Etch
Draw your sounding environment.
The drawing could be in colour or black and white. You can use any tools you wish. The possibilities are up to the listener, but below are some examples for you to think about before doing the exercise:
- Think about how you will use space. Will you use it to map the direction of the sounds you are hearing? Or to map their space in time?
- Think about how you will use colour or texture. Perhaps different colours represent different timbres to you? What colour or texture is that sound?
- Think about how you will use shape. Are louder sounds darker, or larger? Are longer sounds bigger than shorter sounds?
- If you gave this to a performer as a graphic score, would it represent your environment?
Friday, 18 December 2015
Listening Exercise No. 2
Monday, 7 December 2015
Edges @ Wharf Chambers and Malcolm Goldstein
Sunday 6th December
I've included a copy of our programme for the performance last night, I really enjoyed it! I always enjoy performing with Edges, there is something very inclusive, honest and accepting about this group that also seems to extend to the audience. The Oliveros went very well, particularly the tuning meditation seemed to blend very well in this particular performance. Movement three was great fun as usual, I think the audience enjoyed it too. I still wasn't as comfortable with the forth movement, but I definitely felt more sure of myself this time.
I want to mention a piece we performed by Malcolm Goldstein, which I haven't talked about before. The score is below, where in our case, the grainy areas represent a constant wall of unpitched sound, around mp in dynamic, and the two bars represent two periods of silence. After the two silences, we switched to a different unpitched sound, so the group timbre changed significantly.
Let me first point out how difficult this is to play, particularly on a violin which has to be held upright for the entire performance which was, in our case, 15 minutes (7 minutes, 5 minutes, then 3 minutes of our final sound). In the end I opted to hold the violin between my knees like a cello, and play the strings with a piece of yarn for my first sound, then scrape the back of the violin for my second sound. Sometimes practicality has to come above artistic integrity! But the challenge of creating a 'grainy', unpitched sound was still there - it's very difficult to use the strings of a violin without letting loose an accidental pitch, but I think I managed yesterday.
Practicalities aside, the effect of the piece is very, very strange. After a few minutes the constant wall sound almost becomes like white noise, as if it's coming from inside your head or under your skin. Perception of direction of sound is also altered, my favourite trick was to close my eyes (when I wasn't waiting for James to give us a signal to bring us off!) and let the sound envelop like a swarm of angry wasps. As individual sounds falter or become momentarily louder or softer, the swirling mass seems to change shape, size and direction. Then, when the sound suddenly stops, the feeling is very weird. It's hard to describe, it's as if its still there because you remember it very clearly, but it's so obviously not there that the silence seems doubly loud. There's a palpable breath of relief once it comes back in, as if we'd got so accustomed to it being there that not having it there is just weird. For me, it felt like the sound had a mass, it was a pulsating, evolving, weighty thing, and the silence acted almost as if it had been thrown up into the air and caught again.
Then there's the moment after the second silence when the new wall of sound comes in, and it's even stranger. It's obviously not the same thing, but obviously is too. It's about mp, it's grainy, it's unpitched and unmoving (almost) but it's morphed into a different thing. The object your threw in the air is no longer, it's been replaced with a new density, a new mass which pulsates in your hand.
Below is a performance of the work by the Ratchet Orchestra, interpreted completely differently. For a start most of their sounds are pitched, which adds a new dimension of harmony. But the main thing is how they have integrated the two silences; unlike the way we interpreted the score, which was that we should all come out and back in again at exactly the same time, the performers here use their silences independently, so the instruments drop out one by one and the change in timbre is gradual.
It's interesting to hear the difference. On the surface its very similar; even though the sounds are pitched, after a while the constant wall of texture takes on the same pulsating quality, although I think it sounds a bit more one-dimensional (but that could be because I'm listening through headphones and not in and amongst the noise). The effect when instruments drop out is very different. It depends if the individual sound is in the outer extremes of pitch or timbre, for example, it's very obvious when the lowest tone drops out so the effect this creates is more prominent. It's a bit like when an air conditioning unit has been on all day and suddenly cuts out; you were almost unaware it was there but once it's gone it's absence is very noticeable. I would say the change in timbre, though, is not as obvious or effective in this example. Perhaps because of the choice of instruments and the use of pitch it's more difficult to vary the sound; unless you chose notes at the outer extremes of your instrument's range the timbre will be more-or-less the same. Perhaps it's down to the individual choices made by the performers which doesn't work as well for me.
