Piece 1: Tight Deadlines
Piece 2: Youthful Mind
Programme Notes
Tight Deadlines
For my first piece I wanted to capture the stress of work and closing deadlines so, using the Zoom H5 I recorded various mechanical, metal and general workplace sounds including items on my desk like typing on the keyboard (Appendix 1), which became the centre of my piece, as well as the hallways, stairwells and lifts within the university (Appendix 2).
For this piece I was inspired by Berezan’s use of movements in “Baoding” and so I used the identifiable workplace sound of a page turn (Appendix 3) to signal the end of each movement within my work. I used this to conclude the intense rising sections, providing a sense of relief after the almost unbearable climaxes, emphasising the feeling of completing work after a tight deadline.
To create these intense rising sections, I used a combination of drones, made using GRM CombFilter on sounds like metal striking a banister rail, paired with the sound of my hard drive fan which I froze using GRM Freeze. Then using GRM Reson and a heavy low pass filter I embellished its lower frequencies whilst adding pitch, creating an intense low bass drone. I then froze mouse clicking and keyboard typing sounds, using a small number of loops to create an intense, consistent and chaotic, yet recognisable scattering sound which, using GRM Doppler, I sent spinning around the audio space, creating the feeling of stress surrounding the audience (Appendix 4). Then, using GRM Shuffling on several longer sound sources, I created an eclectic and disorientating mix of broken, almost static like, sounds that cascaded around the audio space as I wanted to capture the chaos of sounds crashing into one another unapologetically, inspired by Schaeffer’s use of montage.
Between chapters I wanted to capture the feeling of the office using a familiar sound made from an unrecognisable source and so I applied Reson and tremolo to a banister strike to create an oddly familiar, yet unusual, computer whirring sound (Appendix 5).
Another inspiration from “Baoding” was the use of sudden dynamic shifts which I created from sounds including keys jangling, which I reversed and applied stereo delay and Doppler to. I then bounced the audio and unreversed it so I could have a reversed sound flowing into an unreversed version, creating a metallic, cascading sound, with an unusual texture, in sudden dynamic bursts, capturing the feeling of anxiety (Appendix 6).
For the final section of the piece, I focussed less on pitched sounds and more on creating a frenzy of mechanical office sounds, using GRM Freeze as the backbone. I did this by freezing the sounds of mouse clicking, keyboard typing and pencil scribbles and slowly increasing the number of loops within each freeze (Appendix 7), using volume automation to intensify the rising loops as the piece headed towards its conclusion. I then emphasised this by continuously adding more office sounds with a combination of GRM Freeze, Doppler, Delay, and Reson as well as effects like tremolo, reverb, stereo spread and time stretching to create a building cluster of frenzied sounds as the climax rose (Appendix 8). This was heavily inspired by Schaeffer’s montage ideas and Stansbie’s “Escapade” and emphasised the sound of extreme anxiety within the piece.
Youthful Mind
For my second piece I wanted to capture the sound of a child’s mind during play and the chaos of their imaginations, so I recorded “fun” sounds like bouncing balls, consoles and various instruments that captured the eclectic mix of almost musical sounds that play in a child’s mind (Appendix 9).
Using the idea of Mimetic Discourse, I opened the piece with the sound of a PlayStation starting up, creating a storybook opening as if the child was playing a game throughout the piece. I then used various raw recordings including controller vibrations, bouncing balls and fizzing coke to create an initial identifiable soundscape for the audience (Appendix 10). I then moved into Aural Discourse, delving into the “sound of the mind” using drone sounds, inspired by Adkins “Memory Box”, made from the frozen tail of a ukulele note to create an elongated pad sound. I then combined this pad with the original note, giving it a much longer tail, before duplicating and pitch shifting the sound to create a soft ambient harmony, giving this section a calm feeling but with less identifiable textures, inspired by Moore’s “Junky”.
This led me onto the first climactic section of the piece, inspired by elements from Macdonald’s “Dreel” and Bentall’s “Russian Roulette” as I used various instrument recordings to create a chaotic blend of pitched and unpitched sounds by applying Freeze to instruments like the double bass, creating a solid rising low end foundation, and Shuffling to the sound of a vibrato concertina, creating an intense scattered high end (Appendix 11). This emphasised the child’s mind as children are often musical but without direction, meandering from one sound to the next like my piece. At the core of this section, I used a reversed banjo sound, creating an uncanny version of itself, accompanied by gestural material like flutes and shakers which provided an almost random effect that I emphasised using CombFilter, panning and pitch shifting. I then concluded this first section with a project-wide crescendo, before using the disc eject and re-insert sounds to transition into the next section.
