Foward to Concert 4
|
Robin Whittle |
Tanglewood Interludes |
08:40 |
Melbourne, Australia |
These are minimal, abstract, spatial pieces with straightforward harmonies and very long notes. There is no single rhythm, social discourse or compositional gymnastics.
Both pieces were generated entirely with Csound - the publicly available software synthesis program by Barry Vercoe. This is purely sound calculation by computer software - there is no recording or electronics involved. My version of Csound has a number of additional functions. Some - which make it easier for instruments within the program to communicate - are now a part of the standard Csound. The additional feature which is most evident in these pieces is a binaural processing "unit-generator" which simulates the delays, volume and filtering, which sounds are subject to as they travel through the air and encounter the human head and outer ears. Its not a perfect replication by any means, but when listened to on headphones, there is an intimate feeling of being in a space and hearing multiple sound sources travel around (and occasionally through) your head. All sorts of gee-whiz and unnerving things can be done with this binarual process. However, these pieces are simple, abstract and with pleasing harmonies. The cycles of movement and almost every detail of the piece resulted from loose exploration - rather than being deliberately constructed with particular ends in mind. For instance the highest of the sounds in Spare Luxury turned out as a series of "pweeks". I like these sounds, but they were not deliberate. They result, I think, from anomalies in the flanger instrument I wrote in Csound. There are no samples - just simple fixed angular waveforms and highly strung flangers in Spare Luxury. In Tanglewood Interlude the sounds have eight harmonics where each harmonic has random pitch and volume fluctuations - and the sum of the harmonics is gently distorted. These sounds could conceivably have arisen from physical and/or electronic processes. Spare Luxury had its genesis in something I made around 1983 with a Casio keyboard, a flanger and a four-track tape recorder.
These pieces are a small tribute to the subtlety and beauty of the world we find ourselves in. A fly buzzing around a room involves processes of sound generation, movement, reverberation and acoustic processing by the listener's head and outer ears which are more sophisticated than anything currently possible with computer software.
|
Philip Samartzis |
Herimoncourt |
18:00 |
Melbourne, Australia |
Herimoncourt (1996) is based on environmental recordings of the Peaugot Chateau and surrounding grounds, located in Herimoncourt, France. My intention was to create a sonic narrative which captured the dense acoustic character of the estate. The Peaugot Chateau is a large, wooden, acoustically dense building which has continually shifting moods and textures. I have tried to capture the essence of the place through a mixture of techniques, with an emphasis on the granulation of many of the sounds I recorded there. The granulation technique enabled me to sonically replicate the creaking tones which permeate through every crevice of Herimoncourt. This composition was created with the assistance of the CICV Pierre Schaeffer Institute which is located in Herimoncourt.
|
KlangKrieg |
Analog Errors Digital Errors |
4:00 4:20 |
Germany |
These two pieces, both written in 1997, are composed out of record crackling and scratching sounds (Analog Errors) and of digital distortions and manipulations as well as stimulation of dysfunctions of a digital multi-effect processor (Digital Errors)
|
Jonty Harrison |
Unsound Objects (1995) |
13:00 |
UK |
One of the main criteria in Pierre Schaefer's definition of the 'sound object' was that, through the process of 'reduced listening', one should hear sound material purely as sound, divorced from any associations with its physical origins. Despite this ideal, a rich repertoire of music has been created since the 1950s which plays precisely on the ambiguities evoked when recognition and contextualisation of sound material rub shoulders with more abstracted (and abstract musical structures. But as these structures themselves grow organically out of the peculiarities of the individual sound objects within them, the ambiguity is compounded: interconnections and multiple levels of meaning proliferate. The known becomes strange and the unknown familiar in a continuum of reality, unreality and surreality, where boundaries shift and continually renewed definitions are the only constant.
In Unsound Objects, the sounds used are all from the 'real world' - recordings of actual sonic events which have undergone varying degrees of computer modification. The work operates on three levels. The first addresses what Denis Smalley has called 'spectro- morphology' - a notion very close to the Schaefferian ideals mentioned above and which is the closest to what we in the west understand as 'music'. The second is related to 'soundscape' - recognisable, everyday sound environments which we have all experienced. The third level of discourse is precisely the points of interconnection (collision, friction, impact, interpenetration?) of these two apparently contradictory worlds; it is concerned with the recontextualisation of recognisable sounds and the 'meanings' released by this process - in particular, the shock of recognition caused by the familiar turning up unexpectedly or, conversely, by a strange intruder in an otherwise well known sonic space. If the material in Unsound Objects is - literally - elemental, then this only serves to heighten the impact of sounds as universally recognisable as water (river, sea, rain), wood, fire, birds, wind, children, thunder and the human presence implied by footsteps. This last example is a good illustration of the enormous potential of the sonic arts for blurring the distinctions between reality, unreality and surreality - only in sound can we believe in the simultaneous presence of footsteps on the different surfaces of snow, gravel and dry bracken ( as occurs at ca. 5` 40 of Unsound Objects ). Because we can recognise each situation specifically we can believe what we know to be physically impossible, even at the actual moment of hearing it. Another example: at ca. 11` 30 , the sound of cars passing through the stereo field (an everyday occurrence; try to cross the street anywhere in the world!) recalls the sound of thunder heard earlier in the piece and delivers us on (of all places) a shingle beach, with no cars anywhere in earshot.
Unsound Objects was commissioned by the International Computer Music Association for the 1995 International Computer Music Conference in Banff, Alberta, Canada. It was composed in 1995 in the composer's studio and the Electroacoustic Music Studios of the University of Birmingham, England.
|
Mat Malansky |
The Rose Village |
10:00 |
USA |
Narrated Pamela R. Barrie, poet.
The Rose Village is an audible pentimento, a form which Lillian Hellman describes as follows: 'Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lies: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter "repented", changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.' (Pentimento, 1973)
In this composition, seeing, or rather hearing, again takes the form of resonances. In a lateral sense, this piece is about making a particular physical space more musical by using its resonant characteristics to transform source recordings - composition as guerilla acoustical re-design. At a more figurative level, this poem, written for my wife and I on the occasion of our daughter's first birthday, recalls our (not so transparent) past while celebrating our gains. This piece is for my wife Nancy.
|
Gary Mckie |
Reflection |
12:00 |
Melbourne, Australia |
Samples and synth,
jaffle and chink,
contrast and merge,
brevity and levity,
body and soul.
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