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Although it has been discussed in the 1st submission, and has been referenced throughout, I thought I should make a blog post about how the music was constructed in the first layer, as to be very clear. The chords are based on spectral analysis on both samples of whalesong, and the sea creature sound effects made for the section. The spectral analysis was done by using the programme SPEAR. Figure 1, analysis of a sea creature sound effect.
This is then converted into notation by using an SDIF (SPEAR file) to score converter, as notating out manually would give a much less precise result. Figure 2: Image of a spectrogram-chord generator on Openmusic.
This technique of creating harmony from different sounds/timbres is a common technique in spectralism (Fineberg, 2000) a musical style emerging in the 1970s where the musical compositions are based on the natural spectra and/or acoustics of certain sounds (Harvey, 2000). Gérard Grisey work Partiels specifically uses this technique, instead with the harmony is based on the sound spectra of a low E on a trombone (Hasegawa, 2009). This is a more ‘literal’ interpretation of the sea than the other approaches, which I think is appropriate for establishing this layer, the fear of the sea creatures is represented by harmony based on the acoustic qualities of said creatures. Resulting sounds and notation can be found in the appendix.
Reference list.
Fineberg, J. (2000) Guide to the basic concepts and techniques of spectral music. Contemporary music review. 19 (2), p. 81–113.
Harvey, J. (2000) Spectralism. Contemporary music review. [Online] 19 (3), p. 11–14.
Hasegawa, R. (2009) Gérard Grisey and The “Nature” of Harmony. Music analysis. 28 (2/3), p. 349–371.
This is a showcasing of the sounds I created, the sources part of my research, and the technology I engaged with. A gathering of many of the tools used (this is my no means exhaustive).
Sea creature layer.
Spectral analysis of sound, using the programme SPEAR.
Tool used to create notation from spectral analysis (SDIF files), using the open source music-based visual programming environment OpenMusic.
Chords produced via this process.
Blue whale chord 1.
Blue whale chord 2
Whale chorus chord 1
Whale chorus chord 2
Chaos layer.
Image of room and technologies used during the improvisation.
the improvisation recorded.
the specific sounds sampled from this.
Unknown layer.
the chords used, each having subtle differences between them.
sampled tubular bells.
re-pitched voice.
Consonant chords
Short videos from the instillation, demonstrating the sounds being used.
One in the higher point of the atrium
Bibliography/sources used.
Canonne, C. (2018). Rehearsing Free Improvisation? An Ethnographic Study of Free Improvisers at Work. Music Theory Online, 24(4).
Féron, F.-X. (2011) The Emergence of Spectra in Gérard Grisey’s Compositional Process: From Dérives (1973-74) to Les espaces acoustiques (1974-85). Contemporary music review. 30 (5), pp. 343–375.
Fineberg, J. (2000) Guide to the basic concepts and techniques of spectral music. Contemporary music review. 19 (2), p. 81–113.
Harvey, J. (2000) Spectralism. Contemporary music review. [Online] 19 (3), p. 11–14.
Hasegawa, R. (2009) Gérard Grisey and The “Nature” of Harmony. Music analysis. 28 (2/3), p. 349–371.
Hill, S. C. (2018) A “Sound” Approach: John Cage and Music Education. Philosophy of music education review. 26 (1), p. 46–62.
Kennedy, K. Kennedy, M. and Rutherford-Johnson, T. (2013). The Oxford dictionary of music. 6th Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Latham, A. (2011). The Oxford Companion to Music. Revised 1st Edition ed. Oxford University Press.
Persichetti, V. (1961). Twentieth Century Harmony: Creative aspects and practice. New York: W.W Norton
Smith, B. (2016). Repeater Orchestra. Available at: https://codepen.io/barefootfunk/pen/ZWoLm.
vimeo.com. (n.d.). Bryant Smith: Repeater Orchestra Performance at CodePen Chicago, June 29 2016. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/172845834
Wood, J. (1986). Microtonality: Aesthetics and Practicality. The Musical Times, 127 (1719), pp. 328–330.
In the final work, I felt there were aspects that came across very strongly, whilst other points could have done with more refinement and improvement. One of the main points that I felt worked well was, in spite of the very clear distinctions between the sections, there was still continuity within the whole sound world. This is something that was designed into my sounds, with all of the chords being rooted with the note D. Even the improvisation was extremely rooted within the note D. This ‘implied drone’ throughout meant that even when there was a dramatic shift in sound, there was still some kind of ‘rooting’ to the sound world.
