Month: July 2022

With the concept of worlds converging pretty much solidified now, I thought I would expand my research to gain references and figure out the best way to communicate this idea. What sprung to mind instantly is one of my favourite films of all time, ‘Fight Club’. Directed by David Fincher, Fight Club tells the story of a psychologically disturbed insomniac (played by Edward Norton) who becomes so repressed from his role as a cog in the wheel of capitalist society that he begins to start a fight club with a friend he meets, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). This club embraces freedom and allows men with similar issues of feeling stuck and in a repetitive cycle imposed on them by the society they live in to let out their resentment and anger – on one another. This then evolves into the narrator (he isn’t initially given a name) and Tyler using the club to create an army of radicalists.

We eventually find out that the hell-raising, free-spirited, wildly intense Tyler Durden is in fact an imaginary projection from the narrator’s subconscious, and in reality it is the narrator who is Tyler Durden. Tyler represents everything that the mundane narrator wants to be; he gives him the daring to act out on his repressed impulses and hatred of the position that he is in. Everything that we see Tyler do in the film – from purposefully losing control of his car with both of them in it to being the mastermind behind this eventual rebellion – is in fact the narrator. The film does an exceptional job of painting the narrator to be scared and hopeless, but the fact that we find out all these acts of violence, aggression and ultimate mass destruction were all committed by this imaginary alter ego highlights just how mentally unstable he is, whilst pointing to the importance of having a balance in your life of order and chaos, possession and freedom, calmness and craziness.

The reason this film reinforces my idea so beautifully is because it perfectly addresses the subject of living in reality and living in your mind. The narrator’s mind is so far gone due to the weight of the real world that it generates a projection of everything he wants to be. And even though it is him that acts on everything, he believes it is his “friend” who is influencing him. In one of the most iconic and thought provoking endings of a film I’ve witnessed, we see this convergence of his inner world and what has been happening in the real world when he realises Tyler and him are the same person and he eventually shoots himself in the head to remove Tyler and reach his moment of complete freedom, unchaining himself from the restrictions imposed on his mind. He then somehow survives and we see buildings blowing up in the distance as he holds his girlfriends hand, realising what he has done. This moment in particular is a very good reference for my audio piece because it is the moment where the illusions that plagued the narrators mind result in a real world consequence.

This scene is obviously an extreme version of what I want to communicate, but it is so well filmed and well written that it is a perfect example of worlds converging and a moment happening because of it. I’m led to feel that I should make a soundtrack of a hypothetical moment where the inner world of the mind and the outer world combine. Instead I don’t want to make that moment a destructive one as Fight Club does, but a moment of embracing that you are entirely unique and you see the world in your own way, and accepting that the world has it’s own view of you too. I want to champion self-acceptance and address that your inner world can change and be fluid, and you can exist alongside the world around you. I’m pointing towards a bigger issue here in depression and anxiety, and voices in your head that are often generated by trauma or the dark parts of your mind. I’ve had too many experiences and heard too many stories of people not wanting to live anymore and sometimes acting on it because they don’t feel the world accepts them, and they feel that the world they want to live in doesn’t exist. I am trying to suggest that you can control the world around you more than it controls you.

The first group improvisation really opened some new pathways for me to explore, most notably the no input mixing method that I have since delved into further. I enjoyed the process of improvising on the spot with no restrictions, but this time I wanted to be more involved with the performance. Last time I felt I did a lot of listening and observing, and my role was more to add accents and texture to an already sonically dense performance. I decided to bring my mixer along and sure enough Cai brought his as well, which was great because, alongside the fact that there were considerably less people, it changed the dynamic and overall sound of the improvisation. This recording I’ve linked below is a lot more electronic and driven by synths, mixers and software instruments. We also had one person controlling the overall mix and established that the master mixer is as much an instrument as anything else, with the person in control of it able to make creative decisions like adding effects, changing volume and bringing sound sources in and out of the mix. Furthermore there was one person controlling the octophonic speaker setup with the Pro-Tools plugin ‘GRM Spaces’. This person was able to move individual instruments around the eight speakers as well as the entire master, which ended up creating a much more immersive and spatial experience.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12CXML5mBQcDxgUpqgNYtMXGUSBFM2qWz/view?usp=sharing

