7 - Pseudo Random

Pseudo Random Composition

This week's composition was back on track with influences from other composers. This week's artist in question was John Cage

Ways John Cage Used Randomness

When discussing whether John Cage was a composer, it can be said that "Cage has, as often as not, been treated as something else. It has been stated on various occasions by various authorities that Cage was more a philosopher than a composer, that his ideas were more interesting than his music" (James Pritchett, 2014).

"Cage began to use chance operations in the course of his composition, and it is here that things go awry. His adoption of chance techniques is almost always seen as a rejection: a jettisoning of everything traditionally musical. External forces of irrationality (such as Zen Buddhism) are invoked as the cause of this break. Under such influences, it is believed, Cage decided to substitute the throw of dice for his own tastes, so that he could ultimately remove any trace of his personality from the composed work. By 1952, Cage had written 4′ 33”, the silent piece" (James Pritchett, 2014) and by this time every element of John Cage within his music had been removed.

How This differs from Cage's methods.

In contrast to John Cage's methods, this composition would simply be using the random element in the procurement of sound objects for the piece. The composition itself would be allowing for artistic compositional elements.

Random element

The chosen random element for this piece was not knowing exactly what the sound sources would be. I opted to use the contents of a bin. Whilst i could see a few objects at the top of the bin I had no idea of it's full contents. Assumption led me to believe that it would contain cane, bottle, plastic containers, scraps of paper and perhaps a bag or two. In the recording process I was greeted by the most obscure of surprises.

Bin chosen for sound source

To record the sounds i placed 7 microphones along a flight of stairs, hoping to be able to use some stereo effects and also to be able to get close-mic sounds of most of the objects. I would also allow for the sounds of things falling towards microphones as well as falling away from them. What cannot be seen in the picture below are the 3 microphones at the bottom of the stairs.

Microphone setup

As I was emptying the bin I saw things come out as I had expected - cans, paper, cups, bags... but then a major surpass element. A house-brick. For some strange reason there was a brick at the bottom of the bin. I am not going to attempt to explain why the brick was present, but it certainly made an interesting addition to the sound bank.

Post recording mess (note how close the brick is to the microphone on the left)

Sorting through the trash

I didn't want to just play the whole clips back in different orders so I began the search through each clip for the most interesting sound objects. Many of the early parts of the clips provided solo objects falling which had different tonalities depending on which microphone they were recorded on.

aside from just using the full clips and stretching, warping, shifting, reversing etc. Also looking for small clips of notable sound objects. Finding the brick sound with nice ring to it. Making that a recurring theme.

Raw files from recording

The techniques applied to the chosen clips included vary-fi, reverse, pitch shift and time stretch.

Vari-fi allows gradual speed changes in clips

Pitch shift example

The modified clips were scattered around the workspace in a way that they increased with density as the piece progressed, whilst constantly referring back to the motif of the brick sound with a scattering of a few samples of it in the middle before the most intense part of the piece. I ended it with a reversed sound of a bottle falling punctuated with the motif.

Overview of collection of clips

The output channel of the mix was send through a very deep and thick reverb to add a dark and spicy mood to the overall piece.

Output Reverb

Naming Influence

The pice is named "Tracey's Eminence". This is a play on artist "Tracey Emin" and what I feel she might do if she were to compose a sonic art piece.

References

James Pritchett. 2014.Introduction to 'The music of John Cage' -- James Pritchett. [ONLINE] Available at: http://rosewhitemusic.com/piano/writings/introduction-music-john-cage/. [Accessed 29 May 2014].

6 - Futurist/Abstract Art Composition

Futurist/Abstract Art Composition

This week's composition was a similar curveball to last week's.We were each given an envelope with a piece of art inside. This was to be our graphical score.

Interpretation Of Piece

The piece I was given was Abstract Speed & Sound by Giacomo Balla.

Source: http://www.guggenheim.org

My first point of call was to interpret the image into a score. The first decision made was to avoid other interpretations of the piece before I produced my composition. This was done in an effort to avoid outside influence on the piece and make it a work that was solely between myself and the image.

I split the image up into 4 sections based on the 3 curved lines running from the top to the bottom of the picture. I had opted to use each of the 4 colours as individual sounds and use the intensity and size of the colours to represent dynamics and pitch.

Finally I chose to turn the picture onto it's side (left becoming bottom) and sketched out maps of the progression of colours throughout each part.

Movement 1 Score

Movement 2 Score

Movement 3 Score

Movement 4 Score

In regards to the length of the pieces I chose to make each movement the length of around 3 minutes to conform to the normal compositional guidelines for the module, but made the 4th movement shorter to reflect it's smaller size on the picture.

