Category: Introduction to sound art

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TwuMjE_NMV8MferU6MdGD1PWZzP3rR9b/view?usp=sharing

I had a lot of fun with this project as I would like to pursue a career as a composer and having the opportunity to do that with this project was a very insightful experience for me.

One of the things I could have improved on was my planning, with better planning I could take more notes to allow me to write more blog posts and produce more detailed work. Otherwise, this has been my favourite project to work on.

I found this project enjoyable as over the last year my knowledge as an artist has grown exceptionally, I have learned a lot of new techniques, genres, and instruments, and have been able to apply what I have learned to my own work. I enjoyed being able to produce work that fits my personal style, I felt like I had a lot of creative control over this project and could fine-tune it to what I would like to accomplish with my career. I enjoyed the process of sitting down and analysing the scene because it feels like I have improved my analytical skills.

Overall, this project was not only fun but also helped me develop my skills as an artist and gave me insight into a future career path.

I started by importing an MP4 of the final scene of the film and dragging it into Ableton. I decided to use the field recording of the tumble dryer and reverse it. I found reversing it, and then transposing it down, added a layer of creepiness and discomfort. The field recording runs through the entire track, which I feel gives it a building tension as it carries on as the track gets busier.

Midway through the piece, as the scene continues to get tenser, I decided to add an 808 kick pattern. I did this to add more tension as it slowly speeds up and then goes back to its original speed, which creates more anxiety in the viewer. The kick is mixed quieter than most of the track but can still be heard, not overwhelming the rest of the sounds and acting as a heartbeat underscoring the piece.

At the same point as the 808 started, I used an Ableton synth from their Drone Lab pack called Parsec Breach. What I like about Parsec Breach is that it is a synth drone, but instead of being a low synth it has screeching highs that fit well in a horror movie. If the whole piece is just a low droning note it can get muddy and boring. It is important to explore all the pitch and frequency ranges you can to make the piece more interesting and dynamic. I mixed Parsec Breach so it gradually gets louder throughout the scene, so it gets more intense until it is unbearably loud.

Near the end of the scene I used a machine ambience I found on Ableton. I thought this sounded interesting and industrial which was exactly what I was looking for. I used an Ableton plug in called Drone Maker which transforms any sounds into a Drone. This gave the sound more ambience.

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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