I feel like this time around the group as a whole were more understanding of everyone’s strengths and individual approaches, which resulted in a much more cohesive and structured performance. The link that I have provided is an ambisonic recording of the performance. At around 6 and a half minutes the piece moves onto to focus on my group, which consisted of me and my mixer and Dereck who was using software synths on Ableton being triggered by a MIDI keyboard. Dereck decided to leave me to improvise on my own before joining in which was great for me as it allowed me to have the limelight for a bit and bring my approach to the group more so than last week. I was happy because I felt like I set the tone for the rest of the performance, which then jumped between the different groups. My groups section was a lot more minimal and isolated, but ended up acting as a build up to the synths that came in after, as if it was planned. The spatial aspect offered more space for each sound to breathe and it never felt like any sound dominated when it didn’t need to. Listening back I can imagine that this piece was recorded on a space ship in the middle of an unknown galaxy – the sonic qualities and layers of glitches, strange pads and ethereal frequency shifts sound like a crew of astronauts journeying through an undiscovered area of the universe.

Compared to the first recordings, this one felt like everyone was more connected and the collective conscience that I spoke about before was stronger. Every person respected the overall mood and the piece didn’t seem to flick between atmospheres and aesthetics. It honestly sounded like a score to a sci-fi film. I think if we were to do this more often we would naturally become more connected as a group and create some really progressive sound art. This space offers an opportunity that I wouldn’t be able to have anywhere else, where all these interesting sound tools culminate to spark ideas and inspiration.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vsBrcTMi4-N1rYqyk3EtZ6dD2cSB-fX5/view?usp=sharing

Following the group improvisation, I was very interested in the idea of no input mixing that Cai, one of the students, had introduced to me. I have heard of this idea before but have perhaps been slightly ignorant toward it as I didn’t understand how it worked. Cai explained it to me simply after I asked him, and it all began to make sense.

I decided to try it out for myself with an old mixer that I found at home which I haven’t used before. It’s an Alesis mixer with six channels, a hundred effects and auxiliary sends/returns, offering a lot of different options. I connected 1/4 inch jack cables from the outputs of the mixer (including the main outs, control room outs, aux returns and headphone out), and routed these to the inputs of each channel respectively. The result was a feedback loop that sounded a lot rougher in texture and dynamic in frequency than what I had heard Cai’s mixer produce.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EV1OPchsXNgiqMyJaB8hxAsWxPUNBNyU/view?usp=sharing

I found the process of mindlessly playing with the mixer so fun because I ended up getting completely lost in a wave of uncontrolled sound, which is refreshing as I am usually a bit more in control. It reinforced the ideas I’ve been working on of exploring the sound and the producers’ relationship with the sound in an organic and goalless way, creating a more natural workflow. The sound would range from more rhythmic, bit crushed sequences to swells of warped bass tones and waves of rising frequency that had a much smoother sonic aesthetic. Randomly altering the EQ frequency gain, the amount the channels that were being to sent to the effects and the effects themselves created an unpredictable and fluid sound creation process. Quickly turning knobs would often create glitches and intensely electrical sounding artefacts. I chose to record all of my experiments, which I will link below.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qjLYCULe8DJz9ZNSIEwMDDsByj1N5F7p?usp=sharing

I realised after taking a few recordings that the principles of sound still apply here, for example turning up the gain of high frequencies/cutting out the low frequencies would cause the sound wave to oscillate faster and result in a pitch rather than a rhythmic sequence, and vice versa. I began to have more control over the mixer after it initially seemed so random to me, which helped because I had the ability to begin to construct an arrangement of sorts in my recordings. I was able to go from minimal techno sounding sequences and seamlessly weave it into a noise driven bass just by playing with the frequency. This made me think about performing with this instrument because you could essentially build up an entire track live with enough practice. I think if I were to invest in a better mixer with mute buttons and more channels I would be able to create really intricate compositions from scratch and keep it contained within a tempo, rather than the mixer acting purely as a random sound generator. This is definitely something I would like to develop more as the year goes on.

