In the week three lesson of Acousmatic Music, we were told to choose a composer and a piece of their music we would like to diffuse the following week in our designated groups. I had been listening to Dhomont’s Antichambre quite a lot and felt that it would be an interesting piece to attempt to diffuse, mainly because I had never experienced a diffusion with such pleasing ambient textures and strong pulsating rhythms, and it is a type of Acousmatic music I would be interested in composing myself.

As a group we compromised on pieces from the third movement on Normandeau’s Clair de Terre as the contrasting pieces enabled us to experiment with different types of diffusion and explore different complexities in our relative physical gestures.
These pieces were appealing to each of us because of their cinematic nature; furthermore they instigated the discussion we had about relating diffusion techniques to musical gestures and speculative thoughts on the composer’s own spatialisation intentions.

When it came to attempting some of the techniques I had planned in lesson four, I failed to keep the room ‘warm’ and my gestures were largely sloppy, which can partially be blamed upon my inexperienced visual crossfading technique, which I hopefully will have eradicated by next lesson!

P.s A few classmates have been finding it hard to get Smalley’s Spectromorphology text, so just leave me your email address and I’ll send it your way!