A Sound Arts Blog

I’ve been thinking recently about what I will submit for the upcoming creative assignment in June. I’ve deliberated on different ideas for my sound piece, but overall I’ve been feeling that I want to put together something new and unfamiliar to me.

Recently, my friend showed me a project they were working on. As a photographer, they had collated an array of photos they had taken on their travels. They had carefully selected a handful and then written poems to each individual photo. Each piece was a spoken word poetry that depicted the story they wished to convey from the photo. I found this intriguing; spoken word poetry is something I’ve not yet dived into myself. I’ve always been a fan of musical poets’ work, such as the work of Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan, however I find that this is because of the fusion of poetry and melody that sparks an interest in me.

Recently, I’ve been fascinated by a Taiwanese band I came across called ‘Prairie WWWW’. They are an experimental rock band from Taipei and combine poetry, folk, ambient and indigenous tribal elements to their work. I’ve been intrigued by watching their live performances, and interested in their specific way of telling a story through sound and visuals, specifically through their ability to get lost in their own music every time they perform live. I want to implement some of what I’ve learnt from them, my friends’ poetry and possibly other artists I come across creating work containing similar aspects.

For the upcoming assignment (May), I decided to write my essay on a contextual look into and a sensory ethnography on The Beatles’ Shea Stadium Concert.

I found the entire show on Vimeo and watched it carefully before making some notes on what I will write about. While watching, I found myself mesmerised by the powerful atmosphere in the stadium. It’s quite clear how huge and monumental this concert was. From the historic music being echoed through the stadium, to the ongoing deafening screams of the fans, I can only imagine what it must have felt like to be there.

I will put the link to the full concert I found below incase of any potential reference I may come across while working on my assignment.

Innovative artist Imogen Heap was mentioned in the visitor practitioner class today. I had been somewhat aware of her prominence in musical technological advancements, but my knowledge on her work was very limited, so I decided to do some further research.

I learned about her development of the Mi.Mu gloves, which turns the arms and hands of performers into musical instruments. Mi.Mu works by capturing movement and hand gestures with analog band sensors. I had some mixed feelings about this after initially reading about it. The idea of musical instruments heading more and more into high-tech advancements did come with some personal uneasiness.

I watched her Tiny Desk performance and a demonstration of her implementing the Mi-Mu gloves into her live music. The delivery was nothing but enchanting. I guess the initial conflicting feelings raised from me being such a big fan of traditional and acoustic music and sounds, but I do feel that one can love work from traditional instruments while also embracing new advancements.

This project was a pleasurable experience to me and it’s something I feel will subtly inspire my future work in sound. Something that was quite outstanding to me was the use and implementation of the pitch shifter. Pitch shifting is something I’ve always overlooked; the act of manipulating the pitch on natural vocals never interested me in the slightest.

I’ve always been someone to generally shy away from the more “unnatural” sounds within my own creative work, and the idea of me creating something that could potentially fit into the “ultramodern” category irked me.

Nonetheless, this has definitely been an eye opener for me. I played the piece to a couple friends and both responses were entirely different. Watching the utter perplexity on their faces followed by an unpredictable response excites me. I enjoy being surprised by a reaction to something I’ve created, which is why I feel that this experience will most certainly have some influence on my creative decisions in the future. I plan to possibly expand this piece in the future.

Overall, I believe I’ve grown as an artist from this project alone and I’m pleased to have taken part in it.

In this project, I stepped outside of my comfort and swooped into a type of sound manipulation I never thought I would: pitch shifting. Personally, I’ve never found pitch shifting to enhance a vocal recording on a sound piece in any way. Other than for dramatic effect in a movie, I’ve never understood the desire to want to use it. I thought that now was the time to do something I never thought I’d do and play around with pitch shifting vocals. The Logic Pro pitch shifting plugin doesn’t come with a multitude of features but it’s got the basics and that’s all I felt I needed. I pitched down on most of the vocal recordings to a level that I felt was just right.

As a songwriter, the concept of pitch shifting someone’s voice is almost laughable to me and there were moments when I felt it was nothing but farfetched. Having now made the piece, I feel that my mind has opened to pitch shifting. I now feel that shifting down the tone of the vocals gave to a completely unrealistic level gave the whole piece so much more character. It’s eccentric and enigmatic.

Going into this, my intent was to start to build a project purely from a stream of consciousness and play around with sounds and effects to contribute to the piece. I used Logic Pro X. I started on a completely blank canvas. I had no rough idea of where I will go or how I’ll build my piece. I started by asking my flatmate to talk some gibberish words and to read a small poem a friend had sent me into the microphone, and then I lay out the audio recordings on the timeline.

