Boring Like A Drill.

Richard Trythall, “Omaggio a Jerry Lee Lewis” (1975).
(6’26”, 14.7 MB, mp3)

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The Melbourne Age has published an article today about Music for Bionic Ears:

In February, the audience will get to hear the culmination of his experimental musical dialogue when [Robin] Fox and five other composers perform a selection of works at the Arts Centre created especially for the 1000 or so Victorian Cochlear implant recipients.

It will be a concert like no other; the deaf as well as those with normal hearing will be gathered together listening to the same music. While it is difficult to know how it is going to be interpreted by those wearing the device, Fox said: ”Hopefully, it will be a shared musical experience. Those with normal hearing will be able to discuss it together afterwards with those that are hearing-impaired.”

In the meantime, I’m getting stuck into making the finished piece for the February concert:

As you can see, the creative process is a thrilling mix of heady inspiration and unbridled fun.

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Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, “Sue Egypt” (1980).
(2’58”, 3.38 MB, mp3)

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It’s the ultimate showdown: which proud national cuisine can turn out the most disgusting pizza?

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Underneath all the music I make, there’s a problem nagging away at me. Whatever I do will always be second-rate because of one fatal mistake: I’m working with electronics instead of acoustic instruments.

Have you had this experience? You’re at a gig, someone with a laptop or decks, hi-tech or low-tech gizmos, and you’re into it, thinking to yourself that it all sounds damn good. Then for the next act some old bloke comes on with a penny whistle or ukelele or whatever and blows the room away.

It’s not just that we’re impressed by the visible effort – the ‘work’ – going into the music that is usually less evident in electronic music: the whole experience is tangibly different, more engaging, more exciting. I can’t explain in any satisfactory way why it always has to be like this.

Coincidentally, while procrastinating from writing this I just read a quote from Jeff Harrington:

I find that electronic music has a real problem to it, because, at this point, there is no good way to get across the kind of energy and vitality that the performer brings to acoustic music.

I don’t think that really gets to the heart of this problem, without understanding exactly what is meant when we talk about energy and vitality in music.

And I don’t think it’s all down to the performer either. There’s something in the natures of the two media that will always put acoustic music at an advantage, at least in a live setting. (I suspect I’d rather listen to recordings of boring acoustic music than of boring electronic music, but I’m reluctant to test this theory.)

One time I was playing a gig with live analogue electronics, spontaneously generated, no samples, nothing canned or taped. The air was alive with fresh, new, exciting sounds. As I wound up the piece with a flourish and the last sound ebbed away, a loose cymbal on another act’s percussion rig behind me slid to the floor with a resonant crash, capping off my whole set. The punters laughed and cheered. Acoustic beats electronic, every time.

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The Music For Bionic Ears project now has a confirmed concert date and venue:

Interior Design: Music for the Bionic Ear
George Fairfax Theatre, The Arts Centre, Melbourne
13 February 2011, 5.30pm or 8pm (the concert is repeated)
Tickets: $25 (Concession $15).
There will also be a 7pm lecture for ticket holders.

The premiere of six new musical works written specifically for reception through the cochlear implant:
Robin Fox
Natasha Anderson
Rohan Drape
Eugene Eugetti
Ben Harper
James Rushford

Blurb follows:

Six of Australia’s foremost experimental music composers have been commissioned to research and test new sounds and musical forms both in the lab and with cochlear implant users themselves.

These tests have resulted in unique new approaches to the composition and diffusion of musical ideas and sensations. The concert is designed to be enjoyed by both cochlear implant users and audiences with normal hearing.

There are over 1000 Bionic Ear users in Victoria today. For these people the Bionic Ear brings sound into a previously silent world, and for the most part allows them to converse with friends and family. However, listening to live music can be a difficult, or even annoying experience!

INTERIOR DESIGN: Music for the Bionic Ear aims to start addressing that problem. Prepare to be challenged by what you hear and be careful not to make assumptions about what others might experience!

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Gene Chandler, “In My Body’s House” (1969).
(2’42”, 3.7 MB, mp3)

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I come home to London next week, after having a great three weeks in Melbourne. More updates will follow then, with news about the Music For Bionic Ears project and other cool stuff, but right now I’m having too much fun catching up with friends and watching the Ashes. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this:

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It’s a strange experience, having to play your music to an audience of one and waiting to find out their response, face to face. Even stranger, when they know nothing about your music; stranger still when you know they’re not hearing what you’re hearing.