In our studio praxis lesson we took some of the ideas we have been looking at such as goalless exploration and blending together/evolving compositions and integrated these in a live performance setting. For this first week, we brought in tools to create sounds with or were assigned objects or instruments – some people had synths, there were guitars and a piano, field recorders and foley items. I decided to not bring anything in because I wanted to move out of my comfort zone and embrace the experience, rather than using a synth that I am used to. I was in a group that had random percussion, foley items and objects, which essentially took some power away from me as I didn’t have an overwhelming instrument at my disposal.

We ran through setting everything up and were each routed to different speakers around the room, going over how to properly set the microphones up and discussing what recording devices would be best for each section. There was a section with tradtional instruments like a guitar, violin and piano and also two synths, and there was also a section with a field recorder, a mixer (which was plugged in to itself to create a no input feedback instrument) and an electromagnetic recorder. Then there was a section with a bass guitar, harpsichord and drum objects and then my section which was foley objects.

The first attempt is linked below. We made it clear as a group that we wanted no one to dominate, and try to remove an ego’s from the situation so that no one was in control and it was more of a collective effort.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nM4NeQOKxwfW3fwCNRjRGIDF6V0RC_E7/view?usp=sharing

I think this first live improvisation is suprisingly good. I say surprisingly because I felt that because it was our first time and there was so many different sound tools, it would culminate in a volume war that would end up sounding messy and unpleasant. Instead everyone gave people space for their instruments to breathe and there was a kind of collective conscience that was generated through the performance. I felt like I got to know certain people in a different way through how they were interacting with their instruments and adapting to the other sounds around them. For me personally it was particularly interesting because a lot of the time I sat back and listened, which is a new perspective for me as I would usually be immersed in what I am creating myself. I have never done a live improvisation of this magnitude and I took this first run through to relax and experience what was going on around me. There were certain points where I genuinely felt transcended by the atmosphere of the soundscape; there are some really talented musicians and sound makers in the class. My favourite sequence was at around 13 minutes in where the preceding crescendo cascaded into a quieter, more subdued period in which the violin, guitar and piano took centre stage with the other instruments serving as accents and a bed of sound that, upon listening back, sounds intentional and meticulous.

The second performance was slightly different, as we started with everyone joining in and then went around the room group by group to isolate the different sections of the ensemble.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12fceej83pn63nwUHmhIk7o-8aNMLWHJ6/view?usp=sharing

After five minutes the performance moved on to the first group, which I loved because of the mixer that Cai was using as a no input feedback instrument. The space-like, industrially digital sounds that it produced blew me away, and out of everything I experienced on the day this excited me the most. I have an old mixer at my house which I have never used before, and hearing what sounds you can achieve when you plug it into itself has urged me to try it out myself.

The thing I liked most about the whole performance was the transitions. From around 6 minutes to 7 and a half minutes in the recording there is a slow and methodical transition between the more electronic sounds and percussion/foley abstractions that gently fade in a beautifully smooth yet tactile texture. As a whole piece it sounds like it has life to it, as compared to the first recording there is a lot more isolation of specific sounds and segments of more reflective and quiet sonic moments, as well as broader cacophonies of sound. In relation my working idea for my sound project, this really did feel like a convergence of worlds in every sense. A striking together of peoples minds, a merging of sonic timbres, frequencies and textures and an open conversation without any words, just purely sound.

