(for prerecorded voices and live processed voice/bass clarinet)

The manipulation of these voices were processed through interactive software of existing computer processing packages. The live voice/bass clarinet will have emphasis on: air, throat, yawns, growls, hums, silence, words, vowels, and fragmented text (relocating the voice/clarinet) and will also be effected by effect units that will morph the timbre, pitch and text in live performance.

1. Siren Margaret Thatcher

(quoting St Francis of Assisi) "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony"

3. Stentor Ian Paisley

These four movements are part of a search for different aesthetics for the creation of sonic art. I call these works ‘Voiceprints’ (literally, voiceprints are voice recordings used by the police to trace suspects or missing persons). The movements treat the voices of the subjects in the manner of personal portraits or political cartoons.

Movements 2 an 4 are derived exclusively from the voice of the subject.

"Clouds of whispers fade away into the blue space, as fugitive wings hastening to a distant horizon.

The verb becomes the material of an unknown language that tries to communicate the sense of something lived, perfumed, something unreal and sensible.

The words, the phonemes, the vocal gestures are transformed into a musical flux enriched by the own colours of each language. The speech is disguised into atmosphere, it expresses its essence fusing with music." E.J.

Thousands samples of voices speaking in five different languages were regrouped to model the musical ´ paste ª. In its expressive run the language curve transports the articulation of musical objects. As in the oral expression, the music is inhabited by sounds more or less harmonics interwoven with another of non-harmonic character. The speech is underlined and broken by the respiration and by multiple noises of articulation. We have exploited that natural noises to create our musical material. By means of the spectral analysis of the material we have established the intimate substance of the voice sound. Then we have realized transformations and re-synthesis such as cross-synthesis, convolution, interpolation, etc. In this way we have developed the different phonetic cells into a variety of surfaces and textures.

We have used different programs such as: Audiosculpt, Sound Hack, Waves, ProTools etc.

Elsa Justel

Realized at the Royaumont Foundation, France, 1997. First Performance: 14 November 1997 in the multimedia Exposition ´ Multilinear ª, in Hannover, Germany.

A piece made for Dimitry Bulatov’s "Homo Sonorus" project (National Centre for Contemporary Art, Kalingrad, Russia). Random methods were used to select words from an historical anthology of poets reading their own works. Single syllables from each word were then sampled. These are played in random orders in syncopated rhythms which sometimes sound a little like a tango. Five different random ordering s of the words were made. These were read by me as if they were meaningful poems, and recorded. These are mixed one at a time with the random phonemes, each poem being doubled by a pitch shifter at a different just intonation interval. The software used to make this piece was Softstep, Vaz Modular, and Hyperprism. The piece was made live on a Gateway Pentium II laptop, and recorded live to CD.

The different pronunciations of this word is a well-known Swedish language phenomenon–sonically interesting in itself. But I was also motivated by the fact that all are actually very difficult sounds for an anglophone –so the elusive nature of the sound to my own ears and experience also made me want to capture and play with it. Thanks to Inger, Göran, Paulina and her class, Perikles and Fivos.

Dynamic Stochastic Synthesis was created by Iannis Xenakis as an implementation of his philosophy that randomness can be used to create music from nothing, similar to how the universe was created from nothing in the "big bang". G4 uses the same sound synthesis process, where the composer has control over many elements and initial condition but ultimately lets random processes determine much of the sound material and the overall structure itself. Through judicious selection of initial parameters, trial and error selection and some intervention, a musical work can be born. Unstable random processes are often used for the sound generation in G4, resulting in cascades of micro-timbral melodies and noises which take the listener away from the trap of well known paths and boring repetition or stagnation and leads them to a musical universe which is fresh and unlike anything else.

The aesthetic images which occur in the mind of the listener during the performance of a piece of music and how they relate to the way the music is perceived are the concern of the composer. The placement of sound images in three dimensional space when performing electroacoustic music on tape over a number of loudspeakers and how this imaging relates to the way the music is perceived by the listener is the concern of the sound diffuser.

As a composer and performer of electroacoustic music on tape, I wanted to create a work in which I could investigate and explore these two aspects of "image".

There is an interplay between the real image and the altered image throughout the work. Sometimes a sound may be recognised and associated with one in the real world, but these images change over time, as does their associated "meaning". Similarly, the position of the sound image is constantly changing, sometimes slowly, at other times rapidly, and the breadth and depth of these changes are of course enhanced when the piece is performed over a multi-channel diffusion system.

Altered Images was realised in the Electroacoustic Music Studios at Northern College, Aberdeen and at the University of Birmingham in August 1995. It was premiered in Montréal in January 1996. It won 2nd prize at CIMESP '97, the International Sao Paulo Electroacoustic Music Competition.

In four continuous sections:

1. Morning introduction (claiming territory)

2. Midday heat (mad insects, mellow birds and lazy day dreams)

3. Dancing at night (a frenzied bizarre)

4. Dawn and rain (long live the forest!)

In the New Year of 1999 a number of items of recording apparatus, myself and a colleague found ourselves in the heart of what is left of the virgin rain forests of Costa Rica. The aim of this adventure was to record animal vocalisations over a continuous 24 hour period.

In "Viva La Selva", many aspects of the recordings are used: source sounds, the locations of animal vocalisations (localised by analysing four track recordings from a carefully positioned, microphone array), the vocal and spatial relationships between different animal species, the change in dynamics over the 24 hour recording period, and finally, my experience of venturing through a dense jungle, daytime and night time.

Most of the sound materials come from insects, birds, frogs and monkey calls. Some animals can be seen, other bizarre sounds do not reveal their causes. After some days of exploring the forest, the relationship between sounds gained importance over the actual animal species. This idea is revealed during the composition where human vocal articulations have been temporally and spatially located in substitution of many animal calls (mainly howler monkeys) on the recordings.

Part of 24 hour recording period took place at night time, during which it was necessary to venture into the forest to change DATs and batteries. Armed with only a torch, vision is confined to a single direction shaft of light, yet in the expanse of darkness lit only with fire flies, a busy system is at play...

"Viva La Selva" stars mantled howler monkeys, white capped manakin birds, poison arrow frogs, cikadas, tink frogs, oropendolas, tinamous, a humming bird, mosquitoes, a single engine aeroplane, numerous other forest and forest edge birds, and a mysterious forest spirit.