Thanks a lot to Tom Mudd and everyone else who made Sounding The Great Hall last weekend such a great time. Apart from hearing everyone else’s stuff, it was great fun playing around with eight loudspeakers in such a loud, cavernous room. As it happened, James Wilkie got a photo of me contemplating where to pan the sound next.
It was interesting/disturbing to hear how much the music changed in the space – you really don’t notice how much reverberation is in a room until you realise it’s swallowing up all the detail in your piece. It was a pity I didn’t have the right technical equipment with me to do a real separation of different signals to manipulate directly to each of the eight channels, but it’s got me thinking about a next time.
For the people who contacted me saying they couldn’t make it, I’ve uploaded a recording of my set. It was a performance of the piece Chain Of Ponds, which I’ve discussed before. All sounds were generated in real time by digital feedback synthesis, controlled by chance-determined scripts running on the computer.
The recording is a direct line feed from the computer itself, with just a little bit of the room ambience mixed in. The link below should stream or download – your choice.
Chain Of Ponds (Great Hall, Goldsmiths, 7 February 2015)
As a bonus, I’ve uploaded another recording made at home tonight. This is the same setup as used at Goldsmiths, but with different bias weightings plugged into the controller script. It shows how the piece can be recognisably similar while still producing very different sounds and overall mood.
Chain Of Ponds (9 February 2015, take 3)
[…] I’ve been making. It’s a more sophisticated version of the feedback piece I played at Goldsmiths earlier this year. The sounds are more subtle, more detailed, more focused and more organic. I’m recording […]