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John Young  

Allting Runt Omkring

Duration: 18' 00" Year: 1998
8-channel electroacoustic

• Instrumentation
  8 -channel electroacoustic
• Programme Note

  This work was composed on the 8-channel digital sound system at EMS Stockholm while I was a visiting composer there in 1998. The piece grew out of my encounters with the Stockholm soundscape, which surprised me with its clarity and vitality – both above and below the ground… the chimes of church clocks audible across very large distances…the tunnelbana (subway) with its caverns hewn out of granite, where even quiet shuffles of feet are etched with clarity… skaters on the open air ice rink… footsteps on granite stairs and creaking floors. Along with these I integrated a number of field recordings made in my own country… a fairground, with ghost train and house of mirrors… wind gently resonating a flagpole… I found many of these sounds so captivating that I realised I was carrying impressions of them in my head, and frequently imagining the presence of one sound ‘inside’ another as I was hearing them (both in and out of the studio). ‘Allting Runt Omkring’ attempts to project some of that sensation by creating a new context in which field recordings from the natural world are integrated and transformed. All sound sources in the work are environmental in origin. I work exclusively with my own field recordings, since for me it is important to have a connection with the original context of my sound sources. In this piece the context in which sounds are heard and shaped was an important stimulus, while the tape medium allows me to forge new contextual relationships for the sound. For example, in Stockholm there are a large number of churches and public buildings in the main city area, especially Gamla Stan (the old town), but also across to the islands of Kungsholmen and Soder. At quarter hour intervals the clocks of Stockholm chime, and from a single vantage point one can hear an astonishing depth in the soundscape. The Stockholm tunnelbana also has a great acoustical presence and range of sounds, and in this piece I have tried to fuse sounds of ‘above’ and ‘below’ ground (for instance by linking the bell resonances to the tunnelbana, or by taking the noise of trains to the ice rink).

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Denis Smalley  

Empty Vessels

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1997
electroacoustic work

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  • Denis Smalley: Sources/scenes  Year: 2000 

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John Young  

Flow

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1993
electroacoustic work

Dugal McKinnon  

Gastarbyter

Duration: 17' 00" Year: 1998
electroacoustic, music from the installation Gastarbyter

Susan Frykberg  

Hums

Duration: 18' 00" Year: 1990
for live mixed and diffused tapes

John Young  

Liquid Sky

Duration: 16' 00" Year: 1998
electroacoustic work

• Programme Note

  This work is an exploration of the sound-image of rain. In many ways, I felt the process of composing this piece to be one of revealing and expanding the myriad patterns and colours within the sound, normally noticeable only with very concentrated listening. Since I work exclusively with my own environmental recordings, I tend to see the compositional process as opening out of the richness of the act of listening itself, supported by the imaginative associations for which it can be a catalyst. Like many environmental sources, the sound of rain is extremely varied and, at least in theory, covers a whole range of morphologies from the individual droplet to saturated granular noise. In collecting source material I made numerous field recordings in different locations focusing on the sound of rain falling on different objects (such as leaves, windows and puddles) since it was clear that the variety of sound colours inherent in rain is largely defined by the nature of the surface it falls upon. In processing these sounds, I tried to think about these distinctions: the ‘granular’ aspect tending towards long-term development of texture, and the ‘droplets’ providing models for attack-resonance structures. But in continuing with this idea, my approach was not always subtle! In the studio I tried to expand the gestural rhythm by superimposing the dramatic amplitude envelopes of fireworks onto the dense textures of heavy rain. And, with the use of multiple grouped resonators, I was able to impose defined pitch structures onto the material, allowing slowly evolving inharmonic spectra to eventually have a central role in the piece. As a whole, Liquid Sky aims to convey the feeling of a larger-than-life immersion in rain, and an intensified view of a powerful environmental phenomenon. ‘Liquid Sky’ was realised in the studios of the Groupe de recherches musicales, Paris and EMS Stockholm. Collection of sound sources and some initial processing was done at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. The work was commissioned by the Ina-GRM and premiered in the GRM’s Multiphonies series, Salle Olivier Messiaen, Maison de Radio France, Paris, March 20th 2000. It was pre-selected in the 2000 Bourges International Competition for electroacoustic music.

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  • John Young: La limite du bruit  Year: 1998 

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Anthony Ritchie  

Memories

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1996
dance music for tape

John Rimmer  

Pacific Soundscapes with Dancing

Duration: 15' 00" Year: 1995
electroacoustic

• Programme Note

  Computer music which has been performed in Thailand and Australia, this work is based on computer transformations of environmental sounds from New Zealand.