opportunity to carry out the walk and record the sounds I will use but I have recorded some similar sounds and used them purely as a compositional exercise. In this I recorded the sounds of traffic, birdsong and running water and sampled some and also used IXI. I then gave myself an hour, as was suggested, to arrange these in logic. I wasn’t too happy with the sound at the end but its something I can learn from so here is my attempt…

Sketch Two

After watching the latest podcast and listening to some amazing work by other students in last weeks class I was inspired to go away and have a go myself. I began by recording some more sounds on my flute and then edited these in logic. For my piece I chose two sounds to use which were my breath in my flute and pressing my flute keys. I then (after digging out my notes from last year!) put these into the EX sampler in Logic and recorded some stuff. I used the same sounds in IXI and the best sound I got was using the Grainbox instrument. 

Heather and myself had booked the recital hall on Monday morning so we had the chance to setup by ourselves and then have a go at some diffusion. This session was really useful because we both had a go at everything to do with the setup and we got a chance to properly have a look at the mixer. 

Hearing what I’d composed through the eight speaker set-up was quite strange and the piece sounded completely different but also a lot better! It highlighted some problems with what I’d done and thanks to some useful comments from Heather I’m going to work on making a few changes to what I’ve done and then work on extending it.

The podcast from last week was all about choosing sound materials and subsequently assembling them. The point was made that sounds should be chosen for a purpose (even if this is only known by the composer) and not just at random. Three ways to approach selecting sounds were then discussed. The first was a method used by John Cage which is to use rules when selecting sounds and place the sounds into categories. The second was to produce a theme for the composition and choose sounds based around this. The final method suggested grouping sounds according to a certain musical sound or element and the example of plucked strings was given.

All these things got me thinking about what approach I would take towards my own composition and the method I felt most drawn too was the idea of a theme. For some reason the first thing that came to mind was one of my favourite walks in the Lake District and I then thought I could maybe incorporate this into a composition with the theme being the journey. My idea was to record the following sounds:

• Footsteps, small rocks moving, water running, snippets of conversation from the other walkers and finally capture the peace at the top, for example birdsong and the breeze.

I thought that when it came to structuring my piece it would begin with the sounds of other walkers and maybe some traffic from the main road. Following this would come the sounds encountered on the ascent such as the running water and the footsteps. The middle section would capture the peacefulness of the tarn and then the last part of the composition would use the same sound sources as the beginning but processed in a different way. This would give a type of arch form to the composition and the listener would hopefully be able to pick up on the idea that they’d gone on a journey. 

After thinking about this for a while I wasn’t totally convinced if the idea would actually work so I began thinking of something I could work on easily in Cambridge. During the podcast, saxophone sounds had been used and this made me think I could possibly create a composition using sounds produced on the woodwind instruments that I have with me in Cambridge. With this in mind I had attempted to record my flute, clarinet and saxophone. I didn’t play regular notes but I recorded things like just playing in the mouthpiece, blowing air down my flute and producing harmonics. Since recording these I’ve been editing them in logic so I have a few different samples but I haven’t yet got round to arranging them in some kind of order. After seeing this weeks podcast I downloaded ixi quarks and played about with some of the instruments demonstrated using a sample of me breathing into my flute. I was quite amazed at how much the sound could be transformed and will definitely use this software when it comes to producing my composition. 

This week, whilst setting up the speakers and the mixer, I learnt that the loom carries all the information with the four mounted speakers being connected to the wall and the four stand alone speakers being connected to the loom. Following this we learnt a little about Francis Dhomont and his work in Canada and the idea of ‘cinema for the ear’.

Each group then discussed and diffused the piece they’d been looking at during the previous week, which included two pieces by Robert Normandeau. Our group had looked at Vox 5 and during the session I had the opportunity to diffuse the whole piece. The things that I learnt and struggled with were:

• Even though I had an idea of the what diffusion techniques I wanted at particular points during the piece, it was still incredibly difficult to move the faders fast enough.
• Trying to remember which fader controls which speaker. Although I identified this before starting the diffusion I found that during the performance there was so much to think about it that it was difficult to use them logically.

