I don’t know what it says about me as a musician that I have such affection for process music. I have written and performed a number of process pieces over the years but my lust to explore them further has been reawakened through reading Andrew Ford’s “Illegal Harmonies” whilst on holiday. This inspired me to write the following process piece. This is only really me putting a toe back in the water but I intend to research and build on this area during my sabbatical.
Natural Score
Take a stereo field recording of any length, of an urban or rural environment. Each prominent sound in the field recording is used to score a piece for multiple instruments / sounds. The range and rhythm of each sound is used to define what instrument / sound is used and how it is scored. Record the score as it is “performed”. Place the various instruments / sounds in this recording in the opposite position in the stereo field as the sounds in the original recording. The final piece is created by mixing both recordings, fading from the original field recording to the scored recording, crossing at exactly 50/50 amplitude at the midpoint of the piece.
Obviously, the key is to get on and record these pieces, which I will do…but as I said, this is about me putting a toe back in the water of writing such pieces, to get my mind thinking in the right way again.
I must thank my father for his part in forming this passion of mine. I was lucky enough be surrounded by such things in my childhood and I even remember a couple of trips to the library to investigate specific pieces more closely.
Lastly, I wanted to include the original hand-written score to Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music, which I have been known to perform for Optical Theremins and torches.