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].