Compositional Methods in Electroacoustic Music - Adrian Moore ...

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The sound, in contrast, was entirely produced using deliberately limited resources, designed to yield a distinctive and consistent sonic language (and to use this coherent sound world as a way to ‘perceptually speaking’ make the disparate visual material fuse). The only sound source is an antique valve radio with no aerial - this produces noise of a particularly dirty and warm variety, with occasional, almost inaudible, fragments of music and speech deeply embedded in the static. This single sound source is passed through a single process - a homemade plug-in consisting of a massively parallel array of comb filters which can be arranged in various complex geometric ratios to produce harmonic or inharmonic spectra, and can be assigned various temporal behaviours to produce a wide variety of gestures and textures. Pellere Seddon, Ambrose City University, London This work explores spatial and material contrasts, processes and reminiscences. I am grateful to Peiman Khosravi for his violin, and Laura Reid for her cello. Made in the composer’s own studio and at the electroacoustic music studios of City University, London. Fractions Stansbie, Adam University of Sheffield Fractions was composed in 2011 at Leeds College of Music (LCM), UK, and Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), Sweden; the piece would not exist without the generous support of these two institutions. Fractions is dedicated to Dale Jonathan Perkins (LCM), in recognition of his encouragement, his enthusiasm and his music. Electric Strings Carmen, Oliver Scott Liverpool Hope University The source material for this piece is taken from recordings of the electric bass and electric guitar, as well as vocal improvisations. Heavily processed thumps, scrapes, pops and, in places, glitch-like crackles, compete with the recognisable instrumental material throughout. The vocal material implies a human agent, with fragments of harmonic material creating a sonic theme that provides a running thread throughout the piece. Although material is almost melodic in places, the intention is always for the spectromorphological and spatial content to be the listening focus. Thanks to Mauricio Pauly for the electric bass and vocal performances and also to Barnaby Smith for the electric guitar. Lexicon Lewis, Andrew University of Bangor Andrew Lewiss audio-visual work Lexicon is based on a poem written by a 12-year old boy, Tom, in which he tries to articulate his personal experience of dyslexia. By presenting an imaginary sonic and visual journey through the text of the poem, Lexicon explores not only the challenges, but also the life-affirming creative potential that dyslexia, and a fuller understanding of it, can bring. Lexicon is supported by the Wellcome Trust’s ‘Engaging Science’ programme, which aims to use artistic creation as a means of raising public awareness of biodmedical science. 25
5 Saturday 2nd February 2013 5.1 Paper Session 7 Paper 23 - LIVING WAVES: Rocks and Ruskin 10:00 Mackay, Robert Andrew University of Hull This paper describes the creative and technical processes involved in producing the multi-channel fixed-media composition Living Waves, commissioned for the interdisciplinary Ruskin Rocks Project[1] led by Leeds University. The project brought together musicians, artists and scientists to create two new 21st Century stone percussion instruments (the Brantwood Musical Stones[2]) to be housed at Brantwood, the former home of artist, naturalist and social commentator John Ruskin, now a museum situated in the Lake District. The two lithophones have been created from ringing rock extracted from several Cumbrian Quarries. Living Waves has been inspired by the thoughts, writings and paintings of Ruskin. It is the sub-title he himself gave to Deucalion, his book on geology. It is also the name of a recent exhibition at Brantwood of some of his drawings and watercolours in which he explored the many repeated patterns which occur in nature. Mountains are viewed as fluid and dynamic forms, living waves created by the shifting of the earth’s crust. Through the compositional process I have tried to mirror Ruskin’s visual explorations from a sonic perspective, using a range of transformational techniques to convey repeated patterns in different soundscapes at both the micro and macro level. On a conceptual level, Ruskin identified with the medieval scholars’ concept of Musica Mundana, or ‘music of the spheres’. A celestial harmony. The three branches of the medieval concept of music were laid down by Boethius as Musica Mundana, Musica Humana (the internal music of the human body), and Musica Instrumentalis (sounds made by singers and instrumentalists). In the context of this piece I have interpreted these as: sounds naturally occurring in nature; speech and the sound of manmade machinery; and instrumental sounds (in this case improvisations, on the new Brantwood Musical Stones, played by percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie). During the period from January 2010 to September 2011 ambisonic field recordings were taken of the natural environment that the rocks are taken from as well as location recordings at several quarries including the sounds of diamond saws, water-jet cutting, and rock blasting. These contrasting soundscapes are presented as sound paintings, weaved together by more abstract musical passages employing the sounds of the Brantwood Musical Stones and passages of text by Ruskin. Sound transformation and spatialisation techniques are employed to mimic some of the patterns occurring in the sound paintings, including the use of BATBoids[3] which uses an implementation of Craig Reynolds’ Boids algorithm (mimicking the flocking and swarming of birds, bees, fish etc). Close collaboration with the performer during the recording of improvised material on the instruments ensured there were adequate opportunities for transformation and mimicking between the instrumental and soundscape material. References: Adkins, M., The Influence of Futurist Painting Techniques in my Music, Proceedings of Digital Music Research Network Summer Conference, Leeds Metropolitan University, 2007 Emmerson, S. (Ed), The Language of Electroacoustic Music, Palgrave Macmillan, 1986 Emmerson, S. (Ed), Music Electronic Media and Culture, Ashgate, 2000 Lewis, A., ‘BATBoids’ v 1.00, Bangor University (Wales), 2007 Ruskin, J., Deucalion, D.D.Merrell, 1886, Re-produced by BiblioBazaar, 2009 Ruskin, J., Modern Painters IV, Re-Produced by Adamant Media Corporation, 2000 [1] http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ruskinrocks/, project lead: Prof Bruce Yardley, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Leeds University. [2] Designed by Kia Ng (University of Leeds) and Marcus de Mowbrey (freelance musical instrument maker) [3] ‘BATBoids’ v 1.00 2007 A P Lewis, Bangor University (Wales), part of the Bangor Audio Toolkit Paper 24 - The Beauty of Forgetting: predetermination, time and spontaneity in programming for electroacoustic composition and improvisation. 10:30 26
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