I have learned a lot from this experience and it has reignited a spark within me to let go and just make, listen and observe. Hearing everyone’s approach to the performance was the stimulus for a lot of conversation afterwards, and by the end I saw people, myself included, finding new and creative ways to utilise what was at their disposal to create interesting sounds in a group context. People went from playing the guitar to scratching the strings, creating rhythms with percussion to creating purely texture, adding synth pad sounds to building a sound on the synth live. It was a very inspiring experience, one that I am excited to try again and continue to learn from.

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We were tasked with creating a sound piece that would resemble a storm, and from there we would put all of our files into one folder and pick out other peoples creations and blend them together to create something entirely new.

Here is the piece I made, which was done on VCV rack, which is a free modular synthesiser plugin. I have recently been getting to grips with modular synthesis and I wanted to try and create this storm piece using something I don’t use too often. The intention was to creating a swirling, airy motion that felt like you were in the centre of a tornado, being at the mercy of the force of nature. I wanted the sound to feel epic and intense but with fragments of beauty lying in it, to appreciate the awe inspiring quality of a storm.

I had four oscillators running with two being triggered by a sequencer. One oscillator provided a smooth, constant bass tone for depth whilst another added a wall of buzzing high end. The two other oscillators being triggered by the sequencer created a wistful circular motion that sounds like an arpeggio being played underwater. It was important that all the sounds culminated to spark a dense overall sound as being in the middle of a tornado would be loud and abrasive. I thought of the piece as reflecting on being at the mercy of mother nature, both terrified and at peace knowing your fate is not in your hands. I used a texture synthesiser module to add more air and dimension to the piece. The module was triggered by the reverb of the main swirling sound and has a dreamlike subtlety that adds more muffled intricacy to the rest of the sounds and gives them more structure to be fluid around.

For the next part of the task I first took two compositions from my peers (Hywel and Max) and blended them together. The aim here, as Milo said, was ‘goalless exploration’ or in other words using the material to spark ideas and new ways of thinking rather than trying to solidify your idea before you even start producing sound. I like this way of looking at things because it is what I tend to do when I’m stuck for ideas; resampling things you have already made or using an existing loop and processing it until it is something else can often lead you down a path that would have otherwise not gone down.

For my mashup of two pieces of sound, I tried my best to retain the respective qualities of both pieces that had spoke to me in the first place, whilst at the same time creating something new. Max’s piece was a lot more atmospheric, with Hywel’s having more dynamism and timbral/textural shifts. I used frequency modulation, lowpass filtering and grain delay to blend the two together and used LFO’s to modulate and arrange the sounds into my own composition. I think it worked well because it has a uniqueness that makes it mine but it pays respect to what came before it.

My second piece was an evolution of two pieces that had already been blended together, so the next stage basically. My mindset was different with this because someone had already edited the original sounds, so I treated this how I would treat any sample and processed it quite heavily. I used EQ’s and chopped up the sample, turning one into a distant, delayed kick sound, with the other two being affected by LFO’s controlling the feedback of a resonator/flanger plugin as well as one LFO controlling the other ones rate to create randomness. Finally I put the whole sample through Ableton’s vector grain plugin which added even more randomness and soft glitches and pulsations. Put together the layers turned into a blissful soundscape that had an industrial edge to it.

To address the point of this exercise, my initial piece was specifically inspired by a storm, but building off of other peoples storm pieces began to lead me further and further away from the storm idea, and helped to form new ideas and sounds. This is a process that I thoroughly enjoyed and I had a great experience listening to how everyone approached the initial task differently. I would like to implement this process more in my own work.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fLj4Zven0avLMuofNT0hPsyhPM7sbZGP?usp=sharing

Here is the link for my field recordings, of which there were eight in total. I am very pleased with how these turned out, as they all have so much depth and texture, as well as enough space between sonic events that it would be easy to sample. My intention was to use the ambisonic space to construct vague sketches of compositions, all the time thinking about positioning, intensity, texture and volume. The nature of the ambisonic microphone allowed me to capture distance in more of a controlled way, and I think this worked particularly well in recording 005 where I found a rusted metal pole and scraped it along a less destroyed, larger pole that I positioned just above the recorder. The angle of the pole allowed me to essentially pan the sound from left to right and high to low simultaneously, which resulted in a strikingly dynamic and intimate sound that fluctuated between close detail and more of a bold ambience depending on how close it was to the microphone. Upon listening back I came to realise that the distance and pressure applied to an object would act as the processing in real time, for example gently scraping the poles right next to the microphone would have a low noise, detailed sound as if a compressor had been added, and a more purposeful stroke further away would result in a cavernous reverberated sound with occasional vague delays.

