My concept for the first Acousmatic composition was to highlight how wasteful the majority of westerners are when it comes to recycling. I planned to do this through not only incorporating noises that relate to various recycling processes, such as the sounds of shredders, bin men collecting rubbish and so forth, but I also wanted to arrange these sounds in a playful manner, such as mapping a rhythmic section that is reminiscent to the most recycled drum beat in sample based music: the Amen break; because we have been conditioned to this pattern through hip-hop, drum-and-bass and various other subcultures of popular electronic music, I believe it emphasises the content of the sounds used, rather than detracts from an Acousmatic mode of listening.
The structure I decided on for my piece was inspired by a processing chain of recycling:
The introduction and first section (0 – 43 seconds) used sounds relating to the disposing of rubbish (full bin bags being crushed by hand and bin men’s trucks were sampled). The main crescendo and accompanying increasement of layered sounds reflects the accumulating of waste, before it is taken away from ones home.
The piece then progresses to the decomposition of these materials, and uses sounds from the assembly lines of various recycling plants to give an insight to how our rubbish is treated. I wanted to reflect the plants cyclical nature with anticlimactic crescendos to mirror the tremendous extent of waste that these plants are required to sieve through on a day to day basis.
The succeeding section transitions into the recycle-based Amen break, where I incorporated most of the previous samples from earlier in the piece to demonstrate how one’s rubbish can be broken down and rebuilt into a completely new beneficial form.
The main aim of my processing techniques was to emphasise the break down of the various presented raw materials, so as to highlight how we should be aware of the life cycles of the products we are disposing of.
Examples:
I used a Granulation effect on the sounds of glass to replicate how they must be broken down in to tiny particles before they can be reused.
The sound of the plastic bottles on the assembly line resembled the sound of waves coming back and forth (which is categorically relative); I highlight this amassing then dispersing of material through dynamic swells from an enveloping spectral gate effect.
Here is an audio clip of my piece so far.
3 comments
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March 24, 2009 at 10:50 pm
julio
well done Dave ! you could make some rhythms out of the voice clips to integrate them a bot more with the rest of the music? and show the transformation as it happens?
March 31, 2009 at 5:16 pm
osborndavid
That’s a good idea, I really need to work on this!
I was planning to correlate the vocal effects to the piece’s transformations like you said, but I am also on the hunt to find different contrasting voices so I can chop together the sentences that are in the piece with contrasting articulations.
It seems a lot of advertising companies think this mashing up of various samples to form their own sentences is pretty ‘hip’ and is a cool way to hold the attention span of our ADD ridden youth.
…well it must be working if I am following suit!
Have a good easter Julio.
May 9, 2009 at 10:37 am
Acousmatic polishing « Mr Osborn’s stuff and things
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