For our creative sound project assessment we were placed in groups with the purpose of creating a conceptual album. Each individual contributed with a single composition, that in some way encompassed our theme. To come up with a concept we had regularly meetings where we discussed topics and shared ideas. I shared with the group some aesthetics and artist that I liked in the moment. I suggested to follow an aesthetic similar to Fritz Lang film Metropolis (1927), the other members of the group liked the idea and then further developed it suggesting that our concept could be neo- futurism or the nostalgia of passed artistic ideologies. Trying to find a way to see aspects of the past through eyes of the future. Everyone agreed with the theme and started to come up with a name and a cover art for the album.

For the name, a teammate suggested to use a quote of the ballroom scene in The Shinning (1980). In this scene Jack (the protagonist) and a bartender talked about the past, specifically nostalgic of the 50’s and 40’s. We all agreed with the idea and started to vote for our favorite quote. The winner was “I’ve been away but now I’m back” that perfectly encompassed our concept.

The picture above is the cover art a teammate created for the album. Just as our concept, the picture joins together both an old picture of the early 20th century with a futuristic sci-fi planet, creating an interesting juxtaposition.

For my part of the assessment, I researched more artist and their aesthetic techniques from the early 20th century. A book that really inspired me was Aldous Huxleys A brave new world (1932), where Huxley created a dystopian future where the means of production torment humanity. I took this book into consideration when composing my track.

Robert Henke is an artist, composer and program developer based in Berlin (Henke, 2021). He became notorious for his music as “Monolake” and for being the co-founder of Ableton Live, one of the most ground breaking DAW for modern composition and production. Henke has also worked with visual mediums such as lasers, he has used them in his performances to echo his music. Henke music is defined by a sophisticated sound design created with different sound sources, he is also known for using untraditional ways of composition as using mathematical formulas and complex algorithms to sequence his music. CBM 8032 AV is one of Henke’s latest works and performances. In this project, Henke restored 5 computers of the 80’s and programed them to do a techno performance. The computers not only did the music but created visuals (that where also designed by Henke) to be showed in the performance (FACTmagazine, 2020).

Recently I had the opportunity to be in an online masterclass with Henke where he explained a bit of his idea and process behind this particular project and how he plans to develop it. He explain us that his idea for this performance was to create a modern electronic piece only using technology for the 80’s, to demonstrate that old technology is still useful and that we should exploit it’s capabilities instead of just create newer technology. However Henke had to cheat in his idea to make the performance possible. He had to us a modern digital clock sender to sync all the computers and the visuals together. Henke then explained to us that his newest project is to find a way to send clock using only technology from the 80’s. He is currently designing and developing a small analogue computer that would be able to sync all the devices together, he is only using equipment that was available in the 80’s to be true with his idea and concept.

After hearing the master class I was deeply inspired by Henke’s determination to complete his idea and project. The device he needed was really hard to make and unnecessary because he already had a device that could made everything possible, but either way he decided to keep on so his concept would be completed. This made me think about how I could be more determine in my concepts when composing, because at the end of the day the piece of project gains more uniqueness and virtuosity.

In the Creative Sound Projects course we’ve been doing two very interesting practices that don’t deal directly to sound making or composition. The first one is a listening exercise consisting of listing down every single noise heard from your local environment. Then the list of sound are categorized by different factors like: pleasant, unpleasant, loud and soft. This creates a table that makes it easier to compare and analyze those sounds (Picture below).

I felt that the table was great tool when planning a field recording because I could list the sounds I want to record and then see which ones to prioritize based on its loudness. With the same list of sound we also did a circle of panning, putting in the center your listening position and then mapping all the sound were heard (See picture below).

It’s really interesting how the acoustic environment can be mapped with this exercise. This diagram displays a basic map of my room that is where the exercise took place. In the front left of the circle, it can be noted that there is no sounds, this because there was a big wall there that filtered most frequencies. I thought this practice made me more aware of the acoustic response of my room, I would like to try this in another environment to see how the answers change.

The second practice was automatic writing. Our lecturer gave us 20 minutes at the start of every class to write a story or a description of the first thing that came into our minds. This practice is totally automatic because no planning time was given or any topic to base the story on. At the end we finished with very random outcomes, pure descriptions and narratives of the unconsciousness. Later on with the pieces of writing, we attempted to compose sound that would fit with the description. My composition of sound was very original because I based the structure of the piece to the narrative of the story, making the piece less predictable and interesting. I thought that this practice was a great source of inspiration when coming up with ideas for composition. I also thought this practice would be very useful when designing sound for another medium like film.

Raster Noton is a Berlin based electronic music label and media platform, focused on groundbreaking electronic music. Artist such as Scanner and Bytone have released music under the label, getting huge recognition in the global experimental electronic music scene (Raster-Media, 2021). Also Raster has collaborated with music festivals such as Mutek and CTM to bring artist performances and exhibitions. What makes Raster Noton unique is it’s minimalistic industrial aesthetic and sonic experimentation, it could be argued that it follows the german tradition of Bauhaus in their concepts and ideology. Their aesthetic is defined by black and white palettes of colour, geometric figures and simplistic minimalism. This can be seen both in it’s music and in their exhibition displays. Frank Bretschneider is one of Raster founders and at the same time he has released a lot of music under the label. His music is a clear example of Raster aesthetic , described as “analogue abstract pointillism” in Bretschneider’s Raster bio page (2021). Bretschneider uses very simple sonic raw materials, like sine waves and white noise, to create very complex compositions that are normally mirrored by visuals with the same minimalistic approach.

