Week Five
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.
