Author: Theo Power

I found that choosing a scene to compose was one of the most challenging parts of the whole process. I wanted to find something that I could feel comfortable composing for but gave me room to experiment and try something different. I gravitated towards horror, as I find horror movie scores can be very versatile. For example, John Carpenter’s Halloween soundtrack uses Moog and Prophet sounds with piano, achieving a classic synthesiser slasher sound. Meanwhile, The Exorcist uses avant-garde minimalist music to create more of a surrealist atmosphere.

My first idea was Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied’s surrealist classic, Meshes Of The Afternoon. I wanted to compose for this film as the original version has no music at all. I thought that as there is no original soundtrack, I could not be inspired by any existing music and subconsciously copy it. It is in black and white, which I find gives me a lot of inspiration as it feels otherworldly due to the lack of colour. The film is also surreal in nature with scenes that are very ambiguous and strange in tone. I decided not to use this film as I struggled to find an idea that was strong enough and that I was satisfied with.

The scene I settled on was the final sequence of the 1999 movie, The Blair Witch Project. The clip is grainy, ominous and creepy and I found myself struck with plenty of ideas on the first watch. This film also has no soundtrack which still allowed me to be original without pre-existing influences. The scene has lots of room for tension building sound, so I used field recordings, drones and noise as my main sounds for this scene.

It is important before composing to choose the tools that will suit the scene you are tracking and the sounds you want to create. When it comes to the horror genre there are certain sounds, instruments, and effects I feel are very effective in evoking emotions such as tension, unease, and fear.

Synthesisers (Hardware)

• Make Noise Strega – Good for making soundscapes, ranging from deep, rich and melodic sounds to dissonant, distorted and noisy soundscapes. Also good for creating unusual sounds such as atonal synthesiser lines and harsh feedback.
• Moog Mother 32 – Can create bass lines, similar to 80’s slasher soundtracks (e.g. John Carpenter’s Halloween). Also good for synth lines and experimental soundscapes.

Noise Boxes and Effects Boxes (Hardware)

• Koma Field Kit FX – Effective for harsh noise and power electronics. Noise can be used to build more tension or to help build the climax of a movie/scene.
• Drone Box (get the name from home) – Can be used for lingering low drones, the box has three oscillators built in that can be tuned via a knob so you can have three drones going at once in different tones creating microtonality and dissonance in the piece.

Effects (Digital)

• Valhalla Supermassive (Delay & Reverb) – Perfect for giving space and atmosphere to a sound, but important to use sparingly otherwise too much reverb can muddy a piece and make it sound too spacy.

• Wires (Soviet Wire Recorder Emulator) – Wires are good for recording vocals, spoken word and specific sounds as it can make voices sound ominous and creepy, and can add a retro sound to synthesisers.

• MISHBY (Broken Tape Machine) – MISHBY can be used for glitching or completely morphing and distorting a sound.

Field Recordings

Ableton Live 11 (Built-in effects and sounds) – Ableton is my main DAW and was used for this pr0ject. I also used sounds, instruments and effects that are included in Ableton.

I used Ableton as my DAW of choice, which worked well as I had under 10 tracks for this piece. In future projects, I would like to move on to working with Pro-Tools. All the synthesisers I used for this piece were digital. I would typically use a mixture of both hardware and digital, but for this project, I set myself a goal to only use digital synths as a challenge. I found this helpful as it forced me to use the tools I had to hand and work around the problems and challenges this technique gave me. For synthesisers, I used low drone pads that add a sinister atmosphere. I played one of the pads throughout the second half of the piece, slowly fading in until it swallows the entire track.

The feeling of tension in this track is created from 2 field recordings, one of a tumble dryer (recorded by me) and one of a train (from Ableton Drone Lab pack). The first thing you hear in the track is the field recording of the tumble dryer, reversed and transposed down. The reversed sound gives the piece a tense and surreal aspect to it which I feel works with the found-footage style of the scene.

The audio effects I used for this piece were MISHBY and Valhalla Supermassive. MISHBY was used to add some dissonance and slightly morph sounds. Valhalla Supermassive was used as a basic reverb to add some space to make more atmosphere for the piece.

