Daniel Servante's Blog

Now I have reached completion of the second composition I find it fascinating how much starting with the abstract themes of earth, wind, fire and water has helped. Firstly, and most obviously, my second piece contains a much more balanced variety of sound source material. Starting with four sound types helped to keep a constant contrast between sounds, which is something that I felt my first piece was lacking. There are still a lot of similarities between the sources I used, which helped to focus the piece, for example, I was able to do some quite effective transformations between fire and water sounds.

I think that having four distinct sound groups also helped me to easily structure the piece. I started and ended the piece with an unaltered statement of the four elements one after the other. This was very effective even though to me it was simply the most obvious thing to do given the abstract theme I decided to work with. I then began to form the piece by creating multiple short sections, each dealing with only one or two of the sound types. On top of this I tried to make the amount of effects and processing I used increase as the piece progressed. Again, this was not a particularly difficult structure to plan as it just seemed to fit the source material, showing further how the abstract theme of the four ancient elements was of great help to me.

Overall, this second piece is in my ears, far more successful than my first. I feel I worked on them equally and it was simply the focus of a predetermined abstract theme that really made the difference. I realise also that as with anything there is a lot to be learnt from the act of composition and it should not be too surprising that my second attempt is better than my first.

I will try and get a link to a stereo bounce of the piece up in the next hour or so!

As I continue work on the second composition for this module, I have began to see a three dimensional structure to the process of Acousmatic music creation. The first being the placement of the sound objects in time, and the structure and silence between them. The second is any effects and transformations to be applied. The third dimension I would like to highlight is then the precise manipulation of these effects over time. I am talking of automation. While automation is something I have known how to do for a long time, it has been working on Acousmatic Composition that has really made me see the incredibly vast range of uses for it. What I mean to say by highlighting the ‘three dimensions’ as I see it is that equal concentration must be paid to the automation of the channel’s effects as is paid to the placement and even creation of the sound objects themselves. I have learnt that when working with the precise manipulation of abstract sound, the way in which sound manipulation is tweaked over time is of immense importance. A very bland and simple sound can be brought to life and given personality by adding intelligently chosen effects. However, it can be given even more character when these effects are automated with great precision.

Needless to say, the vast majority of my time composing this piece has been spent in “Automation View’ in Logic and I am very happy with the results this has produced. I am now adding final adjustments to the piece and should have a stereo bounce uploaded for you guys to hear in the next few days!

Having started the second piece I’m here to reflect upon what I have done so far. This has been a small amount of structuring the sounds for the opening of the piece (as I have probably said before, I feel that a precisely measured use of silence is crucial here), however most of my work so far has gone into the construction of the sounds themselves.

As I may have mentioned in the previous post, I am basing my second composition on sounds of the four ancient elements; wind, earth, fire and water. This was a decision I made to ensure I have enough varied sound material as this was a key weakness of my first composition. I did however, still have to be wary of the possibility that I use too much contrasting sound, and the piece become unfocused. As with anything in musical composition, it is a question of intelligent and appropriate balance. To insure I kept this balance in relation to timbre, I decided to only create one or two different sound objects for each of the four elements. I have also found that the sounds of trickling water, spitting fire and rustling leaves are all somewhat similar in timbre so I do not fear too much that the sounds within the piece become too diffuse.

Parmegiani has been known for his work with the sounds of the basic elements and having listened to a few of his works (including En Phase) I feel there is a lot I can learn. I noticed the way in which he moves from one section to the next is incredibly smooth. You do not often feel that there has just been a sudden change, rather you simply notice once the sound transformation is complete. It is important, I think, to note that this technique is still probably best used in moderation, as it may make the piece as a whole seem to be slightly lacking clear structure. However, I do think that playing with this technique and the similar sounds within fire and water mentioned above could form an interesting section of my second piece.

Looking back on my first composition for this module, and learning from it, seems to me to be of great importance, given we must now produce a second piece. Having explored many diffusion techniques while practicing the art of live diffusion, it will be an interesting process applying this knowledge to 5.1 Surround Sound mixing. Although the second piece is to be made up of completely new material, it is for these two reasons I have just mentioned that I see the second composition as somehow being the child of the first. So the most obvious place to start work on the second piece, is in my opinion, to analyse the first.

I think that the first thing I can learn from the piece is the need for a bit more variety in timbre. The sound objects and gestures that make up the vast majority of the piece are very similar. While this was actually a conscious decision, to try and create a feeling of unity within the piece, I think it could have done with a little more contrast. The effect that this has on the piece is rather interesting however, as although the piece is relatively short ( approx. 4 mins), it feels a lot longer. Ones ears seem to become tired of the same sounds repeated without contrast, and the piece begins to drag. I was aware of this as I was composing the piece (particularly when planning the overall structure) but I think this has highlighted a need to be even more vigilant, even considering the different sounds in any given 10 seconds.