Choice Of Sounds

I had interpreted the colours of the image to represent 4 things.

Green - land/earth

white - moving air/clouds

blue - sky

red - sound

I wanted to use sounds that I felt either represented what they symbolised or reflected their use in the image.

• For the Green i chose a low smooth sound to reflect the rumble of the earth and the smoothness of the hills in the image.
• With white i used a glockenspiel type sound with delay to give it an airy feel.
• For the Blue I opted to use natural ambience to give the whole piece a background setting whilst also reflecting the nature of the colour's use in the picture.
• The red was very much the lead colour in the painting so i chose to use a string sound to represent it. 
• I also decided to link the melodies that the red and white play as they both appear layered onto the image as opposed to the green and blue which represented more of a background to the image.

The sounds for Green, White and Red were created using NI's Massive. The creation of the sounds was done by a method of preset-tweaking rather than scratch building. I scanned through the presets until I found something close to what I wanted and then modified it to suit my needs.

"Green" settings

"Red" Settings

"White" Settings

Playing By Sight

I used the charts i had drawn as guides to when to play each part and it's dynamics and pitch. I simply overlaid each part in a single take to allow the score to dictate how the parts interacted with each other as opposed to practice and refinement.

The resulting Movements are thus:

Movement 1

Movement 2

Movement 3

Movement 4

Post compositional research

Didn't want to research beforehand as i wanted to interpret the picture in my own way without influence from others. How did my interpretation equivocate with the artist's intent?

The artist's intent on this piece was for the red to depict the speed of an automobile passing and the white would represent the sound it makes

"It has been proposed that Abstract Speed + Sound (1913–14) was the central section of a narrative triptych suggesting the alteration of landscape by the passage of a car through the atmosphere.¹ The related Abstract Speed (Velocità + paesaggio, 1913) and Abstract Speed—The Car Has Passed (1913) would have been the flanking panels. Indications of sky and a single landscape are present in the three paintings; the interpretation of fragmented evocations of the car's speed varies from panel to panel. The Peggy Guggenheim work is distinguished by crisscross motifs, representing sound, and a multiplication of the number of lines and planes"  (Guggenheim Museum. 2014).

References

Guggenheim Museum. 2014. Collection Online | Giacomo Balla. Abstract Speed + Sound (Velocità astratta + rumore). 1913–14 - Guggenheim Museum. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artwork/300. [Accessed 29 May 2014].

5 - Pencil & Paper

Pencil & Paper Composition

This week's composition was very different to the previous ones.

We were simply given a piece of blank paper and a pencil and told that these were to be our only sources of audio for the composition.

Research

The creation process of this piece is probably most akin to Pierre Schaeffer's Études de bruits in which he creates 5 pieces using a limited sound source for each and concentrates on modifying the sounds to create his pieces. The resulting pieces provided much of the foundation for Musique Concrete.

Selection of Samples

I spent a while experimenting with the different sounds that could be made. The obvious options were the sounds of drawing, paper tearing and pencil snapping. I set up a condenser microphone very close to the paper and recorded a few lines and dots, creating long and short sounds by dotting the paper and drawing lines and swirls. I also recorded the sound of the paper ripping. I opted not to use the sound of the pencil snapping as it seemed too obvious and felt it would result in my piece being too predictable.

Collection of recorded sounds

After recording i scanned through the different sounds and created a small collection of just 3 pencil sounds and one tearing sound.

Three selected sounds

Technique

To make the sounds more interesting I used a few of the effects within ProTools' AudioSuite menu. I used pitch-shift and distort to their extremities on a few versions of each sound.

Distortion Unit

Pitch shift unit

Time shift unit

The other tool I used was the ProTools time stretch function. Since it was the creation of sounds and not the preservation of sounds that was important I stretched the audio to the point where it was full of artefacts. After consolidating the clip I stretched it again and again to create even more artefacts to the point where the audio was breaking up into what sounded like computerised bleeps. The screenshots below show the extremities of the time stretching (note that the images are at the same zoom level).

Audio Clip before time stretch

Audio Clip after time stretch

I used a mix of these two techniques with each sound, often running sounds through the methods multiple times and switching back and forth between the methods, I.e. pitch shift, stretch, pitch shift, stretch, distort, stretch, pitch shift, stretch, stretch.

This process helped to create a wide array of sounds allowing me to create an extensive sonic landscape.