Composing for screen has long been the field of sound art I am most interested in. Film is one of my main interests and I love listening to and analysing film soundtracks. The films that inspired me to start composing are Eraserhead, A Clockwork Orange, Requiem For a Dream, and Under The Skin. These films all have a distinct sound that struck a chord with me and started my curiosity in composing for film, whether it’s Eraserhead’s industrial hellscapes, A Clockwork Oranges’ oddly amusing and disturbing synthesiser tracks, Requiem For a Dream’s disorienting string quartet & hip hop pieces, or Under The Skin’s beautifully avant-garde soundtrack that seamlessly flows between haunting and terrifying. These works have all had a profound impact on how I see both music and film.

Horror movies and experimental cinema are the genres I primarily have an interest in composing for. Horror movies have lots of use for drones, noise, ambient and varying soundscapes, which as an artist is what I particularly enjoy creating. It is the composer’s job to evoke fear in the viewer through sound, such as using drones and inaudible tricks to evoke fear and feelings of dread in the audience. One example of this is the inaudible frequency used by Thomas Bangalter in Gaspar Noe’s film, Irreversible. The frequency is around 27-30 hz and can cause vertigo, nausea, and anxiety in the viewer. Tricks like this are very common in horror films, succeeding in subtly inducing unease.

For experimental cinema, there is more leeway to experiment with different types of music and sound. Since experimental cinema is such a vast genre and spans many genres and time periods. The reason there is more leeway is that experimental cinema typically is very different to your average movie, so sonically a lot of directors who work in this field e.g. David Lynch use sound design and scores that are very unusual. This gives the composer much more freedom to experiment with sounds. Some experimental film soundtracks I like are The Holy Mountain, Eraserhead, Enter The Void, and Fantastic Planet. The feeling a lot of these soundtracks evoke in you is anxiety, curiosity, fear, and relief.

Samson Young is a sound artist, performer, and video and installation artist. Hailing from Hong Kong, Samson has traveled all over the globe showing off his work. Representing Hong Jong at the 57th Venice Biennale. What I like about Samson’s work is how he is not afraid to speak his opinions, with most of his work being political in nature. Talking about military history and the British occupation of Hong Kong in his work. I personally took a lot of interest in that side of his work, as I find sound is a good way to talk about difficult and highly political topics.

An example of his political work is this installation Samson made called Nocturnal Music, which took place at Team Gallery in SoHo New York. In the performance we see Samson sitting at a desk for 6 hours which he did every day. At the desk, Samson is watching muted footage of night airstrikes that the united states launched on the middle east. The audio was recreated using foley effects by Samson and was broadcasted on a pirate FM radio station in the area. I found this such a good way to take something that happened in the world and turn it into some,e thought-provoking art. The use of recreating the sound effects I thought was very interesting and added a whole other layer to the piece. I took great inspiration from this.

Overall Samson is an interesting and strong voice in the sound art field. Challenging what sound art means and expressing his views through this medium among others.

Hannah Kemp-Welch is a sound artist who like Fari Bradley works in multiple disciplinary fields at once, such as installations, broadcasting, field recordings, zine-making, and workshops to name some.

What really caught my eye about Hannahs’s work was the collective she is a part of called the ‘Shortwave Collective’. The shortwave collective is a feminist group that has people from all around the world involved, shortwave is interested in the creative use of radio. For so many reasons I found this to be such an incredible idea, sadly it is still hard for women to get their voices heard in sound art and the genres that surround it. Though it’s still constantly growing there is a lot of movement to go ahead. I found this a good way for women to collide minds and share their interest in creative radio production and show people that this is something we need more of. So far they have released a couple projects, the one that I found the most interesting was a piece called ‘Receive-Transmit-Receive. This is a compilation of radio transmission during 2020 when covid was running rampid across the globe. The piece consists of amateurs, international stations, met reports, naval communications, and continuous-wave code. This is their first collaborative piece and what a piece to start off on. I found this such an inspiration as an artist, especially when it comes to collaboration and what you can do if you collide minds with other artists.

Overall I found Hannah to be one of the most interesting practitioners we have had to date, from the wide array of fields they work in, to the shortwave collective. I think Hannah is a pioneer of feminist sound art and I can’t wait to see what she does next. As someone who works in a collective with a mix of genders, I found what she did to be really creative and boundary-pushing and it made me think of what we could do to our own collective.

References

Shortwave Collective. (n.d.). Receive-Transmit-Receive. [online] Available at: https://www.shortwavecollective.net/receive-transmit-receive.html

Shortwave Collective. (n.d.). Shortwave Collective. [online] Available at: https://www.shortwavecollective.net/

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Fari is a sound artist hailing from Iran, her work has a specific focus on installations, performances, sound sculptures, and broadcasting. She has a background in classical and North Indian music which had an impact on her career in the future with the creation of her own instruments for a mixture of performances and recording. A lot of instruments made in India among other countries are typically made by hand by specialists.