Figure 1: highlighting the rooting of D.
This focus on a single fundamental note across a long time is heavily influenced by the French composer Gérard Griseys 90 minute cycle les espaces acoustiques, which is entirely based on the same low E (Féron, 2011).
However, even if there was strong musical connections, there were some issues with panning between the sections, which lent to the changes being less smooth than planned. Although a lot of this was down to issues within MaxMSP, which wasn’t my part of the project, the individual sounds I created could have been faded in/out in a smoother manner, to make this process easier.
Another strength of the project was the sensors being used, which worked really well, and centered interaction in the instillation. It was commented on that the sensors, which controlled the visuals and the sounds, functioned like a musical instrument. This was an interesting observation, and curiously recontextualized my own perception of the sensors interaction. Instead of being seen as a series of sensors, it felt more like an experimental, electronic, sound and visual autoharp, an instrument which produces chords by suppressing keys (Kennedy et al, 2013, p. 28). The autoharp is purely harmonic, with limited control of what is possible. Similarly, the sensors allow for a degree of control, however, it is limited to the set of sounds we created for it, many of which are chords, though distinctly non-triadic and non-tertian, the typical chords used in functional tonal harmonic practice (Persichetti, 1961, p. 66). The one small issue with the sensors, was with the light sensor. The sensor itself worked very well, and was sensitive to changes in light. However, because of the darkness of the room, it would only respond strongly to torchlight, typically that of a phone torch. Although this work effectively, it did feel slightly awkward to work the other sensors with the phone in hand. Likewise, this made the instillation inaccessible to those who don’t own a smartphone, or a phone with a torch in general. In hindsight, I should have planned to source a light that would mean the light sensors didn’t require the use of a phone torch, whilst also not messing with the rest of the instillation.
I felt the sea-creature layer and the chaos layer worked very well and was happy with how the sound turned out. The sounds/chords created fit very well within the sound world, as they had strong thematic ties to their respective concepts. However, I wasn’t as certain about the harmonic structure in the unknown layer. This was the most difficult to represent from my perspective as a composer; how does one represent the unknown through sound? One of the ideas as to use the harmonic series, a series of ascending pitches from a fundamental which regularly occur in most acoustic sounds (Kennedy et al, 2013, p. 207), as the basis of the harmonic language. This would have been justified as ‘bringing out the unknown sounds around us’, but the aesthetic quality of this kind of harmony didn’t evoke fear in my mind. The denser, microtonal harmonies I felt got closer to this idea, exploring sounds unknown to the 12 tone system used predominantly in western music (Wood, 1986). However, some of the chords felt more curious, and peculiar, rather than evoking fear. In hindsight, I should have spent more time focusing on the harmonic structure of this section, as I was more comfortable with the rest of the material.
Another part I felt need further improvement and additions was in the calmness/peaceful layer. Although I was happy with my chords and harmonic structure in this section broadly, I felt more could have been added in terms of sound material. Most of the sound design at that point was stripped down as a deliberate creative choice, which did make sense as a representation of the calm. I should have responded more so on my end with more additions of ‘musical’ sounds to fill in, as everything dropped away, and felt slightly too sparse. Here are some of the sounds that could have been used in hindsight, using different timbres of the note D on the piano.
Lastly, a final critique mentioned was the lack of high fidelity sounds. All sound was heavily weighted towards the lower and middle frequencies, and therefore, didn’t fill out the whole frequency spectra. In our defense however, it is arguably thematically appropriate to focus more on lower frequencies, as there is more of a sense of being ‘under the water’. Likewise, the spectral analysis that was done to the sea creature sounds and the whalesong showed more prominent partials in the lower and mid frequencies.
Figure 2, spectral analysis of one of the sea creature sound effects in layer 1 (spectral analysis done using the program SPEAR).
That being said, this lack of high fidelity sound does create a less ‘full’ sound quality , and overall feels slightly less immersive than desired. If this instillation was to be done in the future, I would likely add only one other track; a droning improvisation using the high D notes on the piano. There was a last minute idea to add this on during the work live as there was a piano in the room. However, this might have meant the instillation would be perceived as a live performance. For context, this is a rough mock up of what the track could potentially be.
I would have this track play cyclically throughout the work, which would possibly have the second benefit of smoothing the transitions between the sections.