On Monday I got to meet four cochlear implant wearers at the Bionic Ear Institute, as part of the Music For Bionic Ears project. They had differing levels of ability in perceiving music, and of experience in hearing and playing music. I played each of them my Study No. 2 and finally got some feedback on whether or not my experiments would have any positive effect.

The new tuning system seemed to work surprisingly well. The types of chords, and the processed organ sound I had used, weren’t as cluttered and muddy as I feared they might be. All four reported that they could hear chords and harmonies clearly, and that the sounds were, for the most part, pleasant to hear. (By pleasant, I mean that too much muddled sonic information tends to sound like white noise to implant wearers.)

It seemed almost too good to be true when a couple of listeners responded that they could identify the organ sound, hear distinct chords and harmonies, and moreover enjoy them. Previously, they had not found these types of sounds pleasant. This was a much better reaction than I had hoped. It seems that using a just intonation scale instead of standard equal temperament has a big effect on how implant wearers hear music. This could be a useful path of inquiry to follow, examining whether equal temperament is an obstacle to music perception and which tuning systems are clearest.

All listeners could identify the organ sound, although some also heard other instruments in the mix. This may have been due to the synthesised nature of the sound, and the other electronic treatments I had made. There are other aesthetic and philosophical implications to whether or not timbral recognition will be an issue in the finished piece, which I should follow up in a separate post shortly.

The piece I played was not focussed too much on melody, relying instead on presenting a succession of distinct sounds with varied loudness, duration, and harmonic complexity. Implant wearers often have a problem in detecting the small steps between notes that usually make up a melody, so it will be interesting to see if a different tuning has any effect. Alternatively, my piece may continue to work in a way that is less reliant on melody.

The Hearing Organised Sound blog has more information about the meeting, with further details about what the other composers in the project are up to. Their approaches are all quite different and are finding out other details I am now trying to take on board.

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I’m back in Melbourne for a few weeks. On Monday I finally get to visit the Bionic Ear Institute and meet some other people working on the Music For Bionic Ears project.

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There was a little segment about the Music For Bionic Ears project on Australian TV recently, which can be watched online. (I can see it in the UK, so I guess everyone can.)

I’ve uploaded two of the studies I’ve made for the project for you to listen to, working with the 16-tone tuning system.
Bionic Ear Study No. 1
Bionic Ear Study No. 2

Study No. 1 was made by filtering white noise into the 22 frequency bands used in the design of a cochlear implant. This was done using a filtered granular synthesis contraption in AudioMulch. The filtered sounds produced were mimicked by a (virtual) piano, retuned to the 16-tone scale. The sounds you can hear in the study are a mix of the white noise, the piano, and either or both sounds reproduced through the cochlear implant simulator devised by Robin Fox.

Study No. 2 examines the various harmonies that can be produced with the scale. Using only one instrument (electric organ), a sequence of chords and single tones are played in a variable rhythm. Certain pitches, with frequencies that straddled a pair of electrodes, were shifted up or down an octave. This sequence was fed back into the same AudioMulch filter used in Study No. 1, which plays back differing amounts of the original and filtered organ.

What next? Study No. 1 is very rudimentary and serves as a preliminary map of the type of soundworld I am dealing with. Study No. 2 was a demonstration of harmonic combinations that are possible. In the latter piece, I suspect that the combination of chords used and the organ sound will come across as too cluttered in the more rigidly-defined sound structure of the implants. The piece I am working on now uses the following principles:

• Implant wearers report being able to understand speech very well. I’m using a speaking voice as a sort of key, or guide, to the music. This includes filtering and processing the voice in different ways, and deriving melody and rhythm from speech patterns.
• Using lighter instrumental timbres with simpler sounds.
• Building textures that sound active, without becoming dense.

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Hey everyone, how was Halloween for you? I went to a party dressed up as Morton Feldman. Girls kept punching my stomach.

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Franco Donatoni, “Refrain” (1986). Nieuw Ensemble /Ed Spanjaard.
(10’06”, 15.67 MB, mp3)

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