For creating this project I had a couple inspirations in particular, in one of my other blogs I wrote extensively about the influence of the Canadian post-rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and their song ‘The Dead Flag Blues’. So I will not repeat that here. I made a YouTube playlist with some of the pieces that influenced me which you can see here.
I am going to talk about 2 of the works from that playlist that influenced me and this work.
Clipping is an experimental hip-hop trio from Los Angles, California. Consisting of Vocalist/Rapper Daveed Diggs, and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes. The trio experiment with harsh noise, feedback, glitchy drums, and field recordings. Which are then mixed with incredibly detailed 3rd person perspective raps filled with concepts ranging from gang culture, torture, sex, space, being a killer in a horror movie, and more.
The trio released 2 albums based on the concept of horror. Both the albums finish with a field recording piece, on the first record ‘There Exists an Addiction to Blood’ they recreated the famous ‘Burning Piano’ piece composed originally by Annea Lockwood. On their second album ‘Visions Of Bodies Being Burned’ they did their own interpretation of Yoko Ono’s ‘Secret Piece’. Which we are going to be talking about.
Secret Piece was originally composed by Yoko Ono in 1953. How you go about recreating your own version of this is to pick a note that constantly plays throughout the piece. It is then accompanied by the sounds of the woods between 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. during the summer. This a very groundbreaking piece as these types of compositions during the time was very rare and how Ono takes the idea of a score and strips all the traditional elements and makes it more performative is very interesting. This is very reminiscent of John Cage’s scores, who was a big influence on Oko.
This recording was created by Jonathan Snipes, one of the two producers of the group. Jonathan is a very established film composer, sound designer, and field recordist. You can see a lot of this on his bandcamp. The piece has multiple tones played throughout, which were played from most of the features that feature on both records.
The collaborators on Secret Piece are as follows Greg Stuart, Ted Byrnes, Jonathan Borges and Shannon A. Kennedy (Pedestrian Deposit), Casey Anderson, MaryClare Brzytwa, Kirsten Carey, Christopher Fleeger, Hal Rosenfeld, John Snyder, David Rothbaum, Joe Lester, Caleigh Drane, and Kwudi. (The names hyperlinked have the songs they are featured on linked if they do not have a link they only worked on Secret Piece).
Considering there are so many contributors the track does not feel overbearing or messy, it is rather impressive that Jonathan managed to deal with all these different sounds and mix them to a point that flows well. There are numerous instruments creating tones like cellos, guitars, electronics, and drums.
I found this piece quite inspiring as it shows how to mix numerous field recordings, tones, and sounds together. When creating a sound piece primarily made up of field recordings it is very easy for the sound to get muddy. Listening to this track helped me realise how to properly go about piecing together sounds. Throughout the piece, the sounds change, giving the track a continuous breath of fresh air as it does not grow stale by repeating the same sound. For my piece, there are two main sounds, construction/traffic and the London Underground. These sounds are very loud and overwhelming so trying to find a way to mix them all can be difficult. Listening to this piece taught me to be patient and bring sounds in slowly, and not bombard the piece with every sound in that section at once.
2. 4’33 – John Cage
John Cage is a very influential figure in sound arts, though he came from a time where diversity among composers was few and far between, this work did influence a lot of people including myself. This piece is famously just silence… or is it? The intention of the composition is to slowly bring sound into the piece, but with that, the piece starts with silence. For me, it is learning the understanding of silence and its place in sound pieces. If used correctly silence can be louder than the loudest thing in that piece. It is all to do with timing. In the creation of my audio paper, I thought the use of silence could be a powerful way to get my point across. Since I am dealing with the topic of noise pollution, the use of silence could be a good way to show the listener how loud day-to-day London sounds actually are. 4’33 showed me how important the use of silence is, and taught me how to use it responsibly.