I’m deeply obsessed with the creative style of Raster Noton, specially with the electronic minimalism character that is so unique but at the same time so successful. I was inspired with the concept of Bretschnieder of using only simple raw materials in his compositions. This forces the composer to exploit the capabilities of such material instead of using a lot of resources without any depth. For my next composition I will focus in a single instrument or sound and try to transform them in something very complex.

Graphic notation just as classical notation is a way to write and express music, although graphic notation breaks away from the conservative rules of western classical notation, having no boundaries and limits, making any design and notation able to translate into sound. An example will be the picture above, a small extract from Cornelius Cardew “Treatise”. A piece made of 193 pages with different designs and notations, considered as one of the greatest graphical scores ever design (Hall, 2021). Cardew’s work can be argued that is not merely a sound practice but a visual work of art, he has a background in graphic design and each page of the piece is fielled with beautiful designs and drawings, making this piece a visual symphony. His score has not further explanation but its graphics, giving totally freedom of interpretation to the performer, making every performance totally unique (Forrest, 2019).

Using Autodraw, I decided to create my own graphic score. My main objective of it was to create a design that doesn’t have a time linear aspect, like most graphic notation have. I decided to draw a room instead, the performer would have to make sound that fits that room.

Above is a picture of my final design. The symbols at the back of the room are rules that I established for the performer to follow. Both the treble clef and bass clef with the red cross mean that no western notation tuning can be used. The ear with the lighting means that all sounds must be electronically made, preferable from a VCO. The shoe at the bottom is used to establish where the floor of the room is. The curved lines in the walls are symbols for acoustic diffusers, this makes the performer aware of the acoustic properties of the room. Finally the silhouette of the person meditating is a symbol that is totally made for own interpretation. For this drawing I was inspired by the piece “I am sitting in a room” by Alvin Lucier. In this piece Lucier recorded his voice and then played it back to a wall, repeating this process a several times until the room acoustic is the only sound left. This piece made me think about how acoustics can influence a composition or piece, giving me the idea to make it the main focus of my graphic notation.

To take this idea to the next level, I decided to experiment using the autodraw graphic score and a max for life device called image to midi converter, that literally converts images into midi notation.

Above is the final result. As you may guessed, when the midi was played back using a software synth the result was very harsh, due the vast amount of pitch information. This experiment could work better in the future if I used a much simpler graphic notation design and I could organize the pitches triggered with a scale midi effect.

Generative Music is a term used to describe music that is created by a system and that is ever changing. Steve Reich composition “It’s Gonna rain” is a pioneering piece of generative music. In this composition Reich uses two identical tape recordings of a man saying its gonna rain, he puts them in two separate tape players and changes the playback time by a small amount, when the tape starts playing both recordings are in sync but after a while the both tapes start phasing between each other, creating and endless evolving composition created by a simple mechanism. Brian Eno, inspired by Reich, developed this concept in his album “Music for Airports”, where he used seven different tape recorders playing single notes at different speeds. This created and endless piece with long lasting melodies and textures. Both Eno and Reich created a system that mechanically reproduces a composition, they designed rules for the system to follow but at the end the pure composition is made by chance. At the start of this blog I wrote about a practitioner called Jessica Ekomane, she also uses this technique of generative music in her EP Multivocal, but instead of using tape she uses Max MSP, this an example of how the technique is modernized but the concept remains the same (Teropa, 2020).

Aleatoric music is a composition technique where an element of it is left to chance (Music 101, 2020). An example of this would be writing a melody but instead of carefully choosing each note, you use a dice or any probability device to choose the next note. Composer such as John Cage and Iannis Xenakis have created aleatoric music, using very complex techniques such as complex mathematical formulas to come up with random numbers. Generative and Aleatoric music go hand by hand because they both have the aspect of chance. Generative music is always aleatoric but aleatoric music is not always generative. The thing that makes generative music separate from aleatoric music is its characteristic to be endless. The composer decides when the system will stop, but if its never stopped it would sound forever.

These both concepts are a way to make my music non linear, as I mentioned in my passed post and it inspired me to do my next composition totally generative. With modern technology it’s very easy to create generative and aleatoric pieces and tape is not longer needed. The video below thought me various techniques of generative music (Loopop, 2019).

In the global sound mediums, it is recognized that generative and aleatoric techniques where created by western contemporary composers such as the ones mentioned above but is this really true. African drum music uses these techniques and their origins date older than contemporary music. African drumming uses a technique called polyrhythms that could be argued that is the first generative technique. It consist that each performer plays a rhythmic pattern with a different duration to the rest of the performers, creating evolving rhythmic syncopations. This is basically Eno’s idea but humanly performed. The fact that African polyrhythms are not consider as the pioneers of generative music is evidence of how western culture tries to dominate over other different culture’s.