Electroacoustic Program Notes

For this project I attempted to make two contrasting pieces. The first one, ‘Mechanical noise’ aimed to sound abrasive and capture an overwhelming environment in public and ‘Working in the Studio’ attempted to capture the feeling of a studio session in disarray.

Mechanical Noise

For the piece named ‘Mechanical Noise’. I took a lot of inspiration from the piece ‘Liaisons Mechaniques’ by Bernier. This piece uses a lot of harsh mechanical sounds and I wanted to create something similar. For my piece I use 2 main recordings. The first being the recording of a drill being used on a construction site and the second being an alarm recorded on a site that  worked on at Paddington Station.

This alarm sound was inherently high pitched and I ended up using GRM delay to create a cacophony of sound that built and built. The piece was intended to emulate the experience of being in a busy area and having overwhelming sounds surround you. To introduce the human aspect of the piece, the part meant to represent the response to the overwhelming sounds, I used a recording of my voice being sung into a guitar and then recorded out of an amp with a pedal board. This method created a very unique, almost pained sound.  GRM delay was utilised on one of the recordings of the drill as well, creating a higher pitched version of the sound that also brought out metallic properties of the sound not previously heard. I tried to create this piece using very few recordings, 4 in total. I wanted to see how successful a piece of electro acoustic music could be when I had to be more creative with limited sounds.  

To redistribute the resonant frequencies on a recording of me singing long notes in Paddington Station I used the GRM reason tool. This tool was used to create a deeper, richer sound and to make my singing sound less human. It essentially boosted the lower resonant frequencies whilst reducing the higher ones.

I also experimented a lot with panning automation on this piece. For example at 1 minute 49 another recording of guitar feedback enters. The pan is automated to go from right to left at an 

almost random rate. I wanted to disorientate the viewer by doing this and add to the overwhelming aspect of the piece. Automation of volume wasn’t the only example of automaton as I also experimented with automating certain sounds to be muted in a dramatic fashion, often paired with a boost in volume just before the cut off. This created another disorientating aspect of the piece as listeners would be surprised when the big build up of sounds just suddenly cut out.

‘Mechanical Noise’ is a piece that utilises lots of droning sounds, this is an aspect where it differs from the second piece that I made.

Working in the Studio

My second piece is named ‘Working in the studio’. This piece was created to represent, in an abstract way, how working in a studio can be a difficult process. This piece utilised many recordings that I made in a studio recording live musicians over various projects. I blended sounds of guitar, trumpet, bass and various percussion to create this piece. However, none of the instruments sound like the original recordings as they were heavily manipulated using GRM tools and automation.The sound that plays throughout and ties the entire track together is an egg shaker that has been turned into a more continuous sound through the use of GRM delay. Volume is also automated throughout the piece to bring some variation to the egg shaker sound. Another percussion instrument that has been manipulated to no longer sound like the original recording is the bead percussion. The bead percussion has been manipulated using the GRM comb filter, mixing delayed copies of itself in with the original sound to create the illusion that the sound has a longer tail, it creates almost a ‘rattlesnake’ like effect.

I wanted this piece to differ from my first one by having a section with a lot more low end. TO achieve this i utilised a live bass recording paired with a tabla recording. On the bass I used GRM shuffling and GRM delay to create a glitchy bass part. The randomness of the shuffling plug in was a nice aspect that kept the part interesting for the listener. For the tabla I layered many different plugins to create another glitchy sound, something that resembled the sound a synthesizer would make. I layered GRM pitch accum, GRM Doppler, a pitch shifter and GRM delays. All of these plugins transform the traditional percussion sound into something entirely different, this was meant to represent how sometimes recording sessions do not go as intended. GRM shuffling was also used on a recording of a slide guitar, again creating this glitchy effect as if it is being slowly sped up over time. 

By using many recordings from successful recording sessions I had over the course of the year, I managed to create something both familiar and strange. All of the recordings are uncanny after being manipulated and I believe this will create an interesting listening experience.

The only link between the two pieces is the use of electric guitar feedback. I felt that the use of it in ‘Mechanical Noise’ is very different to its use in ‘Working in the Studio’. In mechanical noise it acts as a respite from the more abrasive sounds, whereas in ‘working in the studio’ it only comes in and out occasionally, acting as another textural layer for the piece.