In conclusion, there was a lot of space for improvement and refinement to my sounds, both how some of them where formed, and with more additions to create a fuller experience. Even in terms of the broader ideas of the instillation there was space to improve, for example, clarity of the theme of thalassophobia could have been improved when presenting the instillation. However, the instillation felt strong, and received mostly positive feedback. In spite of the places to improve on for future practice, the project was overall effective, and I believe showcased each of our individual strengths of multimedia programming, sound design, and composition, contributing to a single, consistent, well formed multimedia instillation.
Reference list.
Féron, F.-X. (2011) The Emergence of Spectra in Gérard Grisey’s Compositional Process: From Dérives (1973-74) to Les espaces acoustiques (1974-85). Contemporary music review. 30 (5), pp. 343–375.
Kennedy, K. Kennedy, M. and Rutherford-Johnson, T. (2013). The Oxford dictionary of music. 6th Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Persichetti, V. (1961). Twentieth Century Harmony: Creative aspects and practice. New York: W.W Norton.
Wood, J. (1986). Microtonality: Aesthetics and Practicality. The Musical Times, 127 (1719), pp. 328–330.
Both when forming the spectral harmonies and during the chopping up of the improvisation, there was something I realized about the sound worlds being created that I felt important to mention. Both the ‘sound effects’ and the ‘music’ had a similar aesthetic effect. This is particularly true of the improvisation samples, which could easily be perceived as sound effects, and the spectral chords, half of which where based on a few of the sound effects.
This lead me to a conclusion, that sound design and composition in this context aren’t necessarily separate mediums, but exist in the same medium of sound. The main distinction between sound design and composition is how we get towards the sounds. Sound designers have more of an expertise effects via sampling, electronic manipulation, recording foley, etc, with a main focus on the use of digital technology. Whilst as a composer (in this context) my main Arguably these ideas are echoed in spectral composition philosophy where timbre and harmony are considered to be one in the same (Harvey, 2000)*.
*this is true here, where the sound design, is much dealing with different kinds of sound, and I mainly am dealing with different kinds of harmony, thought timbre is considered in my work a lot (orchestration, instrumentation, extended techniques, etc.) and harmony is thought to some respects in sound (i.e frequency manipulation, white/pink noise, etc.)
Harvey, J. (2000) Spectralism. Contemporary music review. 19 (3), p. 11–14.
There was another problem I had do deal with from the ‘chaotic section’. that being that it was only a single track, not a series of sounds, that can then be manipulated in an interactive context. So, for this section, I picked out a few points of interest. This involved separating many points, including: -micropolyphonic textures (7) a kind of texture where a bunch of complex lines within a small register create a single atmospheric wash (Drott, 2011). -The high whistles (2) which may have been created via overtone singing. This is a style of singing, common in Tuva (Bergevin et al, 2020) and Mongolia (Wu, 2019) , involves the enhancing the volumes of the overtones when signing, creating more than one pitch from a single voice (Sundberg et al. 2023). -distorted noise (4) -a continuous echoing of avant-garde vocal bends (5)
This is just to name a few. Here are all sounds, ordered from 1-8.
These sounds where aesthetically very similar to many sound effects that formed. This is continued to spark a philosophical idea mentioned in previously in the blog on the construction of new spectral chords, and will be expanded on in the next blog entry.
Reference list Bergevin, C. Narayan, C. Williams, J. Mhatre, N. Steeves, J. Bernstein, J. and Story, B. (2020) Overtone focusing in biphonic Tuvan throat singing. eLife. 9. Drott, E (2011). Lines, Masses, Micropolyphony: Ligeti’s Kyrie and the ‘Crisis of the Figure’. Perspectives of New Music, 49(1), pp.4–46. Sundberg, J. Lindblom, B. and Hefele, AH. (2023) Voice source, formant frequencies and vocal tract shape in overtone singing. A case study. Logopedics, phoniatrics, vocology. [Online] 48 (2), 75–87. Wu, S. (2019). To share or not to share: contested heritage in Inner Mongolia, China —A case of overtone singing (khoomei). International Journal of Heritage Studies, 26(3), pp.267–280.
When constructing the spectral chords previously referenced in submission 1, and in the previous blog, I created two harmonies aesthetically distinct from the rest of the content. These harmonies where diatonic, and in some ways more ‘consonant’ than the rest of the chords. I felt that these harmonies created a peaceful and ambient harmonic wash.
