elliott-fyp

[elliott-fyp]

privatisation of stress

i've been feeling overwhelmed by the knowledge that a genocide is happening in gaza but there seems to be little i can do to help with the situation. i tried talking to a school counsellor about it but he recommended that i continue living "as per normal", which i take to mean using the coping strategies i've learnt over the years to distract myself from my emotions enough to be functional. this reminds me of what mark fisher wrote in capitalist realism about the privatisation of stress, where capitalist society (including the mental health industry) views psychological distress as something to be resolved by the individual, even when societal problems are the cause of the distress. but if global injustice, the climate crisis, or economic precarity are the reasons behind distress, surely individual coping strategies like guided meditation and exercise are just stopgaps.

with all this in mind, i wanted to make a (sound art) piece criticising the use of coping strategies in distracting one from the source of their distress. i wanted to express that the source remains. i don't think looking away is the solution. i think it is important to keep confronting realities even if one feels helpless.

i sampled the audio from news reports about the gaza genocide, layered them with a guided meditation sample, and with music i made that i imagine yoga studios would play.

the second half of the piece was made by sampling audio from a 90s aerobics video, processing it with argeiphontes lyre, and then reorganising the fragments in logic based on my taste. i chose to sample an aerobics video because exercise is one of the commonly recommended ways of improving mental health. i remember a mental health professional telling me to exercise in response to me saying i couldn't bring myself to do anything... scrambling the audio sample is my way of depicting my headspace at the time and questioning the efficacy of the mental health professional's advice.

[elliott-fyp]

reflecting on intentions and cohesion across whole project

i made another piece that feels aesthetically similar to my 2nd piece, though its main elements are sonically unique to this piece. the percussive groove that is heard throughout the piece was made using tombak (iranian goblet drum) samples because i wanted to incorporate acoustic sounds for a change. i still wanted electronic sounds though, and i did not want it to be harmonically driven or even particularly melodic. hence, i recorded a generative synth and chose phrases i liked, then time-shifted them to make the notes fit the rhythmic grid.

as i type this i'm realising that the reason why i find this piece similar to my 2nd piece (which i shall tentatively name "excursion"), and dissimilar to my 3rd piece, is the lack of chord changes and melodic motifs.

when i first embarked on this project my intentions were: 1. to make pieces, not songs 2. to sonically represent my interiority in my pieces (to translate how i feel, how i see myself into a sonic aesthetic?) 3. to explore concepts related to nostalgia, memory, dreams, and fantasy since are important parts of my inner life

i think i achieved all 3 in my piece dream logic, and the first 2 in excursion and this piece. i'm struggling to make sense of my 3rd piece. it did feel like i was expressing myself while i was making it, particularly my frustrated state of mind. maybe because frustration is a passing state and not an intrinsic aspect of my self-concept, and because it is so harmonically and melodically specific, it's slightly out of place amongst the other pieces in this project. it would be tricky to figure out an order that flows well for the presentation of these pieces.

[elliott-fyp]

3rd piece

the other day, i changed the tuning of my guitar so that i could compose without knowing the exact notes i was playing. i discovered a progression that worked by keeping three notes constant and changing only the root note. i tried recording it in logic but wasn't happy with my plucking patterns, so i decided to record the three constant notes as a synth sound instead.

i added a drum loop, and then an arpeggiator because i've been obsessed with the band MUNA and they use arpeggiators a lot in their production. they sometimes let it run throughout the entire song. that is something i'm trying to allow myself to do; to un-learn the idea that i can't let any element go on for "too long" because it would be boring to the listener.

i also added a bass melody that suggested different key centres in each phrase. that way i was controlling the perception of what the tonality is with the bass but not just playing the root note.

usually after writing a section i would try to write a different section, but i thought of my friend lemuel's comment that he likes my ideas and thinks it's a shame that i move on from them so quickly. so for this piece, i repeated the same chords, the same bass melody, with slight changes to the production. lemuel has also commented before that i tend to use only smooth sounds, so i wanted to challenge myself to use more abrasive sounds. i went with a harsh sounding bass double.

now that the bass melody has already played four times, i wanted to change up the tonality again. still using the original 3 constant notes, i added different held bass notes. i got a synth lead to play the bass melody two octaves higher instead. i felt like this added a whole new layer of harmonic complexity to my piece.

i am happy that i overcame the issues in my music making that lemuel pointed out. i managed to produce a 3 min piece revolving around one idea, and it still feels like i can develop this piece even further.