Bradley says that her art revolves around ‘Core methodologies revolve around experimentalism, deep listening, and exercises in modes of communication and reception’ I personally found Fari to be an interesting practitioner, I enjoyed how versatile her work is and how many fields she works in at once. For example her work in broadcasting. Fari has featured on Resonance.FM which is an experimental radio station based in London. She has also featured on Falgoosh Radio in Dubai and Jaou Tunis in Tunisia. I found her diverse work in different countries very inspiring as someone who wants to work all over the world.

Fari has art installations that she describes as ‘Silent works about sound, Experimental audio-visuals, and silent film  Other totemic experiments in signage’. I personally connected with the idea of Silent works about sound as it’s a way to show people sound but with nothing for them to hear. For example, she has a piece called ‘NightSoundscape’ which is a piece of cotton with descriptions of sounds you hear at night like ‘Pub Closes’, ‘Glass Smash’, ‘Owl’, and ‘Barking Dog’ to name a few. I found it a way for the audience to imagine the soundscape of what you’re hearing which is a very fun way to interact with the consumers of this art.

Overall I was very inspired by Fari and found her work to be very intriguing. In particular, the visual art portion that uses more of the audience’s interpretation. I would like to incorporate ideas like this into my art in the future as I find sometimes being an audience member it can be fun to conversate with people about what you interpret and what you hear. It is also a good exercise for an artist to practice.

References

Anon, (n.d.). Sculpture – Fari Bradley. [online] Available at: https://www.faribradley.co.uk/sculpture

Anon, (n.d.). About – Fari Bradley. [online] Available at: https://www.faribradley.co.uk/about

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Since our session with Joseph, I have been fascinated by his work as it fits into what I am also interested in as an artist. Joseph’s work focuses on sound art, field recording, and noise! The latter is something I create a lot of in my own work. The way Joseph thinks about culture through sound and how he turns that into his own art is something I found particularly interesting. He takes these concepts and expresses the thoughts and ideas behind them through installations, performances, and other types of creative compositions. Personally, I like to do the same but with different ideas, I found the way he takes these ideas and transforms them into something people can experience something that will be very useful to me.

Joseph goes under the pseudonym KMRU, on his Bandcamp page you can see the mountains of work he has released thus far. I would like to focus on his cassette release Jar, which was released through Seil Records. KMRU describes the record as ‘Jar is a journey through the dust of time. Merging found sounds, analog warmth and granular dreams along the way. This perfectly sums up the record, the sound of the record is very warm and analog. This suits the cassette release perfectly as these types of sounds work best on tape. The album is very dream-like, for example, the song ‘ulmma‘ has this warm synthesizer pad progressing throughout the piece. With the use of percussion (xylophone) and what sounds like field recordings. It makes for a very peaceful listen. I really enjoyed the composition of this record in general.

Overall Joseph has become my favorite practitioner to date, a truly fascinating artist who is one to keep your eye on for sure.

References

KMRU. (n.d.). ulmma, by KMRU. [online] Available at: https://kmru.bandcamp.com/track/ulmma

KMRU. (n.d.). Jar, by KMRU. [online] Available at: https://kmru.bandcamp.com/album/jar

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Sharon Gal is an artist who spans many skills, known for being a performer and composer primarily, The fact she works in so many different fields makes me excited to see her lecture. Her works using Voice, Electronics, Instruments, video collages, and field recordings, and using that to explore themes of relationships between people and sound and space make for a watch that you don’t get often

Etudes

Etudes is a pack of 78 cards that Sharon created, with one side of the card being text and the other being text.  The way it works is that it is an open score, which means the cards can be interested in the artist, and then the artist will create work that they think suits that card. It is somewhat reminiscent of Brian Eno’s ‘Oblique Strategies cards’ where you pull a card and it tells you an instruction. Then you interpret the card how you want to then do whatever you think you should do. It is a fun but interesting way to get an artist to switch up their creative pattern and push them outside of their comfort zones.

To show an example of this Sharon created two pieces based on this technique, the piece I want to focus on is ‘ETUDE No 1‘. ETUDE No 1 is a vocal piece very reminiscent of Joan La Barbara’s work. Having screechy high vocals reaching octaves that are uncommon to the human ear. The piece is quite peaceful, these scattered vocal patterns with a splash of reverb make for a nice listen.

