Other Works

 

This piece was inspired by the works of Trevor Wishart, Francis Dhomont  and Robert Normandeau, and other more contemporary artists who all have composed using spoken word. The Wishart piece Vox 5 was initially composed using vocal sounds on tape, utilising the speed function of the tape machine but he moved onto the newly emerging computer music capabilities of the 1980’s. Two techniques used were spectral manipulation and spectral interpolation. Wishart also used the phase shifting vocoda, which utilises multiple channels to transform the spoken sounds.

Dohmonts Porete profonde uses multiple spoken word sources in a very complex manner. “In the realm of both narrative and musical materials, the fragment, an open-ended, incomplete morsel of material, serves as a primary building block in Fortet profonde; the accretion of these fragments function to establish Dhomont’s sonic metaphors. In addition, larger blocks of material often retain an open-ended and incomplete quality. There is no one fragment reflecting in microcosm the whole of the piece and yet the composers method of construction is reminiscent of a hologram. A given fragment by its very nature suggests other fragments. “ A, Rubbin.

Robert Normandeau has composed a number of spoken word pieces where he transforms the human voice using effects. “ The voice is a unique element of identity. Speaker recognition software exists because of the voice’s particularity, its cadence, tone, and articulations idiosyncratic to the individual. This particularity can be difficult, and almost impossible, to disguise. But Normandeau can sculpt extraordinary sounds into previously unknown and unrecognizable states, all through electronic technology: fragmenting, layering, filtering, stretching, among many other techniques Normandeau uses, transform the human sound source into some- thing new, even unworldly at times. While Normandeau erases the unique vocal identity of his human sound sources, including age, he retains aspects of the original sources’ identity, namely gender. Normandeau constructs new stories and identities, and the listener can combine his own experiences and memories with the sounds encountered to decode the voice’s new message.”  Woloshyn, A.

Adam Stanovic’s piece we Are the Voices of the Wandering Wind, from his album Hymnes sans Paroles, uses recordings of the wind blowing, it starts out very low with a single track and begins to multiply into a crescendo of wind which rises in volume and suddenly drops back into a quiet single track. The crescendo’s continue into what sounds like a synth pad sound which has almost human voice qualities to it.

The Yves Daoust track Lily from his album Docu-fictions has female vocal sounds and utterances of breath and syllables intermixed with French spoken word, these are panned around to give a sense of space and are underlined with almost synth pad sounding and violin strings which may be effected voice and real violins. We also hear what may be contemporary piano strikes again with spoken word and vocal sounds, the whole piece cresendos to a huge mix of all these sounds. Then we get the track Intermede which is a mix of car horns which are obvious to start out then are effected and maybe gated to give a pulse effect along with police sirens.

 

Hans Tutschku track remembering Japan part one, Imersion, again has spoken word pieces mixed with Japanese Tokai drums which crescendo to bring in different sections of spoken word and chants accompanied by wooden blocks being struck and what sounds like Japanese string instruments.

 

The track Scherzo by Ake Parmerud from his album Bruit noir starts out with a staccato sounding like piano strings being struck, this crescendos with synthesizer like resonance sweeps that build in deep padded sounds which permeate the sound palate as more sweeps build the intensity of the pads, this calms with the next tracks Scherzo, Largo and Presto, which have high and low frequency pad sounds and again after a minute or two we get the synth resonant sweeps again with an anti-climax of high and low pads panned in a way to give a sense of space, as we get to presto we get more piano string strike type sounds and celeste type strikes adorned with breathy sounding pads in high and low frequencies and which morph into gated and snipped high and low pulsating staccatos. By this point we have had a build up of the sonic landscape.

As I continued with my Echolalia piece I tried to repeat sound objects with different effects added to give a progressive feel to piece whilst also showing repetition, (echolalia and palilalia,) I have tried to make these sounds build in a crescendo effect like some of the examples I have been listening too. Some of the grainer and granulator sounds I have tried to underline the sound objects with. In this I am trying to add a synth pad like effect but totally using the spoken word samples run through Cecilia. In the middle section of the piece I have used the voice in differing pitches and speeds, similar to some examples of the spoken word pieces, Hans Tutschku track remembering Japan part one, Imersion, the Yves Daoust track Lily. As I move into the final section of my piece I have reused earlier samples and run them through various effect plugins to change pitch and timbre and give them a whole new feel. I have varied the timing and order of the tracks again to add some progressive feeling to the piece, the same yet different, repeating yet not sounding repetitive.

I feel my track sounds different from the given examples although I have tried to mimic what I am hearing, I will look further at techniques in order to create a given effect such as the build-up of samples to get the crescendo of sound. I played with the idea of using synth resonant sweeps like in some of the examples, but I wanted this piece to be totally spoken word in source and I am not sure how to achieve this effect without using synth plug ins to get the desired effect. I also feel some of the spoken word examples sound very dry and clean whereas I have tried to cover the source of my samples with effects and have tried to add more sonic examples of what can be done with the help of effects such as Cecilia, Audacity and Logic plugins.