[elliott-fyp]

evolution of 2nd piece

instead of extending the first section like i said i would, i made two other short pieces. i combined them all because there was a lot of cohesion between their sonic palettes. i'm not sure if this is the final order i want to present the work in, so i will try swapping the pieces around to see if the transitions work and if i like the overall dynamic arc. i realised that the duration of this piece is around the same as my dream logic piece, and it's also a collage of different sonic ideas, so i see it as a companion to dream logic.

[elliott-fyp]

idea for 2nd piece

for my second piece, i still wanted to try different techniques:

i wanted the piece to be rhythmically instead of harmonically driven. i focused my efforts on sourcing one-shot samples that were contrasting yet complementary. once i was happy with my palette of sounds, i arranged them along the grid and panned them widely.

usually, i fill up space by using ambient samples, but this time i wanted gaps in the piece.

i also wanted randomisation in the piece, so i put some of my sounds into the logic sampler and applied the randomiser plug-in to the track. then, i recorded the rhythmic pattern i wanted in midi.

this is what i have so far. i plan to lengthen the first section by at least a minute because i realised it goes into the second section too soon.

[elliott-fyp]

dream logic

i joined where i left off to a drum beat that i made a few months ago. then i added a bass line. at this point i was tempted to record some chords, but i remembered some words i wrote in a dream - you are suburban / you are of this quilt / what does it mean to freeze and unfreeze?

i thought it was a good opportunity to use this in a creative project, so i recorded myself reading out the words, and processed the audio.

though i still need to make some adjustments to this section, i felt like the piece was complete. i would have to make more pieces to meet the requirement of my final year project.

i started thinking about how i might package this piece in future. i could release this on streaming platforms either as one piece within an EP or as separate tracks that flow seamlessly from one to the next within a beat tape. the latter would rack up more streams but i think i want to maintain the integrity of my initial idea to make longer pieces. i still want to take the listener on a journey to different sonic environments within one piece.

while working on this piece, the concept of "dream logic" kept coming to mind. at first i wanted to explore magical realism in my piece but it turned out structured like a dream in which disparate events happen sequentially without striking you as odd while you're in that dream-state. so that's what i'm going to title the piece.

[elliott-fyp]

developing vs extending a piece

in my very first post, i mentioned wanting to adopt a more experimental approach to making music. rather than copy and pasting my sections like i would when producing pop music, i want to develop my piece differently. the question is, what can i do with my main idea now that it is laid out, if i want to avoid repeating the whole AABC form?

i opted to bring back the use of film samples, this time using dialogue that is meaningful to me. i ran the samples through samplebrain to scramble them up, and did some further processing within my DAW. i also bounced out the pad layer from section C, and ran it through argeiphontes lyre, to create the effect of analog degradation. i layered these two elements with new electronic percussion grooves for novelty.

i guess now the form is AABCC. but the question returns, what now?

i removed all the layers except the scrambled dialogue sample and the electronic topper. then i introduced a sparse kick pattern which gradually builds up, setting the scene for a new idea.