The other things I learnt from both my own attempt and other peoples were to think about diagonal movement and occasionally using all speakers at the same time so that the sound isn’t varied.

Since last week I went away and listened to Vox 1. To help me get a better understanding of the piece I produced a sketch of the opening minute and then wrote down a few ideas of how I could diffuse this. (It’s just a rough sketch that helped me get better understanding of the piece).

In last weeks lesson we began by setting up the speakers and mixer which was all going well until we came to use the mixer and discovered that no sound was coming through. It turned out that the connections were all plugged into the inserts instead of the inputs but it meant I got to learn that an insert is for sending and receiving information and has two connections on the quarter inch jack instead of one.

Once this had been corrected we sat down and listened to one of the students diffuse Denis Smalley’s ‘Clarinet Threads’. This was a really interesting piece and it allowed us to learn some more diffusion techniques:

• The one fader approach in which we moved the sound around the speakers whilst only having one fader up at a time.
• The two fader approach which is the same idea but simpler to do because one fader will always remain up whilst the others are being swopped.

We learnt that the trick to both these techniques is to wait until there is some kind of moveable sound in the piece and also that silence is a good opportunity to change speakers.

During the class we learnt about spectromorphology. MIDI is event and pitch based whereas spectromorphology is about how the sound behaves in time and how it is then arranged based on that behaviour.

At the end of the class we were split into small groups and each asked to research a composer. Our group decided to look at the music of Trevor Wishart and we settled on the Vox Cycle. Originally we had planned to look at one piece each and discuss it together but after doing this we discovered that only one track was to be shown in class so we settled on Vox 5. We discovered that his main compositional technique was the use of sound transformation and in the case of Vox 5 transforming the sounds of the human voice into natural events.

In the introduction to ‘Audible Desgin’, Wishart notes three assumptions about sounds:

1. Any sound whatsoever may be the starting material for a musical composition

2. The ways in which this sound may be transformed are limited only by the imagination of the composer

3. Musical structure depends on establishing audible relationships amongst sound materials.

These may seem like simple and obvious things but personally it got me thinking of a whole new way of composing. Up until taking this module my thoughts on composition had always focussed on what sounds were harmonically and rhythmically pleasing but reading that made me consider that whatever sound you begin with its how you compliment the sound with others and the whole thought process behind why you chose the sounds. In past weeks when I thought of the relationship between traditional composition and acousmatic composition I always thought of the similarities as being time and rhythm but now i can see that the same processes apply and both have to consider the properties of the sound being produced, whether thats what register of a clarinet sounds best or which part of a recording really works best.

(That probably didn’t make much sense because I didn’t really know how to express it but I wrote it down mainly to make it clear to myself)

We began last weeks lesson by setting up the mixer and speakers and whilst doing this we learnt that everything needs power and also about the safety aspect of setting up. For example, not letting the cables hang loose around the speakers and organising the cables so that they are out of the way of the audience (this prevents the speakers being knocked over or the audience falling). Next we sat down and learnt about the mixer itself and I tried to do a quick sketch of the layout of the faders and inputs (apologies!)

After this we listened to some sounds collected my members of the class and from this I learnt:

• If there is any silence in a sound that you don’t know very well it causes problems when diffusing and one way to deal with this is to drop all the faders and gradually bring them back in. But a knowledge of the sounds your diffusing is essential.
• Watch the speakers so that you don’t have the faders up too loud and damage them.
• Effects such as delay can have a huge impact on the movement of the sound and different techniques can be used on the faders to swing the sound around the speakers and send the sound from front to back.

 After listening to these we summarised what we’d covered in the lesson and discussed how different set-ups of the speakers can have different advantages when it comes to diffusing. We also talked about the whole process of choosing sounds and how this impacts on the composition and the end performance.

After it was mentioned in last weeks class I went away and tried to research ’spectromorphology’ and was utterly confused after the first paragraph but it did inspire me to listen to some tracks from Denis Smalley’s album ‘Impact interieurs’ and this time I tried to imagine how it would/could sound with diffusion. With the idea of diffusion in mind I also had ago at recording some new sounds and altering the ones I’d captured last week.