Composition 5- Venus

The work for Venus has started.  The idea behind this piece is to merge classical, text/speech and concrete styles in order to create a piece based on love and peace just like in Holst's Planets Suite.  With that in mind, poems have been edited and manipulated in Metasynth in the following way: 

Please click for a larger image.  

These poems have all been manipulated in such a way so that the speech itself is still somewhat intelligible.  This is so that the messages of peace and love can be heard.  

The next steps for the piece are:

1) To manipulate the orchestrated version of Holst's Venus
2) To create a sound file of the same frequency which Venus creates from its movement (221.23Hz)
3) To put the whole piece together

Composition 4- Mars

Composition 4 (Mars) has began to come together.  The graphic score (featured below in diagram 1) has now been processed and an audio clip showing the transformation will soon go live and then will be embedded into this blog.

   [Photo diagram 1- graphic score]

This score was imported into Metasynth and inverted so that sound could be heard.  I changed the synth sounds so that I found something I liked and then put the sound through the FX synth in order to change the sound.  The process the sound went through can be seen in the video below and heard in the soundcloud clip below.

   [Video file]

   [Soundcloud file]

In order to use the piece to create new sounds, I manipulated the sound without the use of (much) software.  I set up 2 speakers against a metal barrel in a studio and played the full symphony through the speakers.  A Neumann U87 microphone was positioned over the top of the barrel and recorded the sounds from the music, the room and the barrel.  Whatever the microphone picked up I re-input into ProTools so that each time it went through the system it would have new properties. This can be heard in the audio clip below.

   [Soundcloud file]

Composition 3- Orchestral Concrete Piece

The 3rd composition I am working on is similar to the piano concrete pieces in as much as that it uses the same basic formula to create it.  I have taken a recording of Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake Finale and cut it into musical and non-musical phrases.  These phrases were manipulated any number of times as desired.  The clips have been edited / manipulated twice so far.  The manipulations are as follows:

Please click on the picture for a larger view.  I know the colours are bright but it's only to differentiate between different software easily.  

The random number generator generated the sequence in which the sound clips must go. The results are as shown on the screenshot below. Please click for a larger view.

Below is a screenshot of the Cubase project as it was when the sound clips were inserted in the sequence that the random number generator determined. (Please click on the picture for a larger view.)

The next picture shows the way the piece was arranged after auditioning the sounds, but it stills keeps the order determined by the random number generator.

Below is an audio clip of the completed piece as arranged.

Composition 2 - Shostakovich Piece

The second composition is now completed and the audio has been uploaded to soundcloud. 

Below is a screenshot of the unedited version of the cubase arrangement.  

Please click on the picture for a larger view.

The unedited version is below.  This version is the track as it was after the random number generator generated the sequence the sound clips were to be put together in order to create a new piece.  

Below shows the Cubase project once the editing of the arrangement was completed.  This is exactly how the piece sounds.

Please click on the picture for a larger view.

The edited version is the piece where I moved the sound clips around and ensured that they each worked with one another whilst still keeping the sequence/order that the number generator gave.

Composition 2 Full Manipulations

Below is a screenshot of the full list of manipulations that the sound files undertook.  Please click on the picture for a bigger view. The colours in the chart are for an easier way of finding the softwares used on each sound clip.

Random Number Generator

For the Shostakovich recomposition, I decided to use a random number generator from Random.org in order to arrange the piece, thus giving it an element of indeterminacy. The generated numbers are shown in the screenshot below and this is the order that the sound clips / sound objects will be arranged in the piece.  Please click on the picture to view it in greater detail.

Composition 2

For the second composition using recorded piano music as the basis for musique concrete, I chose Shostakovich's Prelude in Eb Minor as it is very different to the first (Edward MacDowell's To a Wild Rose) and has a much wider range of dynamics, more use of the bass frequencies and has a darker general feel.  

I followed the same primary steps as the first piece (1- Cut piece into phrases, 2- Number phrases, 3- Manipulate each clip) however, with this piece, I decided to allow more than one manipulation on each clip to get a greater variety of sounds and to pull the object source away from the piano thus giving a greater curiosity as to the sound source.

The first manipulation have been completed and these new sound clips will undergo second and, if necessary, more manipulations in order to warp the sonic landscape.  The table below shows the first set of manipulations.

Clip	Manipulation 1
1	Evolution GRM
2	Fusion GRM
3	Reson GRM
4	Warp GRM
5	Grinder GRM
6	Comb Filters GRM
7	Shift GRM
8	Freeze GRM
9	Bandpass GRM
10	Pitch Accum GRM
11	Shuffling GRM
12	Vocoder Cecilia 5
13	Pelletizer Cecilia 5
14	Degrade Cecilia 5
15	Detuned Resonator Cecilia 5
16	Granulator Cecilia 5
17	Delay Mod Cecilia 5
18	Harmoniser Cecilia 5
19	PitchLooper Cecilia 5
20	Transpose Cecilia 5
21	LooperMod Cecilia 5
22	Beat Maker Cecilia 5
23	Feedback Looper Cecilia 5
24	Soundgrain 1
25	Soundgrain 2
26	Soundgrain 3
27	Fusion GRM
28	Shuffling GRM
29	Warp GRM
30	Pitch Accum GRM
31	Evolution GRM
32	Grinder GRM
33	Reson GRM
34	Shift GRM
35	Doppler GRM
36	Contrast GRM
37	Delay GRM
38	Freeze GRM
39	Bandpass GRM
40	Distortion Cecilia 5
41	Harmoniser Cecilia 5
42	Granulator Cecilia 5
43	Feedback Looper Cecilia 5
44	Spectral Delay Cecilia 5
45	Spectral Warper Cecilia 5
46	Beat Maker Cecilia 5

The next steps for this piece are:

• Undergo more manipulations
• Use an online number generator to decide the order of the sound objects
• Re-arrangement of sound objects
• Mixing and post-production
• Exporting and mastering