[elliott-fyp]

adding to the piece

as much as i liked the timbre of the short reprise in the last post's audio file, i think it would be better to transition from the ambience to a new idea. i wanted to shift from ionian to lydian for a more dreamy effect, and also to voice the arpeggiated chord in intervals of perfect fifths. this is what i came up with:

i used the same piano sound as before for continuity. i moved the same arpeggiated chord down one step, because i wanted to retain the same character but still have some movement. i added delay because i felt like it helped to fill up the space when no new notes were being played. i was happy with this progression as section A of the idea, and wanted to repeat it again instead of moving on so quickly. i decided on an AABC form.

i added a melody line, extra chords to make things more interesting but still link back to the maj13(#11) ostinato, a beat to the second A section, and changed the chords towards the end to lead to the B section.

i changed up the piano pattern and the chords in the B section, and automated the filter on the beat so that it would fade out. i added a percussion riser to build up to section C. as you can hear, section C mostly uses minor chords, is more rhythmically intense and has many more electronic elements - e piano, pad, bass line, bleep boops, distorted percussive layers. i really liked how those textures sounded together with the acoustic piano.

[elliott-fyp]

recording improvised piano

i started my music journey as a classical piano student. for years my practice involved playing notes from sheet music without understanding why the composition sounded nice to me. even after i learnt harmony and started thinking of chords in terms of scale degrees and chord qualities, i would play progressions from existing songs instead of improvising to express myself.

only recently did i realise how cathartic playing whatever comes to me in the moment can be. when i play in this manner, it is not strictly in time. but rather than sounding bad, i find that my playing sounds raw and contemplative. that said, i was afraid that it would come across too sparse and meandering by itself, so i tried to record over the film ambience track that i previously made. i really like the result. the human-ness makes it more compelling, just like the piano playing featured in Spot Dog by The Japanese House.

because i was reminded of that song, i decided to duplicate my piano recording and run certain parts through a spectral granulator, to create the effect i hear so much in The Japanese House's music.

[elliott-fyp]

magical realism

i have been doing sound design and composition for short films. i feel fortunate that the people who invited me on board for their projects trusted me enough to let me have complete creative control over everything sound-related. with little to no direction from them, they felt more like collaborators than clients. i had the freedom to be imaginative about the sonic environment of each scene. the possibilities felt endless, particularly for the animated short film that i worked on - i did not have to keep things entirely realistic.

this got me thinking whether i could create a sense of magical realism in my music, even if it is unaccompanied by visuals. one of my favourite literary works, Bliss Montage by Ling Ma, is a collection of short stories that start off in normal settings but are interspersed with fantastical elements. this gave me the idea to sample ambience from a live action film, and layer them in a way that defies reality. for example, having roadside traffic noise playing at the same time as train cabin noise. by doing so, i am overlaying one space over another. the sounds may have recognisable sources, but together they construct a soundscape that could never exist in real life.

[elliott-fyp]

ideation - using samples in a meaningful way

in my previous post, i reconciled my desire to create pieces (not songs) with my desire to have my work be experienced in its entirety. with that issue out of the way, i can move on to thinking about the concepts i wish to explore in my pieces.

i have been researching postmodernism for my dissertation and it got me thinking about fragmentation and being able to trace the context / cultural lineage of borrowed fragments. maybe for my first piece i will gather sonic fragments that are meaningful to me and piece them together. this bottom-up approach could be inefficient, but hopefully i will be inspired as i go along.

[elliott-fyp]

ideation - pieces, not songs

i'm interested in making pieces as opposed to songs. in the past i relied heavily on lyrics to shape the form of the song, and i think it would be a good challenge to eschew my pop production process to explore other approaches, arrive at different results.

without vocals and the conventional verse-prechorus-chorus format, i have to think of other ways to engage the listener. in electronic music ensemble workshops and at external shows, i have performed as well as watched lengthy pieces, but i feel like witnessing a person work with sound sources in real time helps to retain attention in a way that listening to acousmatic music cannot.

as much as i take pleasure in creating, it is more important to me that my work attracts and retains an audience. perhaps by making the work site-specific and manufacturing an aura of exclusivity around it, i can get people to stick around long enough to listen to my pieces from start to end.