As I was aiming to achieve a fully experimental, avant-garde sound, I decided to cut up the audio recordings into completely random parts and place them in no particular order. I was left with a meaningless collection of gibberish, which was perfect as I wanted the meaning of this piece to be completely up to individual interpretation. I played around with some plugin effects, some modulation and pitch shifting, and manipulated the vocal recordings to a point of almost ridiculousness. I started experimenting with different synthesiser sounds, which was a lot of fun, and I felt these sounds brought the piece into its own interesting and perplexing little world.

I found some joy in adding some extreme echo to some of the vocal parts, as I felt no need to hold back on the experimentation. I ended up with an almost dazzling sounding synthesiser as I robustly hammered down some notes on the keyboard. The final mix of the highly mixed vocals along with the synth is nothing groundbreaking, but to me it’s startling and unlike anything I’d ever usually make.

For years, I’ve been fascinated with the eclecticism of the discography of The Beatles. For a band that is as as globally popular as they are, it’s quite shocking to me that so many are unaware of their more experimental tracks. I remember the first time I heard ‘Revolution 9’ with a bewildered expression as I processed that this was the same band that created ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Here Comes The Sun’.

I truly admire the band for having no fear to hold back in their experimental exploration, especially at the pinnacle of their success. Implementing such unusual aspects, that were completely unheard of at the time in popular music, really solidifies to me that they were indeed one of the greatest groups of musicians.

I do see myself as much more of a traditional music lover, but bands like The Beatles that unapologetically embarked on a journey into a wider landscape of sound truly inspires me to do the same. I feel that this piece I am creating is potentially the first step of a journey into producing experimental sound.

A friend sat me down recently and played me a sound piece they had made. They made me aware that they had created it with the intention of it being purely ambiguous. They had followed no form, no structure, used no melody, harmony, or played any rhythm; they just played around with sounds and manipulated them based solely on what they felt to use in the moment. While listening to the track I was strangely mystified by the listening experience. What struck a chord inside me was the fact that I was transported into a visual storyline while listening. I think that the fact that there was no rhythm, music or lyrics for me follow led me on an instinctive journey inside my mind.

Sonically, the piece wasn’t something I’d return to for pure enjoyment, however the imagery and distinct pictures I gathered to myself from the piece was memorable to me above everything. Since then, I’ve been keen to try to create something like this myself. I am fascinated with the idea of somebody else hearing my work and entering a visual storyline in their head that’s completely personal to their imagination, but wholly inspired by my work. I feel that imagination is momentous to the art of sound and through this, I wish to explore that.

Doing a course in sound art has opened a world of experimental music to me; experimental music that, prior to the course, I had a very limited awareness of. Consistently hearing new artists of sub-genre sounds has been intriguing to me and I look forward each week to hearing more. Music that derives from purely experimental inspiration is not something I’ve dived into in the past.

In this group project, I want my segment to be something out of my comfort zone; a way of putting sound together that is brand new to me. I also want it to be purely midi-based, as well as not be set around any structure or familiarity.

Learning each week about experimental music and sound has developed a curiosity within me and I feel that experimental music leaves a door open to the unknown. With my sound piece, I want to explore a creative part of me that I’ve not yet explored by following some intuition and inspiration that comes to me moment by moment. I feel that by doing so, I will create something unpredictable and exciting.

In recent years, the only medium of radio that I’ve intentionally consumed is the algorithmic radio that’s featured on the music streaming platform of Spotify. Spotify Radio creates a collection of songs based on any artist, album, playlist, or song of your choice. Additionally, it updates over time to keep fresh.

Personally, I feel that the method of using a technologically produced algorithm to display a collection of music that the listener should expect to enjoy can be a hit or a miss. I’ve noticed from my own use of it that its recommendations can fall short of unpredictability when the radio stream is based on a popular song, artist or band. For example, if someone were to play the Michael Jackson radio they’d be recommended artists such as Prince and Janet Jackson. However, I know that the feature can be a wonderful tool for discovering lesser known, or independent, or artists of sub-genre sounds.

Through Spotify Radio, I’ve discovered many hidden gems, many I would never have found had I not dived into the algorithmic streaming world. All things considered, I am of the opinion that this modern form of radio is beneficiary and can lead to some delightful surprises, however I feel that to call it “radio” simply disregards the whole popular notion of what radio really has historically been: live.