Composition Portfolio

Acousmatic Composition

Below is an embedded Soundcloud player containing a portfolio of acousmatic compositions that I put together for the final year of my degree. It is around 20 minutes in length, and while acousmatic music is fairly far removed from more traditional composition styles, I feel that it is still a valid demonstration of my abilities. More information on the composition process for each piece (taken from the programme notes for their original submission) can be found under the soundcloud player.

Composition 1: ADSR (10:04)

This composition came to life after a discussion of synthesisers. For some reason I began to contemplate the four stages associated with the dynamics of an analogue synth note: Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release. I decided to structure the piece in four sections, each inspired by one of the four stages, with themes evolving throughout, like the development of the synthesised note.

Some elements of the sections are based directly on the sonic characteristics of that particular stage of the note development. For example, Attack heavily focuses on sounds with prominent attacks, and increases in volume, just like the attack of a note. Other sections focus on a more abstracted interpretation of the words, like Decay. The sounds are designed to evoke a sense of decay, as well as featuring decaying sounds, through the use of large reverb sounds and distortions.

The goal of the piece was to investigate the interaction of these four sections, and to hopefully create a composition that develops related sounds in different ways to characterise these sections. Each section also took inspiration from different composers. Attack was inspired by the aggressive drum sounds of Jason Kahn, I.E.M. and This Heat, which lead to the harsh, dynamically extreme hits. Ryoji Ikeda, particularly Test Patterns and dataplex, inspired the high-­pitched drone material.

The piece transitions to the Decay section at around two to three minutes, marked by the introduction of a much less aggressive sound set. Large reverb sounds were used to evoke a sense of a decayed location, devoid of life. The more ghost like textures were inspired by Bass Communion’s Ghosts on Magnetic Tape album.

The Sustain section that begins near the piece’s halfway point utilises pitched material to a much greater degree than the rest of the composition. This came as a natural progression from the desire to use drones in this section. By stretching material using the Spear plug-in, it was given a clearer pitch, and so this was investigated musically. The sound begins to build at the end of this section, with more extreme bass and textures replacing the relative calm that started it.

The drone artists Sunn O))) inspired the extreme bass drones, often used with distortion filters The ominous and ever building sound is designed to create tension. As the release element of an ADSR curve represents the end of a sound, I felt that the best way to express this would be through tension that demands release. Rhythmic sounds that recall the timbre of the first section begin to build until the piece reaches its climax. The noisy and rhythmic nature of these sounds took inspiration from the piece Concrete (Remix) by Andy Stott, which also inspired the third piece in this portfolio.

The composition ends with a reiteration of the most prominent recurring motif. The sound was made by recording the back of a mechanical watch as it was wound, which creates a rhythmic clicking A watch was chosen as a recurring theme because an ADSR curve maps sound over time, and so referencing the sound of time throughout the piece seemed appropriate.

Composition 2: Cubism (5:56)

During a source sound recording session I decided to solve a Rubix cube while sitting between a pair of microphones. The resulting material had a very distinct, clicky, springy quality that inspired the creation of the rest of this piece.

The piece wanders off on tangents, away from the core sound of the Rubix cube, which is meant to portray the way my mind wanders as I go through the process of solving it. These tangents were inspired by the pieces Study in Ink by Adrian Moore and Klang by Jonty Harrison. These are both single source pieces that gradually explore the sonic character of an object by processing the sound further and further from its original state, before dramatically returning to the original sound. While the choice was made not to create a piece using only sounds from the Rubix cube, and instead to incorporate other sounds that share sonic characteristics with the cube, this method of revealing and then concealing facets of a sound was implemented. Multiple sources were chosen as the mental tangents come from a loss of focus on the cube, and so other sounds were used to represent distractions.

The structure of the piece is based around the algorithmic system I use to solve the puzzle. Sound is initially distant, based on the scrambling of the cube before it can be solved, and comes into focus as the solution begins. The first step involves the creation of a cross on one side. The algorithms used to do this often lead to audible sounds from the cube’s internal springs, and so other spring like sounds were added. The basic nature of this first step also lead to the short, gated sounds, with little or no post-processing.

The second step requires building two layers of the cube. This revolves around manipulation of pairs, and so the additional layers of movement were added. At this point the same process has to be repeated many times, and so the first intrusive sounds were added. These distractions build into dramatic sounds, with additional layers of cube samples to build tension, before returning to a single layer as an anti-climax.

The third step requires the movement of corner pieces, which lent itself to an exploration of panning. Fast stereo tremolos were used to create disorientating and extreme pans, along with sounds that are dragged from one side to the other. Stuttered and fractionally delayed cube sounds were inspired by the algorithmic nature of the puzzle. Solving it is essentially a computational process, and so glitch like effects were employed. Pitch and tremolo ramps were used on droned sounds to give a sense of time speeding up and slowing down as multiple calculations are made in a very short space of time.

Composition 3: 60 Minutes of Car Crash Victims (4:43)

Intrusive sound was investigated further in the final piece of this portfolio. Over the past few years I have tried to make a point of not listening to music while walking, in order to experience the sounds of my environment, which I would otherwise drown out. However, what could be relaxing and ambient places are often attacked by harsh and abrasive sounds. This piece is based around a recording of a secluded street that was dominated by the sound of renovations to one of the buildings.

The contrast between the near silence of the street under normal circumstances and the sounds that were present on that particular day also led to an investigation of sonic extremes. These were particularly inspired by the artists Death Grips, Andy Stott and Sunn O))), who all explore limits of pitch and volume in their compositions.

The sounds used for the piece were built on top of an environmental recording, which was also manipulated. In order to preserve the idea of intrusive or unwanted sound, the other sources were required to meet this criteria. The most prominent source came from an unplugged guitar cable, which was held to create interference. It was also connected to various guitar pedals that were setup to create as loud a noise floor as possible. These were combined with a set of screams, which were convolved against various sounds in the piece to give them a more human character.

Compression and reverb were also used to give sounds a sense of artificial distance, both near and far. These were used on the environmental sound in particular to create a feeling of claustrophobia. The bird song that can be heard throughout the original location recording, which is still audible even over the sound of an angle grinder, inspired the occasional pitched moments. These were created by altering the playback speed of the cable noise, and using reverb to remove some of the abrasive elements.

The piece comes to an end as the renovations are temporarily paused, with the slow spinning down of the angle grinder’s blade. The final section of bird song was given a long reverb to allow this relaxing sound to breathe after the overwhelmingly harsh noises that preceded it.