This semester was fun and challenging, I have really been enjoying 20th century music history and aural classes, they go perfectly with what we are learning in techniques of comp. I kind of like the information overload in Lindsay's lectures because I can latch onto particular techniques I find interesting and go on a deep dive, for example I was really interested in found sounds, found textures, graphic scoring, word setting, mensural canon, rhythmic cell shifting, tarot cards ETC.
Techniques and ideas I am developing/interested in
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What I can make sparse in order to forground another element, what is in focus?
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Perception
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Improvising as composing
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Recording improvisations and rearranging them like collage
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Combining acoustic/electronic sound with sculpture/painting
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Poetry or spoken word in the piece
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Cadavre exquis / Felicia Atkinson
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Improving my home recordings
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Staying inspired and confident
Reading: Just Kids by Patti Smith, Notations by John Cage,
Listening:
Glimmer is going well, we are in the process of mixing some songs we recorded with Jack Seah (who is also our bassist) at Tunafish studios and going to record some more songs. My guitar playing lately has been leaning towards a bit country/folk (with rough edges). I miss being in a band where I write the songs/material and sing though. I am in the process of bringing this back... My piano lessons are going well and I'm learning some Kabalevsky pieces (15 Kinderstucke fur Klavier). Would like to get better/regularly practice both guitar and piano. Have been teaching guitar this year as well and have realised how challenging it is to teach 6 year olds music!! Girls Rock mentoring was very fun and heartwarming, would love to do it again next year.
I completed the RTRFM presenter course and have presented a few overnight shows, enjoying exploring how to tell story through a playlist, how to structure playlist, work with themes etc. Have discovered so much new music this way, and is helping me with deep listening. Have been emailing Eduardo Cossio about joining Difficult Listening, really keen and might be doing some shows in July.
Listen to collaborations ^
You can read about them here
Short Pieces 1: Slow Siren
Techniques: Beat frequencies, blend of electronics and acoustic
Inspired by Alvin Lucier's piece, Ever present, for flute, alto saxophone, piano and two sweeping sine tones, I explored beat frequencies, and what happens when 2 instruments are producing beats and a third enters, experimenting with different speeds/rates of glissando. My instrument choice is a synthesiser, cello and bass clarinet. When two or more sounds are present, with frequency differences of less than 20-30Hz, beats will occur.
The rate of the beating is the frequency difference in Hz
440 Hz and 441 Hz - 1 beat per second
440 and 442 Hz - 1/2 beat per second
I wanted to explore what is it like to be slow, to fully focus on the present moment, hazy and in a trance, beats emerge slowly and smoothly, causing listeners to become submerged into the moment, a noise like a siren. Sirens have intense timbre, synth and cello for a sharp edge. No roundness
Short Piece 2: To Undisclosed Recipients
Technique: Melody with words, syllabic and melismatic word setting, mensural canon.
The text I used for this piece is from a spam email I received from Dr. Stellah Hassan:
To Undisclosed Recipients:
‘I would like to have a word with you, it's very important that we
discuss it as soon as possible’
The constraint will link syllables to specific pitch and rhythms. Syllabic and melismatic word setting.
The cello part is a mensural canon (half time) of the alto part. All the same notes except the C in bar 9 and 10 should be a B but sounded bad so I changed it to a C. The alto part is a mensural canon of the tenor part, starting in bar 9.
Short Piece 3: Voyage Entre
Techniques used: Quarter tones
For solo cello, Inspired by Ben Johnston's String Quartets, Chiyoko Szlavnics gradients of detail String Quartet, Catherine Lamb Parallaxis Forma
In this piece quarter tones are used and explored. Nice to look at music past the notes I have been using my whole life! Opens up so many more possibilities. In terms of notating a quarter sharp I borrowed symbols from Xenakis solo violin piece Mikka. Also I tried a bit of the gliss technique he used in that piece.
The score is handwritten which gives it a characteristic look, matching my style of composition. Also during writing process I could hear how the pitches might sound by bending strings on guitar.
Short Piece 4: Feeling Drone
Techniques: Acoustic instrument combined with field recordings
One morning I went into my bathroom and I could hear the fan was on, along with dripping of the shower. As a field recording it provides a drone in F#, which I then wrote for violin on top, and bass clarinet to match the drone in some parts and drift away too. The violin was sul tasto to imply a blending of violin and clarinet together.
The shower drips were kind of providing a tempo that I didn’t really want to get in the way of the performers so I just stuck to second marks, and loose sense of time.
I also had to think about how to sync up fixed media with a live performance - I could have abandoned the need for synchronisation and leave it up to the performers, but decided a stopwatch would work, and mark 10, 20, 30 seconds on the score. I wanted to leave it up to performers on how long they play each note, but gave a general guide with the crotchets vs minums etc.
