#microsound

Maggi Payne - Through Space and Time (Longform Editions, 2022)

Through Space and Time invites listeners on a mysterious immersive journey through images they imagine while experiencing the work, whether the images be vast deserts, the frozen Arctic, the lunar surface, Saturn’s rings, or beyond. Sounds and events conjure earthly images of nature: wind, storms, rain, dark nights, and sunlit days as well as unearthly images, at times suspending, at other times either contracting or expanding the fabric of space and time.

https://miguelisaza.bandcamp.com/album/m-yopama

https://flau.bandcamp.com/album/reverberate-slowly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3ktNSg43Z8

https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/two-point-two

https://darrenmcclure.bandcamp.com/album/on-opposites

https://pheek.bandcamp.com/album/millefolium

https://nueen.bandcamp.com/album/circular-sequence-2

https://ezekiel-honig.bandcamp.com/album/moment-again-elsewhere

https://ranslavin.bandcamp.com/album/tropical-agent-ears-in-water-product02

Found out about these last two from the idm-l. I joined idm-l in 1999, when I was working in the returns department of TESSCO technologies, a company that sells everything that has anything to do with a cellphone, except cellphones. They have a giant warehouse next to the McCormick spice plant and during the summer standing in TESSCO’s parking lot sometimes felt like somebody was misting your eyes lightly with an atomizer full of bleach, from the McCormick’s fumes.

It was 1999 but the computer I had in the returns department didn't have Windows. It didn't have graphics of any kind actually, just text. I think the monitor was CGA. Luckily my cousin Lee taught me how to do anything important in DOS and when I figured out how to check my email on that POS I felt like a wizard.

“To stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all, what is music but organised noises?” - Edgard Varèse (1962)

What Is Granular Synthesis?

Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis technique that operates on minute timescales. It is the method of arranging so-called ‘grains’ of sound that last “typically between one thousandth of a second and one tenth of a second” (Roads 2004, p.86). According to Curtis Roads, the roots of granular synthesis date as far back as the antiquity but it was not until the mid 20th century that the likes of Iannis Xenakis began utilising these techniques in compositions:

Xenakis’ Concret PH electroacoustic composition (1958) was created using recordings of “burning wood-embers, cut into one-second fragments” (Solomos 1997 in Roads 2004, p.64). The sound of the embers burning is still audible when the sounds origin is known but at times takes on an almost metallic quality and is a separate sonic entity to the original source material.

Granular Synthesis Techniques - The Micromontage

In his book Microsound (2004), Curtis Roads identifies and outlines various granular synthesis techniques. One of these techniques is the ‘micromontage’, which derives its name from the world of cinema, referring to a sequence of rapid images. In the world of audio, the micromontage utilises particles from existing recordings and reorders them (Roads 2004, pp.182-3). This can be laboriously done by ‘hand’ using a piece of audio editing software, manually reordering the particles of sound, or by utilising computer scripts or algorithms to automate the process (Roads 2004, pp. 183-5).

Horacio Vaggione’s Schall (1994) is an example of a micromontage in action, the raw material for the piece “consists of sampled piano sounds, granulated and transformed by convolution, waveshaping, and the phase vocoder” (Roads 2004, p.186). The piece contains tens of thousands of sound particles obtained from the sampled piano material (Roads 2004, p.313). The effect of the composition is a transformation in timbre of the ubiquitous piano: some of its granular descendants are recognisable as being derived from piano recordings, whilst others lurch into the realm of mechanical sounds and unrecognisable clouds of grains. Vaggione’s use of different time spectrums also allows original piano notes to peek through the granular textures and introduce small elements of familiarity into the piece.

“The work plays essentially with tiny textures of feeble intensity, composed of multiple strata, which contrast with some stronger objects of different sizes, in a kind of dialog between the near and the far - as an expression of concern with a detailed articulation of sound objects at diferent time scales.” - Vaggione 1995.

My Granular Experiment

Inspired by my reading into the subject I have attempted to quickly piece together a minimalist granular piece in a micromontage style. Given the labour intensive nature of manual micromontage creation, I opted to attempt creating a short experimental piece using the Max instrument Granulator 2 created Robert Henke, but utilising an algorithmic approach simillar to that outlined by Curtis Roads. I used only 3 sound sources: a contact microphone recording of a bong, a strip of velcro and a female choir singer. Each track had a MIDI note pulse generator and instead of selecting synthesis parameters by hand I created a complicated network of modulation sources  to change the grain size, file position, MIDI input note and MIDI note rhythm. I wanted to keep human agency to a minimum beyond setting up the granular ‘system’. I added some reverb and delay to gel the elements of the track together slightly and added a small amount of automation to the levels of the tracks to give a sense of progression and to bring an otherwise infinite piece to a close. The final result can be heard here:

https://soundcloud.com/sub-denizen/vholcrist/s-6Lh9h

References

Books

Roads C. (2004) Microsound. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Music

Vaggione H. (1994) Schall.

At midnight last night I released my latest album The Dictionary Sorta Says. It’s about ummmm when people cite sources but paraphrase or misquote to bend it away from the author's intent and more towards, ummmmm, more towards their own fiendish purposes. Well the goodies and the baddies both do this and I struggle to get behind anyone because of it! 

It's also about love and linguistics and the 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔏𝔬𝔯𝔡 and losing the will, and the inky greyness in your mind between thoughts or when there's nothing to be found where you're looking 

Or when you whittle past "a" or where you go ummmmmm

1. I Gave Him One Potato But...  2. ...I Didn't Think A Crowd Would Gather 3. Ray Of Light 4. Carvery Counselling 5. Input To Input (Onkyokei t1206) 6. (Adding Knowledge) Isolation Hornpipe 7. (too shy to play drums rn) [t1228] 8. Post-Catalan Necrostatix/No Quite Sae Macho 9. Wittgenstein Wanxtatix 10. Prostrate B4 U 11. Woah just a minute 12. Mata Bavana 13. Crash Repeat 14. No More Sacrificial Lambs 15. Crane Crying [t1243f] 16. Man Of Glad 17. Do You Like Tennis? Physical Reality 18. Frightened Silence 

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