Project Notes for Electroacoustic Submission: Piece 1

My biggest inspiration when creating this piece came from the track Memory Box by Jonty Adkins. Its incorporation of more tonal elements into the electroacoustic sound was very appealing to me, so I created an electroacoustic piece with distinct post – ambient stylings.

Sounds Used

The only two sources of the sounds in this piece were an upright piano located in Leeds Conservatoire, alongside my Takamine acoustic guitar. I picked these as my basis for the piece do to their ability to produce pitched sounds. I initally recorded myself playing all 12 notes in an octave on both instruments so as to give myself the ability to create a pad on any note of the scale. This was then followed by recording myself playing octaves of C and G, giving me more harmonic material to work with. The percussive sounds heard during this piece came from a mixture of places on both instruments, such as the pickguard of the guitar, the lid being shut on the piano, or a pick being scraped along the guitar strings.

Processing applied

The main piece of GRM software used through this piece was the freeze plugin. It was predominantly used to create pads from the reverb tails of guitar and piano notes, with the pitch function used to adjust the pitch of the note if needed. This technique can be heard for the first time at around 8 seconds in, with it being consistently utilised throughout. I also adjusted the parameters of the freeze plugin whilst recording, to extend the width of the affected audio in order to slowly incorporate the attack of a note or pluck. This gave my pads more textural depth and a more melodic feel at points. A prime example of this can be heard at 00:54 to 01:07 in a guitar recording being processed. The original recording, which can also be heard in the piece in its unprocessed state, is linked underneath:

The main melody of this piece heard at 01:34 was developed through taking an individual piano note and adjusting its pitch to create a sequence, with the room reverb in the recording being put through GRM freeze to boost the reverb level. The sub bass being incorporated in the second half of the piece was directly inspired by Memory box, which start high in the frequency range, but gradually expands downwards. This allowed the piece to have a distinct textural expansion halfway through, giving greater variation and interest.

The percussion through the piece consisted of recordings of the piano lid being shut, and the pickguard being tapped on the guitar. Both of these sounds were then inputted through GRM shuffling. For each different recording, I put two versions of it in the piece, offset them from each other and then put differing delay parameters on each so as to give a thicker percussive sound bed with greater levels of variation. I changed how offset they were from each other at points as well to keep the sound shifting. The final percussive element utilised was a recording of me running a pick down a guitar string. I then processed the audio using a comb filter, which gave it more a pitched sound but still retained a strongly percussive element to it.

Project notes for Electroacoustic Submission: Piece 2

When writing this piece I aimed to create something distinctly less harmonically driven than the last one, with more of a focus on percussive elements. That aside, Adam Stansbie’s escapade was of great inspiration, with its darker set of sounds and an unsettling feeling of tension. While this piece took a more subdued approach than escape, I aimed to emulate that feeling of tension akin to something out of a horror soundtrack.

Sounds used:

Most of the sounds i recorded were an eclectic set of items from my bedroom, such as a lighter, a hairbrush scraped against my bed, an empty cake wrapper, and my curtains. In an effort to bring some more mechanical sounds in I also recorded my washing machine and dryer. I recorded these sounds in an effort to have a strong variation in non – pitched elements so as to create a sound bed made up of small fragments of each sound.

Processing applied

This piece used a wider range of processing tools than the previous, with particular note to the GRM shuffling tool which was utilised heavily. I placed shuffling alonside delays on the recording a cake wrapper being scrunched, which can be heard entering at 00:32. the sound has been completely fragmented, leaving only a low pitched crackle. I also used the comb filter quite heavily to still retain some element of pitch and tonality, while also giving interest to my percussion. The recording that enters at 00:11 is the sound of my dryer, which I have applied comb filter and freeze to. I am slowly opening up the width parameter on the freeze plugin which is what causes the comb filter affected ticking sound. The bouncy low end that can be heard entering the track at 00:40 is a recording of my AirPod case shutting, which I have routed through comb filter for pitch, and then the delays plugin to get a sound akin to an arpeggiator, giving the track a subtle tension to the texture.

At 01:30, an extended recording of my washing machine beginning a cycle can be heard, which has had shuffle applied to it. It serves as a fresh addition to the texture, but also fades in and out due to the machine starting and stopping, this allows the texture to breathe as the sound fades in and out, giving variation.

The fragmented and unsettling melody at 03:05 is from a piano recording I did for the previous piece but did not use. Here I have frozen the tail of a note and am slowly expanding the parameters of freeze to let the attack of the note in, creating a jumpy, unsettling melodic texture.

The twirling, detuned pad that can be heard entering at 03:15 is the same piano recording put through GRM delays, with the ending pitch lowered, to create a detuning effect that builds up to the end of the piece due to a high feedback setting on the delay.