Overall I really liked Sharon’s work and how she pushes the boundaries of sound art by using card games that make the artist intentionally create something different, the fact she is in so many disciplines makes for an interesting read and I am very excited to see what she does in our lecture.

References

Sound and Music. (n.d.). Sharon Gal. [online] Available at: https://soundandmusic.org/discover/composer/sharon-gal/

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Makoto Oshiro is a Japanese sound artist based in Berlin/Tokyo. Makoto works in sound for the most part but combines his sound with physical aspects too, like mixing light and electronics in his work. I found Makoto to make for an exciting practitioner, after doing some more research on him I found what he did even more enthralling. One thing that stood out to me about Makoto was the creation of his own instruments, primarily out of junk and random items. This reminded me of Japanese noise artist Merzbow and his ‘junk guitar’. The strings are attached to metal plates that he strums and the vibrations would then be picked up through contact mics and run through effects. I really like this way of thinking that Makoto did, as it inspires people to create whatever works for them. And by doing that you can create some really phenomenal equipment and sound.

Above is a sound installation by Makoto called ‘Strings’. Strings is a sound installation that is supposed to explore the different aspects of beat frequencies (interferences that happen between audio waves). Here is a description from the video description that better explains what Makoto did to achieve the piece. ‘However, instead of simply combining several audio waves, it combines a flickering light with physical vibration to create a heterodyne that gives a visual representation of what happens between the two waves. Several strings are tied to a subwoofer that emits a low-frequency sine wave; the strings are stretched to certain points in the exhibition space. When the stretched strings are tuned to certain tensions, the vibration of the subwoofer passes on to the strings, causing them to oscillate and depict waveforms. The exhibition space is lit up using a strobe light that flickers at a varying frequency that interferes with the string vibration, allowing us to see the string movements at a much slower frequency than what is actually happening’.

This is an incredible idea, I really like what Makoto tried to achieve, I think the idea was very thought out and he did more to it to make it something purely unique. I thought the idea of using the strobe lights to interfere with the string vibration was really interesting and how that can affect the way you see things happening. Overall I’m a big fan of the work Makoto showed us and creates, I think the use of mixing sound and visual art was done in a way I have never seen before and I hope he continues to push the boundaries of sound art. I took a lot away from this practitioner like his use of light and sound and have been thinking about how I can expand my work from what I have learned.

www.youtube.com. (n.d.). Strings – Makoto Oshiro. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXPR7iOzQdQ

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I find psychoacoustics to be a fascinating topic, as I enjoy looking at how humans perceive sound and how everyone can perceive sound in their own ways.

The way we hear and perceive sound was challenged by avant-garde composers creating tracks with sounds we’ve never heard before. Whether this is the early work of John Cage, introducing Musique Concrete to a wider audience, or when synthesizers became more widely used, opening up a whole new realm of sound for both the audience and the artists. Composers at this time like Pauline Oliveros, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Wendy Carlos took this new invention and strived to challenge how we as humans hear and perceive sound.

Oliveros is famous for her ‘Deep Listening’ work which was Oliveros’ own way of teaching people the art and beauty of listening. The term ‘deep listening’ was coined by Oliveros after going down 14 feet into Dan Harpole underground cistern in Port Townsend, Washington. She went there to record a piece, and she came out with the idea of ‘deep listening’. ‘Deep Listening’ has continued to grow, even past her death. It has become a staple of Sound Arts and is one of the most revolutionary listening techniques of all time.

Even in mainstream music, sound has changed considerably with the introduction of synthesizers into popular music during the ’70s and ’80s. Unique time signatures have become more common as popular music taste grows and evolves.

Personally, I’ve had some interesting experiences with how people can interpret sound differently. When I am back in my hometown, I work with young adults with special needs, ranging from more abled to severely disabled. The young adults I cared for typically had autism, brain damage, epilepsy, cerebral palsy, speaking issues, etc. We would host music classes, in which they could play an instrument of their choice which was typically percussion, singing, or guitar. It was fascinating hearing their listening habits. When they’d choose a song to play, a lot of them would pick the same song over and over again, including Disney songs, children’s shows theme songs, nursery rhymes, or pop hits from the ’70s until the present. It was interesting to see the amount of joy listening to music could bring to them, and how they use music as a creative outlet to express themselves, which they may not have had the chance to do before.