This section was based around the sound of balls bouncing, which I used to create a rhythmical sequence including tennis balls, yoga balls and bongos which I had in standard, time stretched and reversed forms using Reson to emphasise the reverses (Appendix 12). This was built up slowly, adding a new rhythmic idea with each passing bar, inspired by Schaeffer, before I used the sound of a pizzicato double bass, which I heavily time stretched, to effectively swallow the sounds. This helped to transition into a softer section where the banjo could be faintly heard amongst guitar plucks with an Fmaj7 applied to them through CombFilter and rotationally panned coke sounds that I froze, creating a bed of soft textures (Appendix 13). I then rose out of these textures to create a noticeable dynamic shift by reintroducing many of the instrumental ideas from before, paired with various new ones using Reson, Shuffling, Freeze, Doppler and Delays to create an intense collection of pitched sounds for the climax, fronted by the concertina. I then concluded this piece with the disc eject sound, bookending the piece and providing an end to the game within the child’s mind, as the game was physically removed from the console.
Bibliography
Adkins, M. (2011) Memory Box. Fragile.Flicker.Fragment [Streamed]. Audiobulb Records.
Bentall, R. (2016) Russian Roulette. Russian Roulette [Streamed]. Available online: https://robbentall.bandcamp.com/track/russian-roulette [Accessed 05/12/2025].
Berezan, D. (2002) Baoding. La face cachée [Streamed]. Available online: https://empreintesdigitales.bandcamp.com/track/baoding [Accessed 21/11/2025].
Macdonald, A. (2008) Dreel. Legacies: Works from BEAST Vol.2 [Streamed]. Sargasso.
Moore, A. (1996) Junky. Traces [Streamed]. Available online: https://empreintesdigitales.bandcamp.com/track/junky [Accessed 28/11/2025].
Schaeffer, P. (1959) Objets Exposés. Étude aux Objets [Streamed].
Stansbie, A. (2012) Escapade. Isthmus [Streamed]. Sargasso.
Appendices
Appendix 1 – Keyboard Recordings
Appendix 1.1 – Keyboard Typing Raw Recording
Appendix 1.2 – Image of me Recording my Keyboard
Appendix 2 – University Recordings
Appendix 2.1 – Lift Recording
Appendix 2.2 – Hallway Doors Recording
Appendix 2.3 – Stairwell Bannister Recording
Appendix 3 – Page Turn Recording
Appendix 4 – Keyboard Typing with GRM Freeze and Doppler Applied
Appendix 4.1 – Keyboard Typing with Freeze and Doppler Sound
Appendix 4.2 – Freeze Parameters on Keyboard Typing Recording
Appendix 4.3 – Doppler Parameters on Keyboard Typing Recording
Appendix 5 – Computer Whirring Sound made from Bannister Strike using GRM Reson and Tremolo Plugin
Appendix 6 – Sudden Dynamic Shift Sound created from Keys Jangling
Appendix 6.1 – Original Keys Jangling Sound
Appendix 6.2 – Processed Keys Jangling with Stereo Delay and Doppler Applied
Appendix 7 – Using Automation to slowly increase the number of loops in GRM Freeze
Appendix 7.1 – Picture of the Automation for the rising loops in GRM Freeze
Appendix 7.2 – Mouse Clicking with rising loops in GRM Freeze
Appendix 8 – Picture of all the different channels with a variety of GRM Plugins applied in the conclusion to ‘Tight Deadlines’
Appendix 9 – “Fun” Recordings from ‘Youthful Mind’
Appendix 9.1 – Tennis Ball Sounds
Appendix 9.2 – Picture of me recording Tennis Ball Sounds
Appendix 9.3 – Playstation On/Off Sound (Disc Eject)
Appendix 9.4 – Concertina Vibrato Recording
Appendix 9.5 – Picture of me recording Concertina
Appendix 9.6 – Double Bass Recording
Appendix 9.7 – Picture of me recording Double Bass
Appendix 10 – Raw Sound Recordings to set the scene in ‘Youthful Mind’
Appendix 10.1 – Can of Coke Recording
Appendix 10.2 – Controller Vibrations Recording
Appendix 11 – Using GRM Freeze and Shuffling to create chaotic sounds from Instrument Recordings
Appendix 11.1 – Pad/Drone created using GRM Freeze on a Double Bass
Appendix 11.2 – GRM Freeze Parameters for Double Bass Drone
Appendix 11.3 – Concertina Vibrato with GRM Shuffling Applied to it
Appendix 11.4 – Parameters for GRM Shuffling on the Concertina Vibrato
Appendix 12 – Tennis and Yoga Ball Rhythmical Sequence Sound Recordings
Appendix 12.1 – Time Stretched Yoga Ball Audio
Appendix 12.2 – Tennis Ball Recording that has been Reversed and then GRM Reson has been applied to it
Appendix 13 – Soft Section Sounds using GRM CombFilter and GRM Freeze with Panning
Appendix 13.1 – CombFiltered Guitar Plucks with Fmaj7 applied in CombFilter
Appendix 13.2 – Picture of GRM CombFilter Plugin with Fmaj7 applied using the frequencies in the plugin for the Guitar Plucks
Appendix 13.3 – Coke Recording frozen with GRM Freeze and then Panned
Appendix 13.4 – Picture of GRM Freeze Parameters for the Panned Coke Sound
