The musical experimentation includes an audio repository and explanations of methods. Whilst the sketchbook shows the progress of my visual art development, I found it clearer to display the musical development on a separate page.
Techniques mentioned on this page:
Soundation Software
Oblique Strategies
Techniques I mention in the sketchbook/practical art development page:
Etching & re-purposing etching plates
Lino Printing
Charcoal
Photography & edits (using Instagram + Google Docs)
Oil Painting
Acrylic Painting
Oil Pastels
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MUSICAL EXPERIMENTATION
TECHNIQUES & PROCESS
To make music inspired by minimalist composer John Cage and the 'father of ambient music' Brian Eno, I needed to amass audio recordings to manipulate. The following audio repository includes videos and mp.3 recordings I took either on my Ipad or (android!) phone. I was keen to experiment with the software 'Soundation' which allows the user to input their own audio or use samples from their library, and to manipulate the sound with multiple effects (reverb, tremolo, compressor, looping etc)
The videos below include audio that I experimented with, ranging from sounds from nature, to city noises, family life, or me playing piano.The mp3 recordings are at the bottom of the page.
Here is my final audio, exemplifying how individual recordings have been combined and edited into one song. I've annotated only the key experiments that have been fundamental to the final work, rather than explaining every recording.
Birdies: bird song recorded on a walk near home.
Unlock: me unlocking my house.
A flatish improv: an improvisation/stream of consciousness expressed on the piano, based around the note A flat.
These clips were put together, using Soundation, into one audio (the longer piece below), titled 'Just carry on'. HEADPHONES RECOMMENDED. Whilst experimenting with different effects available, I manipulated the audio in a way that plays the birdsong stronger in one ear. Try only listening with one ear at a time then both at once and notice the difference.
When deciding how I wanted this piece to sound, I resorted to Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, and having been assigned a random strategy from the website (http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html ) the card I got was 'just carry on', hence the improvisation and the relevance of adding recordings which signify a journey. The journey is through Yorkshire, full of birdsong, and on my way home. It ends quite abruptly after the tempo increases, and I left the 'unlocking' deliberately louder than the other audio so as to disturb the listener back to reality, as if snapped out of a daydream. The piano trails away like an lost train of thought. The individual recordings were taken on different days, but together they form a unified alternate reality.
This relates back to my research on Eno, finding that music becomes real for him when he can imagine the place, the colours and the temperature. For me, this music I've called 'just carry on' connotes ideas of the Yorkshire landscape by my home, on a spring day with bright greens and warm blues.
SOUNDATION
Soundation is the software I used to manipulate my recordings into music. During the process, I would input some of my recordings, cut clips, reverse them so they would play backwards, put them on loop or repeat snippets. Other effects allow you to play with the reverb, tremolo and compression among countless others (a process of trial and error, to begin with).
Regarding the method behind the process, I would often refer to Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, which would prompt a response. These strategies undertaken by Eno are elaborated in my artist research, but more examples can be seen below.
Here are screenshots of how the program looks on my laptop. These clips were created in a few sittings each. However the red boxes are recordings that, for whatever reason, did not save and the results are lost. When I realised this work had been lost, I referred to the Oblique Strategies and happened to get the card 'have courage!'.
I don't have enough time left in the module to rectify these recordings and start from scratch, so we'll never know how they would have sounded, however I have included the screenshots below as proof of process and their individual recording snippets are in the audio repository at the bottom of the page.
I had started the process using my own recordings taken randomly during ordinary moments. This was in response to John Cage's piece 4'33, with the purpose of listening more closely to our environment, and re-purposing the sounds into an art form.
Then I started experimenting with what the software Soundation really had to offer. The notion of using pre-recorded sounds or effects that I hadn't created myself follows the methods of Eno, who often uses banks of digital clips, such as from the BBC sound effects library which he shared on Twitter (previously mentioned in my artist research).
'Elec (1)' below, is a piece using samples from the Soundation library. It is by no means a finished piece, but an experimentation. I cut and edited some of the clips to form my own rhythms, for a somewhat dissonant result.
A SELECTION OF MP3 RECORDINGS TAKEN ON MY PHONE
As my recording experiments developed, and the Soundation experiments unfortunately failed to save all of my progress, I began to focus more on the visual art and experimenting with mediums.
Like Scully listening to Agnes Obel, I would always listen to music as I worked (often hers) and I also found that Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies came in handy when deciding what direction to take with my visual art. More on this is mentioned in the sketchbook.
CREATING THE FINAL PIECE AUDIO
I decided my final piece would depict my younger brother's morning coffee routine. This relates back to themes I was researching at the very beginning of the project, considering Angelica Mesiti's films capturing elements of daily life (featured for example in 'The Calling' and 'Citizens Band').
It also relates to Hockney's portraits, capturing a character somewhat spontaneously like he did in his 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life.
The audio accompaniment was developed using sounds from an ordinary day and oblique strategies that have also been used in the visual art.
Below is what I came up with. The complete final piece with the pictures to go with the audio can be viewed on the Final Works for Show page.