Composition 1

The first composition of the project involves taking phrases from the piece in order to split these phrases and manipulate them separately.  The piece chosen for this was To A Wild Rose from Woodland Sketches (Op. 51, (1896)) by Edward Macdowell. The piece was performed and recorded prior to manipulation. This piece was chosen as there are many musical phrases and pauses in the piece. 


Methodology

1. The piece will be split into musical (and non-musical) phrases in order to get 26 different phrases
2. Each phrase will undergo a different manipulation in one of three software packages in no specific order to add another layer of indeterminacy
3. These will be each bounced out as numbers
4. These numbers will be re-entered into a DAW in no particular order
5. The piece will be formed using artistic liberties but also keeping some elements of indeterminacy. This means that any changes to the piece to make it sound better will be done
6. The piece will be mixed appropriately and bounced out

Tools

For this composition, the piece requires 3 software packages:

• Cecilia 5
• Soundgrain
• GRM Tools (Demo version)
• DAW (for this track, Cubase was used)

Influences

• Pierre Schaeffer and his Etudes Violette and Etudes Noir (his studies using piano sounds recorded for Schaeffer)
• John Cage and his pieces on indeterminacy (for example his Music of Changes)

Manipulations

1. Cecilia - Vocoder
2. Cecilia - Morphing
3. Cecilia - Convolution Reverb
4. Cecilia - Feedback Looper
5. Cecilia - Multiband Harmoniser
6. Cecilia - Delay Mod
7. Cecilia - Degrade
8. Cecilia - Chord Maker
9. Cecilia - Phaser
10. Sounds made in Soundgrain
11. Sounds made in Soundgrain
12. Sounds made in Soundgrain
13. Sounds made in Soundgrain
14. GRM Tools - Freeze
15. GRM Tools - Evolution
16. GRM Tools - Pitch Accumulators
17. GRM Tools - Shuffling
18. GRM Tools - Doppler
19. GRM Tools - Fusion
20. GRM Tools - Resonator
21. GRM Tools - Warp
22. GRM Tools - Comb Filter
23. GRM Tools - Shift
24. GRM Tools - Delays
25. GRM Tools - Bandpass Filter
26. GRM Tools - Evolution

Videos

Videos of the manipulations were created for each in order to prove the methodology and for transparency in the project.  These will be edited together and time lapsed and uploaded at a later date.

The Track

You can listen to the track here:  

Conclusion

A conclusion has not yet been formed.  Please check back at a later date.