It was a poignant moment for me because the process made me understand the beauty of field recording, and the idea that you do not need to run these sounds through extensive effects chains on a computer to achieve the desired effect – instead it was more about how I could use the space and surroundings to my advantage, and work in unison with the area around me to conjure these exciting sounds. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of post processing and heavily affecting recordings, but there was a subtlety and child like enthusiasm that this processed forced out of me that I don’t think working with samples on a computer could. The curiosity of delving deeper into the sonic capabilities of an object, and then two objects, and then how that object can interact with everything else definitely struck me and expanded my thinking a bit more.

I feel like I recorded enough diverse sound content, spanning through all the frequency ranges and ranging from aggressive and dense to soft and delicate. This means that I have an enormous amount of sounds to work with. Furthermore, this experience reinforces my idea of your perspective on the world and the worlds subsequent perspective of you. I feel that through this recording process, the two perspectives collided, or in other words two worlds collided. The world that I was generating in my mind before actually starting to record and interact was totally different to the world I was generating when I did begin. I felt a connection between myself and my surroundings, as if we were one. Often I feel that the world around me doesn’t understand me, or maybe I just don’t understand it, or maybe even both, but when the two parties begin to immerse themselves in one another beautiful things happen. I think this process has strengthened my concept, which will focus on creating a composition that basically scores the moment when worlds collide. This could be interpreted in many ways which is why I think it is a great idea, as it could mean a your perception of life clashing with someone elses, or your surroundings becoming less familiar to you and you then reacting to that, or even the moment of realisation that your inner world and the world around you are different, but can merge to become one.

I believe that my ideas generated from my research on ‘La Ravissement de Frank N. Stein’ and ‘Donda’ have sat in my mind a while longer and evolved slightly. Put simply, the concept of an artist being misunderstood by others as well as misunderstanding themselves and the world around them is all to do with perception. The perception of the world from your lens, and the world’s perception of you through its lens.

With this in mind I felt like my idea for this project was becoming more concrete, and I thought the best way to start generating some actual sound would be to document me interacting with the world around me. I decided to take a trip to Greenwich and walk along the Thames after Rory, one of our technicians, recommended that it was a great place for recording the environment without too much interruption.

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These are some pictures I took on my phone of the location, as well as some pictures that are more centred around my reaction to the environment, such as textures of materials and compositions rather that documentation. I felt it was important to document how I was interacting with the world surrounding me through visual means as well as sound recordings, as it is all the same process ultimately.

I used a Zoom H3 ambisonic recorder, which was perfect because it is small and portable so I could put it in any position I wanted, rather than having to carry around a big recorder with a stand and everything. I found the process really enjoyable because for the first time I felt like I was just letting go and becoming one with the surrounding environment. Last year whenever I went out recording I would always have a lot of subconscious restrictions like a specific concept or an unspoken need to achieve a certain sound, whereas this time I felt consumed by the process and it was very liberating. I took a lot from Cedrik Fermont’s lecture where he spoke about his unwavering desire to travel and immerse himself in new ideas, cultures and environments, and whilst this environment wasn’t exactly new to me my mindset was different and that resulted in a totally unique experience.

I found so many little objects to make sound with, as the location had a lot of scrap metal, stones, plastic and washed up litter, not to mention there was a seemingly abandoned construction site that only took a little climb to get to right next to where I was recording. I will examine my recordings in more detail in my next post, where I will link the actual recordings as well.

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