Short Piece 5: Birds Blending
techniques used: Imitating nature
After sitting outside one day I could hear so many different bird calls, coming in and out of my perception. Sometimes I would listen to one bird and another would emerge from underneath it without me realising. I wrote down some of the rhythms I could hear, and interactions between them. Sometimes three birds would do the same call all at once, except they would start a second after each other, kind of a canon. I wrote this piece to try and explore that rhythmic shifting and canon that birds do. A sort of call and response piece, imitating nature.
It’s for crotales, 2 flutes and alto saxophone.
Shifting between 2/4 and 4/4. Shifting from pitch to air, tremolo. Fast notes. Percussive and timbral sounds, how they work atonally when I’m composing with rhythmic focus. I was considering writing with no pitch lines, just single-line (like Dutch Courage).
I think there’s some elements of hocket, or sharing melodic lines/material between instruments, especially the two flutes. Listening back to it on Sibelius it sounds like there’s a lot going on melody wise but I think it’s good like that. It sounds like lots of different birds or animals shifting in and out.
Short Piece 6: Framework/Parallels
This piece is exploring new score formats, and ways of communicating sound. Also combining fixed media with an acoustic instrument. Score is spectral representation (of the field recording) and the green notation is the guitar part. I wanted to explore textural relationships between the guitar and field recording. The field recording was made with a contact mic, piano, zoom recorder.
The score is leaning away from the limitations of traditional notation, I used a spectral representation to show the performer how to follow along with the fixed media (sonic visualiser). For the guitar part I wanted to leave some choices up to the performer, so the notes are up to interpretation.
Short Piece 7: A Poem
Techniques: Phrygian mode, mensural canon minimalist rhythm technique.
Started with an electric guitar improvisation, which I then notated slightly differently to how it was played. Then I added more instrumentation in the form of the rhythmic mensural canon. By starting off in Phrygian mode.
Short Piece 8: Pulselessness
Technique used: Aperiodicity due to note length, rhythmic ambiguity, processing
Basically a really slowed down drum beat, like only 2 kicks and one snare for the whole duration. The flute, clarinet and bass clarinet play really long notes that start and stop, staggered from one another. I wrote this piece to be played by HearNOW.
Working with the idea of perception and auditory ambiguity, inability to detect rhythm.
After recording hearNOW playing the score, I chopped up pieces of it and repitched some parts, layering them together in a new way. The piece sounds more unpredictable and interesting now.
Short Piece 9: For 12 Flutes
Each flute is playing one of the 12 tones. Instead of always having 12 tones playing at once, they come in and out, creating different combinations and voicings. Sometimes the top 6 flutes play, sometimes the bottom 6. In bars 12-15, 8 voices come in one at a time shortly after one another.
Short Piece 10: Marlene
Uses iPhone recording of a hospital waiting room, while I waited for a really long time! Didn't want to capture weird hospital vibes, just was bored and found the soundscape/sonic environment in the room really interesting. Paired it with chopped up iPhone recordings of me playing guitar, creating an unfamiliar sound. There is a beat repeat glitch effect on the field recording to emphasise this unpredictable feeling. You can hear it in certain parts where there is talking.
7 Minute Textural Piece:
This piece was made by collaging several textures, including guitar improvisations, vocal improvisations and field recording. It begins with one guitar line and then another slowly follows, and the listener sometimes can't differentiate the two lines. Then a doubled vocal line that is offset by a second or two. Guitar harmonics, then doubled and offset similar to the vocal lines. Field recording of rain landing on the river down south.
Imitative polyphony was used several times, in the offsetting of the guitar harmonics lines and the vocal lines. This created an unpredictable and evolving relationship between the two lines. I wanted to explore how offsetting a melodic line slightly results in interesting harmony. Textural variables I am experimenting with include morphology - when in the piece does it evolve/stay static, register/range of instruments and fixed media, and conceptual issue of source material - pitch sets, found melody/rhythms and field recordings, improvisation as spontaneous composition. Tried sustaining a note while the harmony above changes, to produce constant evolving dissonances.
Creating a schematic or rough plan of the structure helped me plan how much time to assign to each section, giving an overview of instrumentation and textures etc. Originally I wanted to explore drones and spectralism but as I brainstormed and researched more I became interested in finding a balance between collaging found sounds and scoring acoustic instruments.
Aesthetics: While writing this piece I became very interested in natural/bodily gestures, drawing, walking, interdeterminacy, finding a relationship between my place and my work. Superimposing elements and letting them interact, sharing a common existence, perhaps redefining these sounds. Maybe it’s a poem or rocks or someone talking. The idea of process instead of product also informs this piece, audible processes.
Also inspired by the strange floating meter of Morton Feldman’s music, constant micro rhythmic changes, from 5/4 to 3/2 to 2/2 etc, there is no pulse. Inspired to make a guitar duet piece like this.
Memory, dealing with blurred memories and fading memories, humming, responding, ambiguity, using music and sound as a method of engaging with, recording and cataloguing memory. How space is perceived when listened back.
Structure: I was lost when trying to decide a structure, even though I planned out a schematic to begin with, it kind of felt meaningless until I started actually writing material.