Overview of edit window

I also used a mashup of plugins that fed back and forth into each other, creating feedback loops and effects upon effects - such as a reverb feeding into a delay that fed into a distortion that fed into a ring modulator that fed back into the original reverb, and thus continued the cycle.

overview of mix window

Composition Influence

A piece that heavily influenced my composition was Jonty Harrison's "Klang". This piece made use of a basic sound source that was affected t a heavy degree to create a whole new sonic landscape that had a spacey feel to it. I felt that with some of the sounds that I had created I would be best served following a similar route to Jonty Harrison.

Structure

The structure of the piece followed Klang to a degree in the sense that it begins and ends with the source sounds but throughout the middle section the piece goes off into a completely unrelated area of sound. In Klang Jonty Harrison also makes use of digitised sounds to give a sci-fi feel to the piece and this is something that I also used in my composition.

Paper Scratcher

4 - One Note Composition

One Note Composition

This week's composition is a single note composition.
The guides for this piece were as follows

• Create a composition using only one note
• Transposition to different octaves allowed.
• No sustaining sounds.
• No drums or percussion.
• Can use multiple instruments.

Try and think about:

• the quality of that note.
• Rhythm.
• Texture.
• Dynamics

Research into One note compositions

It would appear that the internet yields very little information on the concept of single note compositions. One reference that was consistently thrown at me was Tenacious D's "One Note Song" which is essentially a skit based around mocking Avant Garde music.

Of course this is obviously not the style of music that this week's composition is based on but I felt it deserved a mention for it's entertainment value.

Selection of Note

I opted to use the note Eb. This was originally because I planned to use electric guitar for a majority of the piece and Eb was the lowest note that my guitar was tuned to. After experimenting with synths and overlay ideas I ended up not using any guitar in the piece and taking it in a different direction altogether, albeit still using the same note. Although the note is very central to the composition it is quite evident that the particular note is irrelevant as the piece would be the same and have the same feel using any note - even those outside of equal temperament.

Parts

The piece contains 4 main parts. The primary part is the strings with the drone playing an important role towards the start of the piece. The synth acts as an underlying part that begins to develop during the second half of the piece and is complimented by the chants that fade in throughout the second half.

Strings

The strings were created using Action Strings through Kontakt Player.

The patch allows pressing a single note to trigger rhythms of a string section playing a particular note. This made the composition a lot easier to toy with as I could quickly test differing rhythms against each other. I used, in total, 4 separate string parts at 4 consecutive octaves.

Synth

The synth sound was produced within NI's Massive. 

This synth was played as a single note during the first half of the composition. During the second half the synth's note is followed by one an octave above, allowing the portamento feature to effect the synth whilst being quick enough to not settle on a note and thus ruin the single-note ethic of the composition.

Drone

The drone used was also created within NI's Massive.

The drone is used to open the piece and act as the glue that ties together the combination of instruments until the first drop. The drone is also used to lead into the dynamic change where the whole track increases in gain. The drone has heavy tremolo on it which is then filtered to give the impression of rising up and down in pitch whilst actually remaining the same.

Chants

The chants were recorded by myself and auto tuned to Eb. 

These chants were then faded in through the second half of the composition to become the final thing that is heard.

Structure

I wanted the strings to be the main part of the piece but also wanted attention drawn to the other instrumentation. I felt the best way to do this would be to bring them in separately so the ear is drawn towards the new things occurring within the piece.
In composing this piece it seemed that rhythm was the most obvious element to work with and by using different rhythms within Action Strings I was able to have the different rhythms playing against each other.
As the central part was the strings I didn't want to open the piece with them. I used the drone to open and had one track of strings to give a taste of what was to come before the dynamic change. The dynamic change served to kick-in the track fully.
I opted to use a lot of stabs within the strings sections as the song progressed to give cliche tension the the piece before any changes. I was also able to use the dropping out of string parts in line with the stabs to create an almost melodic run up through the octaves at the end of the first half of the piece.
The second half of the piece made use of the expansion on the synth part and the addition of the chants. This served well to build up to the close of the piece along with the later return of the high octave strings stabs.

Compositional Narrative

The composition covers the story of a war effort from preparation, full scale war and the effect of powerful weapons and superior manpower on the war.

The opening section describes the preparation and mobilisation of the war effort which culminates in a fast and dramatic leap into full scale war with the volume increase. The middle section is the ongoing war and is followed by the introduction of new weaponry (the synth) akin to the A-bomb of World War 2. The chants represent the march of masses of troops that, when combined with the new weapons end the war by dominating the enemy (or in this case, the mix).