On Thursday May 4th I received a book in the mail on early to late impressionist paintings. My practice is focused on scoring to picture and for my assignment in element 2 I am currently planning on creating a sonic response and interpretation of an impressionist painting from the 19th century. The project would consist of gathering field recordings in environments similar to the painting, and composing a piece of music using instrumentation that conveys my perception of the image as well.

Parallel to creating a work that acts score for the piece, the composition would be organised and mixed as if it were for a film. Music mixed in with a soundscape. Nature, people, animals, and weather. I also hope to find or create instruments that feel period accurate to the original work, with a post-modern and personal interpretation imbedded into it as well.

Outside of the assignment brief I would also paint a reaction to my final composition. My first assignment for term 1 this year consisted of composing a piece that was symbolic of a self-portrait of my own mind. Following the final composition and mix I sat listening to the project while painting my interpretation of it. It felt very meditative and reflective to see how the piece spoke to me following the final work and as a part of my practice I would continue doing that with this reflective work as well.

In an effort to practice what we have been introduced to in the second block of Creative Sound Projects, I decided to sample a full symphony from Mozart and not only alter the piece itself through tape effects, but to also use this as a practice for improvisation and arrangement.

After recording the piece to tape using normal playback speed, 1.5x playback speed, and my slowing down and pausing the piece at improvised intervals, I arranged them alongside each other in a session in pro tools. I used the 1/8 inch out put on the cassette recorder to transfer the recording from the cassette to the DAW, and in protools I used automation to create volume swells and gradual panning across the tracks. Once I established an environment from the original samples, I improvised over the entire piece with an alto saxophone, a Moog Subsequent 25, and an acoustic guitar to create the illusion of three voices communicating to each other.

The piece is my first attempt to interpret sampling in my own practice. SAMPLE NO.1 (2023).

Expanding my perspective on sampling and the culture, possibilities, and textures around it is something that I am looking forward to in the second half of the Creative Sound Projects Module. While I have some insight on to the history and what I enjoy from sampling, I have not incorporated it into my practice yet.

Beginning with Pierre Schaffer and moving in through the 50s and 60s with music concrete tape looping made many appearances within the music I grew up with listening to. Artists usage include The Beatles in “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “I am the Walrus” as well as in Pink Floyd’s “Money” looping gardening tools to symbolise currency. However, through high school and now in university most of the music I listen to that utilises sampling stops in the year 1999, as The Beastie Boys and Sublime are a few of only the artists that I listen to who regularly use sampling as a medium for composition.

I plan on using what I learn in this module to incorporate traditional sampling and abelton live into my creative practice, focusing on music concrete and looping natural sounds.

The remainder of my work on the project was focused on analysing my piece and elaborating the contexts and motifs relevant to me and my practice. “Forever, the only complaint” is the title of the piece and is related to a work by Jimi Hendrix, one of the few musicians responsible for changing the trajectory of the electric guitar in the late 1960s. His work and playing style has always inspired me and other musicians I admire, which is why I chose to implement him conceptually into this work.

In mixing the final work I came to realise how spatial the piece was in its own nature, without feeling the need to create more artificial space then already present with the analog effects I had used on the instruments while tracking. Noticing this is what changed the direction of the piece from an experimentation in non melodic composition to a demonstration of the voice in a sonic environment. The characteristics and personality of different sounds, including texture, emotion, and arrangement are what stand out to me as key components of a space, when represented sonically.

Developing this perspective in my piece contributed to the motif of the collective, stepping out of and expanding our own comfort zones. The collaborative effort of the class was monitored through an instagram message group chat, and for the next project I would suggest we hold in person meetings and workshops together instead. Overall I felt that the project was an individual effort, using the guidelines established as a group only in the description of my work rather than its conception. However, it still had an effect on the result and how I choose to project this piece in my written final reflection.

My piece is representative of a classical movement. The progression begins with a C major 7 chord played in a closed voicing, which is to have the smallest interval between the notes of the chord. In expanding on my relatively classical approach to this project, I wrote out the movement on a piece of paper and wrote it at 60bpm to match the desired time I wanted the project to be, exactly 5 minutes. From there I recording the progression on a main guitar track and recorded the leave on my second track. The bass drone sound and the kick drum added to the piece structurally and sonically tied the various guitar parts together.

Despite the structurally musical approach to my composition, I wanted to guide the piece into a more spatial and environmental direction. The goal was for the listener, including myself, to get lost in the piece itself and have it preform as more of an ambient and ambiguous score for a space, either physical or imaginary.

Including the obscure guitar sounds elevated the work even closer to that direction, and represented the expanded idea of a voice within my piece.

Following the expansion of my project into the ideas and role of the voice in a musical context, I continued my recordings using the guitar as the sole instrument for my piece. My goal is to create an environment that feels organic despite being composed from electronic components. The guitar has been the focal point of my creative practice for years now and I am working towards expanding the utilisation of the instrument into new areas outside of typical music, for example sound design and composition for film.

For the project I have composed and recorded a chord progression in the key of C, and used guitars to structure the basic layout of the piece. The rhythm and low end is played using single note drones on a Moog Subsequent 25 and the kick drum is from a Roland TR-08 drum machine. Following the basic tracking, I experimented with a plethora of clean and distorted guitar sounds for the ambience, rhythm, and lead parts of the piece. Some examples of the tonal qualities I used for the piece include clean dry tones from my amp and a chorus pedal for the main closed chord shapes, modulated delay feedback that has rhythm generated from a tremolo pedal for ambience throughout the piece, fuzz and delay combination with a glass slide to play one of the lead lines in the middle of the piece, and chromatic drones played on the whole of the neck randomly throughout the piece to contribute to the spatialisation of the piece.

While it is still untitled the growth of the piece has been inspiring to me and is growing into a world of its own, that represents the expansion of my own practice and overall interest in sound in general.