I think it's a very effective piece, and having read a bit further into Malcolm Goldstein I found the following excerpt from his book, Sounding the Full Circle, which I find rather appropriate in this case.
I've included a copy of our programme for the performance last night, I really enjoyed it! I always enjoy performing with Edges, there is something very inclusive, honest and accepting about this group that also seems to extend to the audience. The Oliveros went very well, particularly the tuning meditation seemed to blend very well in this particular performance. Movement three was great fun as usual, I think the audience enjoyed it too. I still wasn't as comfortable with the forth movement, but I definitely felt more sure of myself this time.
I want to mention a piece we performed by Malcolm Goldstein, which I haven't talked about before. The score is below, where in our case, the grainy areas represent a constant wall of unpitched sound, around mp in dynamic, and the two bars represent two periods of silence. After the two silences, we switched to a different unpitched sound, so the group timbre changed significantly.
Let me first point out how difficult this is to play, particularly on a violin which has to be held upright for the entire performance which was, in our case, 15 minutes (7 minutes, 5 minutes, then 3 minutes of our final sound). In the end I opted to hold the violin between my knees like a cello, and play the strings with a piece of yarn for my first sound, then scrape the back of the violin for my second sound. Sometimes practicality has to come above artistic integrity! But the challenge of creating a 'grainy', unpitched sound was still there - it's very difficult to use the strings of a violin without letting loose an accidental pitch, but I think I managed yesterday.
Practicalities aside, the effect of the piece is very, very strange. After a few minutes the constant wall sound almost becomes like white noise, as if it's coming from inside your head or under your skin. Perception of direction of sound is also altered, my favourite trick was to close my eyes (when I wasn't waiting for James to give us a signal to bring us off!) and let the sound envelop like a swarm of angry wasps. As individual sounds falter or become momentarily louder or softer, the swirling mass seems to change shape, size and direction. Then, when the sound suddenly stops, the feeling is very weird. It's hard to describe, it's as if its still there because you remember it very clearly, but it's so obviously not there that the silence seems doubly loud. There's a palpable breath of relief once it comes back in, as if we'd got so accustomed to it being there that not having it there is just weird. For me, it felt like the sound had a mass, it was a pulsating, evolving, weighty thing, and the silence acted almost as if it had been thrown up into the air and caught again.
Then there's the moment after the second silence when the new wall of sound comes in, and it's even stranger. It's obviously not the same thing, but obviously is too. It's about mp, it's grainy, it's unpitched and unmoving (almost) but it's morphed into a different thing. The object your threw in the air is no longer, it's been replaced with a new density, a new mass which pulsates in your hand.
Below is a performance of the work by the Ratchet Orchestra, interpreted completely differently. For a start most of their sounds are pitched, which adds a new dimension of harmony. But the main thing is how they have integrated the two silences; unlike the way we interpreted the score, which was that we should all come out and back in again at exactly the same time, the performers here use their silences independently, so the instruments drop out one by one and the change in timbre is gradual.
It's interesting to hear the difference. On the surface its very similar; even though the sounds are pitched, after a while the constant wall of texture takes on the same pulsating quality, although I think it sounds a bit more one-dimensional (but that could be because I'm listening through headphones and not in and amongst the noise). The effect when instruments drop out is very different. It depends if the individual sound is in the outer extremes of pitch or timbre, for example, it's very obvious when the lowest tone drops out so the effect this creates is more prominent. It's a bit like when an air conditioning unit has been on all day and suddenly cuts out; you were almost unaware it was there but once it's gone it's absence is very noticeable. I would say the change in timbre, though, is not as obvious or effective in this example. Perhaps because of the choice of instruments and the use of pitch it's more difficult to vary the sound; unless you chose notes at the outer extremes of your instrument's range the timbre will be more-or-less the same. Perhaps it's down to the individual choices made by the performers which doesn't work as well for me.
I think it's a very effective piece, and having read a bit further into Malcolm Goldstein I found the following excerpt from his book, Sounding the Full Circle, which I find rather appropriate in this case.
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