I felt these stuck out too much within the ‘sea/ocean’ section. However, they did fit well as a basis for the consonant section. I then formed 2 ‘fused chords’ which stuck together different aspects of each chord, and attached them together to derive more diatonic harmonies.
These has been applied to multiple different timbres used throughout the instillation, to give further coherence and connection throughout.
When looking back, I felt that the idea of using mirror harmony might be throwing in too many concepts into the pot for representing the ocean. So for the rest of the sea-like chords, I chose to structure similarly through spectral analysis. However, unlike the ‘whalesong chords’, I instead analyzed some of Yuan Mei’s ‘sea creature’ sound effects. This gave more coherence to the sound world, and would ultimately lead to a philosophical realization that I felt important to acknowledge in a collaborative sound art instillation*, particularly ones that involve collaboration between composers and sound designers.
Here are the new sea creature chords.
*being used broadly to mean any art instillation involving sound.
For the layer representing the fear of unknown, I constructed four chords, each built from slightly different microtonal clusters.
Quarter-tones are outwith the 12-tone equal temperament tuning system that is used in most western music (Wood, 1986), and therefore can have an ‘unknown quality’ to them.
The timbres applied to the harmony are that of the voice, re-sampled and de-tuned, creating an ‘uncanny valley’ like-timbre, which is seemingly trying to imitate the human voice, but is clearly digitally manipulated. This fits as it is a sound that is unclear, and unknown in it’s origin.
here are the chords 1-4 with that timbre.
The other timbre is based around sampled tubular bells. Another breakaway from the sounds of the tubular bells due to breaking away from 12TET. Here are chords 1-4 based around that timbre.
References Wood, J. (1986). Microtonality: Aesthetics and Practicality. The Musical Times, 127 (1719), pp. 328–330.
When expanding on the different sections, the group felt it important for the ‘musical’ content, to each be distinct in their representation of the different sections. For the creation of the ‘chaos’ layer, representing the panic caused by fear, I felt it was best to take a free improvisation approach to the section. Free improvisation is a musical style that instead of relying on any formally recognized framework to improvise on (scales, harmony, tonal centers, etc.) improvisation is completely free, left totally up to the impulse of the player (Caconne, 2018).
For my improvisation I used a tool called the repeater orchestra, a piece of software which repeats what the performer plays at different times. Here is a demonstration of the tools use, in performing the Terry Riley work in C.
When using the website, there is a warning, saying that if you don’t use headphones it can “create some gnarly feedback” (Smith, 2o16). However, this kind of gnarly feedback that is created with the repeater orchestra is very useful as part of creating a chaotic aesthetic.
The improvisation itself involved the use of voice, percussion, and the repeater orchestra, in a mostly empty echoy room. Thankfully, my old room in Glasgow was currently empty, and was therefore able to use for recording in a reverberant space.
I then took the improvisation, added some further effects, and created this track.
Sources
Canonne, C. (2018). Rehearsing Free Improvisation? An Ethnographic Study of Free Improvisers at Work. Music Theory Online, 24(4).
Smith, B. (2016). Repeater Orchestra. Available at: https://codepen.io/barefootfunk/pen/ZWoLm.
vimeo.com. (n.d.). Bryant Smith: Repeater Orchestra Performance at CodePen Chicago, June 29 2016. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/172845834
The effect of presence and absence are really interesting to me, and how things can be affected by absence and presence of objects, sounds, people, etc. The idea of live performance mixed with sound installation as a concept emerged for me, dealing with the presence/absence of the ‘virtual’ sounds (electronics) and the ‘real sounds’ (improvised acoustics). Other related thoughts, which ties into the blend of ‘real’ and ‘virtual’, the presence/absence of either object changes what the art form is contextualized as. When there is no acoustic element, the work is sound art/sound installation. When there is both, it is electroacoustic music/’performance art’(?). Where there is only a musician, it then becomes freely improvised music. If there is a visual element, I believe the improviser (most likely myself) should be blindfolded, so as to not be distracted by the visuals. Really need to consider the practicality of using VR, lighting systems may be better, and VR may limit the experience to a small group of people. Using Unity with projectors could also work, might possibly be better to work with.
Here is a produced idea, representing ideas of reflection, a mirror harmony, which reflects different musical intervals in a vertical space (Perschetti, 1961, p. 173) This sounds uses a MIDI vibraphone, reversed, with added delay, reverb, and a wee bit of chorus.
