First attempt at creating an Electroacoustic Composition
click title for link
The main idea surrounding the composition was to use natural field recordings to represent a real-world sound palette which develops over time into an unrealistic soundscape. The structural development of the composition is mapped out in the table below. The term Movement is used to describe a certain section of the composition and the term Surrogacy relates to Dennis Smalley’s interpretation of ‘gestural surrogacy’ (Smalley, D. 1997) in which 1st order surrogacy refers to a sound which is recorded with no intention to be used musically, and which is completely recognizable to the listener in relation to the source-bond of the sound. The term source-bond refers to the “natural tendency to relate sounds to supposed sources and causes..” (Denis Smalley, 1994). 3rd order surrogacy refers to gestural sounds which source is either “inferred or imagined” (Smalley, D. 1997: 112).
|
Movement:
|
Introduction
|
1st Movement
|
Bridge
|
2nd Movement
|
Finish
|
|
Surrogacy:
|
1st order
|
3rd order
|
1st order
|
3rd order
|
1st order
|
The predominant theme throughout the composition is ‘water’. Using water the composition is able to demonstrate the process of experiencing the 1st order surrogacy of the recordings, which develop into 3rd order imagined soundscapes, a process which can be imagined as travelling from a listening position situated in-front of the water to a position within the water; ‘falling’ into the water, into a space which contains a completely imagined soundscape. Various stereo field recordings were captured of rivers, streams, small waterfalls, and sea, captured using a Zoom H4n portable recorder with an x-y stereo condenser microphone setup. The recordings were captured from locations such as Meanwood Park in Leeds, and the shoreline at the north-west seaside town of Fleetwood. The collected library of sounds were processed within Pro Tools as the main digital environment, using various GRM Tools and EQ plugins within the DAW. Other software was also used to achieve the processed outcomes, such as Spear and SoundHack.
Introduction/1st Movement/Bridge:
The planned introduction for the piece was to lead the listener towards a location, using 1st order surrogate sounds, to place the listener in an intended landscape. This is represented by footsteps on a dusty terrain which gradually lead towards a river, the footsteps halt and the river is brought to the foreground of the soundscape, the piece is then suspended on the river, a meditative sound which allows the listeners mind to focus on the natural pitch changes and subtle characteristics of the sound of flowing water. This encourages the listener to focus on the reduced way of listening, by listening to the flowing water for it’s own sake, removing the meaning it conveys. An impact sound is then intended, to engulf the listener as if falling into the water, which acts as the cause sound for the time stretched ambient river drone which follows; gesture followed by texture. The sub-sequential drone is intended to act as a background sound, a palette from which foreground sounds can evolve and take form. Here the drone is layered with the same sound which has undergone more editing using GRMTools Fusion to create pitch shifts and dynamic changes, which helps to create a background sound which seems to weave in and out of the composed space, and which also creates phase conflicts between both similar sounds, which can be heard more prominently as the drone continues. The drone was originally created using the river sample first heard in the piece and edited using the time stretch feature in Spear.
Sounds which occupy the higher end of the frequency spectrum are introduced throughout the 1st movement, which stand in contrast with a lower frequency bass sound shaped using sine waves, and the mid-frequency range of the drone. The high end sounds were originally created by treading on seaweed on a beach, they give a glitchy impression within the piece and help to fill out the frequency spectrum. The bass sounds have a cause-relationship with further glitch sounds which are layered along with the bass, the strength of the bass determines the level of the glitch’s, representing a powerful presence within the imaginary soundscape. Further presence is added with a sound which was originally a birds call, which was edited to create a decorrelated effect which portrays movement through the composed space from right to left. This movement was designed to represent heavy objects falling through the space, space which can be imagined to be underneath the water. This represents destruction taking place above the water, perhaps in a different dimension.
The 1st movement then comes to a climax with an increased presence of all frequencies, a crescendo of most of the sounds used up to this point. A further gesture followed by texture links the 1st movement to the 2nd, in this case the gesture coming from a glitch sound used previously, and the texture being the same river sound as the piece begins with, which, along with more footsteps, guides the piece through to the 2nd movement which introduces a new water sound, this time originating from the shore of a pebble beach in the town of Fleetwood.
2nd Movement/Finish:
With the newly introduced sample taken from the shore, attention was intended to be drawn to the high-end frequency content of the recording, which was a result of the small waves washing up on the pebbles which make up the beach, producing a pleasing sound which can be described as a fizz, one might not notice this sound when at the beach, but is very noticeable when heard through reduced listening when the sound is abstracted from it’s environment. Movement is also important in this opening phrase, the stereo recording captures the shoreline as it laps over the pebbles from left to right and forwards, the direction in which the tide was flowing. This leads to the introduction of the 2nd 3rd order surrogacy imagined soundscape. This transition is executed using bell sounds for the first time in the piece, hame bells on a horse strap to be precise, which jingle and trigger a second gestural sound in an atmospheric form to engulf the listener once more into an imagined soundscape. The preceding texture was created once again by using the water sound featured before the texture, in this case the shoreline, which was time stretched within Spear and layered on itself. The shoreline sample is also placed on-top of this drone texture to add a greater sense of being underneath the water, EQ and filters were used to create the effect. The hame bell sample is used on multiple occasions throughout this section, edited with the Lo-Fi plugin within Pro Tools to create a low-end sound with a lower sample rate than before which creates a greater sense of the sound originating from under water.
The bell sample was also edited and layered using the Time Adjuster plugin to add two separate delays to the left and right of the sound, and also using the GRMTools Shuffling plugin to add a sense of rapid movement within the composed space. This increased presence of movement builds up to a climax which releases the final sample of the piece, a return to 1st order surrogacy normality with a layered sample taken from the pebble beach.
The final piece has followed the structure envisioned at the beginning very well. The concept of travelling from 1st order surrogacy to 3rd order, and repeating this a second time before ending on 1st order worked well in relation to the sounds recorded and produced. The recorded sounds naturally contained flowing characteristics which worked well in relation to the concept. Software such as Pro Tools, GRM Tools and Spear was used to a good extent throughout the piece, more emphasis could had been put into the use of SoundHack, but it was felt that new software was to be explored, as SoundHack had already been explored in past projects. A greater understanding of how the spectromorphology of a sound can be shaped and sculptured to create a completely different sound has been achieved, especially from the use of time stretching in Spear and the numerous effects available within the GRM Tools plugin bundle available to demo. Most of the sounds created through editing were envisioned beforehand, but a good amount of experimenting was utilized in order to create such sounds, GRM Tools and Spear had never been used previously, and it has been a pleasure to use such tools and learn how they operate. I feel my editing palette has been greatly widened and new directions can now be taken in future projects utilizing the skills that I have learnt from creating this composition.
Smalley, D. 1997: Spectromorphology: explaining sound-shapes. Organised Sound, 2(2), pp. 107-126.
Denis Smalley (1994) Index: Source Bonding (Musicology of Electroacoustic Music [MEM]) [Internet]. Referenced on : <http://www.ears.dmu.ac.uk/spip.php?rubrique208> [Accessed 6 December 2012].
Sound[Rec]Lewis 