I feel that a strength of the piece is it’s opening. I wanted to make the primary gestures very clear in this section and put a lot of time into the timing between them. Particularly looking at the effect silence has on what the listener has just heard, compared with a flurry of different sounds to frame an important gesture. I feel that I made these gestures very clear with these techniques and achieving this is, in my opinion, crucial to the composition of an acousmatic work.

I am very interested to work with water based sounds for my next piece and will start collecting material in the next few days!

Done! And while I haven’t been able to give it a try with the four channel set up, I am confident that it will only make things easier than when I was reading the same commands off of a piece of paper and constantly having to keep one eye on the time!

For any of you who are interested, here’s the code:

Another quick thing I just remembered, before I begin coding fun…

Through Julio’s recommendation I have just created a SoundCloud account. The site allows you to upload, listen to and download music and there’s a lot of it. It’s always handy to have somewhere online to keep a few examples of your work and myspace is polluted with so much rubbish now that this site has made my day.

I thought though that you guys may be interested to hear a stereo mix of my piece for tomorrow so I uploaded it just now, here’s the link:

CLICK!

Having been into the recital hall twice this week to practice for tomorrows performance I am starting to feel really comfortable with diffusion. I know the piece well and feel I can really appreciate much more subtle sound movements than before.

In my first session on Monday I explored as many different possibilities I could for the piece, trying as many techniques as I could think of. I spent a lot of time perfecting circular movements and I feel I now have a very easy and effective technique. The way I feel I have achieved a more fluid circle is by always having two faders up. Rather than moving the sound from channel 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, I move it from 1 & 2 to 2 & 3 to 3 & 4 to 4 & 1 etc. This helps the sound to remain constant but also stops it from ever sounding like it is coming from a single static location.

My second session in the hall (last night) I was able to arrange these techniques in relation to my finished piece and explore structure in relation to diffusion rather than just sound. I came up with a page of scribbled notes which make sense to me and help me to perform the diffusion in the way I plan. However, they are not ideal. Even when written up neatly these notes are hard to follow and I must be constantly aware of how many seconds into the piece I am in order to read them. This made me think about other ways to notate diffusion plans and suddenly an effective method came to mind…

I have not yet put this in place, in fact, I am just about to try. I plan to code a diffusion command  scheduler in SuperCollider for me to use in tomorrows performance. The piece itself will also play through SuperCollider to keep them in sync. The idea being that as I diffuse I keep one eye on the ‘post’ window within SuperCollider and when the relevant time comes the relevant diffusion command, for example ‘slow move – front right to back left’ will be shown. I will post again in a few hours to share with you my results!

Listening to the opening of Julio’s piece Salto Mortal in last weeks session made me consider a number of compositional techniques to use in my compositional work. Having talked in class about call and response, this was the first I thought a lot about. I have come to realise that it is most effective when used to voice two contrasting sounds, one against the other. Despite their differences, the two sounds begin to become attached in the listener’s mind. Each individual sound seems to want for the other, and as they are repeatedly used together they begin to almost become one sound object.  This technique fascinates me as it seems to me the simplest way to create a truly unique and complex sound object, which can be naturally very easily split into two separate and contrasting sound objects.

Another thing I noticed Julio did was to accentuate percussive sounds with very quiet, plucked, chordal textures. It almost sounds as if it is the reverb itself that has been tuned to a chord. This is very subtle in the mix though so not to give an overtly tonal impression. I really liked this sound, and it has also made me realise that I do not need to shy away from harmony in my own composition quite as much as I had first assumed.

In last weeks session I got a great amount of practice on the mixer experimenting with defusion techniques. For the most part this was during the presentation Pete and I gave on Dhomont’s Theme De La Fuite. As I had hoped and suspected, I heard that almost every conceivable defusion motion could be used effectively if the sound was appropriate. I found that on very long steady sounds one could use the faders to impose an original volume envelope, for example causing the sound to swell dramatically. I also enjoyed exploring quick choppy movements which lend themselves very well, unsurprisingly, to quick choppy sounds.

Getting the chance to hear and defuse some of my own sounds that I recorded in the first week of term was a great experience. Having not heard the sounds for a while also definitely helped in giving me a much more objective opinion. In particular the scratching sounds I made with a plectrum across my mandolin’s strings was very easy to move around the room and hearing this effect was very inspiring.

It also made me want to explore the possibilities of different deformation techniques on the sounds. The sounds I got from various actions and motions with a roll of brown parcel tape in particular would lend themselves excellently to pitch shifting and time stretching. It was all very inspiring and no doubt by the end of the week I will be able to attach some work in progress of the first task to a post so you guys can give me a bit of feedback!