Summer
21/07/10
It has been almost two months since my last posting. During this time I’ve taken a much needed holiday, had a premiere of my Quartet for Low Brass, and have almost completed another project, Tidelines Installation. Throughout this time, however, I’ve continued to work on the symphony. The four movements have now been mostly composed, and orchestrated, and the work is taking real shape. I’ll post some score samples in subsequent postings and will describe in more detail each movement. Here are the titles of each movement – with approximate durations shown in brackets.
I Highways (7:30)
II Dis-shovel’d (8:00)
III Rotations (10:00)
IV Crude (10:00)
For the next few months I’ll be working on the electronic soundscape. As you can read in earlier postings, sounds are created in several ways: recorded in the field, in my studio, electronically in the computer, or a combination of all three. The sounds will be activated at precise moments, indicated in the score, and in tandem with the instruments. I predict the electronics taking from August until October to complete. During this time the notated score will undergo revisions and additions to accommodate the electronics. By November or December the work should be mostly complete. The last stage will be to create a program in Max/MSP (cycling74.com) to control the sound-files and live processing. For the curious, I’ll be creating the soundscape in Digital Performer. Edited “Soundbites” are placed in stems (or multiple layers) and then extracted as individual files that are overlapped as the music is played.
The image below is the interface for Digital Performer. On the left you can see multiple channels, or stems. In this example (this is from a different project) they are labelled according to the channels they sound out of. There are 4 channels; music 1/2 are channels 1 and 2 (left and right front), music 2/3 are channels 2 and 3 (right front and left back), and so on. At the top of the image is the counter and other options such as the fidelity of the sound files. In this case they are CD quality 44.1 kHz and 16 Bit. The various coloured blocks are the sound-files themselves. The multiple lines are dynamic (volume) and panning information.
Click on the image for a larger version.
I Highways (7:30)
II Dis-shovel’d (8:00)
III Rotations (10:00)
IV Crude (10:00)
For the next few months I’ll be working on the electronic soundscape. As you can read in earlier postings, sounds are created in several ways: recorded in the field, in my studio, electronically in the computer, or a combination of all three. The sounds will be activated at precise moments, indicated in the score, and in tandem with the instruments. I predict the electronics taking from August until October to complete. During this time the notated score will undergo revisions and additions to accommodate the electronics. By November or December the work should be mostly complete. The last stage will be to create a program in Max/MSP (cycling74.com) to control the sound-files and live processing. For the curious, I’ll be creating the soundscape in Digital Performer. Edited “Soundbites” are placed in stems (or multiple layers) and then extracted as individual files that are overlapped as the music is played.
The image below is the interface for Digital Performer. On the left you can see multiple channels, or stems. In this example (this is from a different project) they are labelled according to the channels they sound out of. There are 4 channels; music 1/2 are channels 1 and 2 (left and right front), music 2/3 are channels 2 and 3 (right front and left back), and so on. At the top of the image is the counter and other options such as the fidelity of the sound files. In this case they are CD quality 44.1 kHz and 16 Bit. The various coloured blocks are the sound-files themselves. The multiple lines are dynamic (volume) and panning information.
Click on the image for a larger version.
