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On making tidesongs

tidesongs is a short composition for multilayered voice and vocal processing, exploring tidal languages of the East Coast, co-composed and performed with vocalist Lucy Duncombe. It can be listened to and downloaded here. 

The piece is crafted from elements of words and phrases found in minnmouth, a book of poems by Alec Finlay exploring local sea-and-energy-related expressions, anchored in place-names, from the Out Stack of Unst to Great Yarmouth. Written in various regional languages and dialects of the East Coast of the British Isles, the poems bode the inshot and ootshot tide: sea rise, coastal inundation, and the promise of marine renewables. tidesongs also refers to ebban an’ flowan Alec’s earlier primer on coastal language and marine renewables.

(drawing, books & visual poem by Alec Finlay)

Animating coastal mimesis. Reading Alec’s poems, notes, and poem-drawings, Lucy and I were struck by how many coastal place-names and regional sea-related words he’d chosen to work with are mimetic – that is, they imitate environmental phenomena. These include onomatopoeia, where the words sound like the referent, such as oobin, Shetland Norn for the ‘moaning of the sea’, and swaa, Orkney Norn for the ‘noise of the sea in the distance’. In linguistics and language evolution studies, this mapping of vocal sound onto perceptions of environmental phenomena is known as iconicity. However, iconicity is not limited to sound imitation, but also holds for cross-sensory connections, such as movement, action, colour, touch and even taste. These words evoke vivid impressions of sensory perceptions, and are known as ideophones. In the case of minnmouth, and ebban an’ flowan, most of these ideophones, such as efja, ebbe, flo, strom, swaal, and swelchie deal with movement, from the motion of waves, the ebb and flow of the tide, to streaming currents, and swirling whirlpools.

In our composing, Lucy and I were inspired to take the listener on a journey from mouth to sea and back again, animating this coastal mimesis through a synaesthetic intertwining of vocal soundscapes and imagined land-sea-scapes. We were interested in releasing language from its source, to flow and flood into hybrid spaces of sound-sense, and abstract-representation.

We’re all synesthetes – except we don’t know it. Cross-connection is the rule for all brains. – Richard Cytowic, neurologist

Liquidity is a principle of language; language must be filled with water. – Gaston Bachelard

The journey of tidesongs: from mouth to sea and back again The composition comprises six interlinked sections, a journey which I will attempt to outline below, along with visual score sketches. 

1. MINNMOUTH 00.00 – 02.07 The first part of the composition is inspired by the title of Alec’s book minnmouth and poems of the same name. minn is a recurring term in place-names stretching from Banna Minn and Score Minni in Shetland, down to Minsmere in Suffolk, and is derived from Old Norse minni and mynni, meaning ‘mouth’, ‘bay’ or ‘inlet’. In Scotland, this meaning flows into associations with mothering – mynne in Old Scots also means ‘mother’ and ‘a child’s instinctive utterance’; minni in Shetland Norn, means ‘a child’s word’. The baby’s first mnnn nmm nmmm mnnnn represents its seeking for the breast, and in his poem, Alec conjures the sound-image of the infant’s murmurashen, Shetlandic for murmuring or discontented muttering.

The composition unravels and plays with these sounds and meanings. Breath is our anchor, and beginning with a sounded inhalation, this first section undulates between two intervals suggestive of the sea’s motion in the bay. From the outset, proprioception is key – by this I mean how the body senses its own motion, especially that of the mouth, in relation to the movement of the sea. A hummed mm / mm unfurls into minn / mouth, before ending with in / out – sounds contained within minnmouth. The contrasting open, low vowels of the ou, and the closed, high vowels of the i create a literal opening-and-closing of the mouth – as well as a littoral one – the mouth’s shapes echoing the movement of the tides and the lapping of the waves. Overlaid onto this, murmuring voices float from east to west, hinting at that first instinctive utterance of the child, or the sound of murmurashen hidden in the waves.

2. FLO-FLOOD 02.07 – 03.57 Across a number of languages, similar sounding terms deriving from the Proto-Indo-European *plow, for ‘flow’, share similar meanings. Flø means ‘rising tide’ in Norse, Flod is ‘high tide’ in Danish, Floo is ‘flow’ in Orkney Norn, and Floe is the ‘sea’ in Shetland Norn.

In the second part of the composition’s journey, we imagined the flooding movement of tidal water up an estuary. Beginning with a sounded exhalation, followed by a single drone, constricted fff- sounds open out into planes of ascending harmonies created from flo- related words. The tones flood sonic space, and high notes soar like wind, propelling the music onwards.

3. EBB-SWELL-FLO 03.57 – 05.25 The next stage of the composition’s journey evokes the feeling of the sea departing land, inspired by the place-name Evie, or the Sands of Evie in Orkney, which Alec translates as ‘offing’. The name refers to the strong tides, and can be traced back to the Orkneyinga Saga where it is known as Efiusund. Derived from the Norse efja, meaning ‘back-current’, and middle English ebben, meaning ‘to off’, this relates to a number of similar sounding indo-european words for ebb, such as Eb and Ebb (German), Ebba (Old English), Ebb (Old Frisian),  Ebbe (Middle Dutch and Danish), and  Ebbiunga (Old Saxon).

Lucy and I worked rhythmically with these ebbing sounds to emulate the waves as they roll back from the shore. To suggest the water-swell as it pulls away, slow ascending glissandos are blended together, from the Orkney Norn terms – swaal, meaning ‘sea swell’ and swaa, meaning the ‘noise of the sea heard from a distance’. Beneath this, the flo- flood- harmonies return, resolving with a pure high tone, to evoke the opening out of a panoramic seascape.

4. STREAM-SWIRL 05.25 – 08.30 From this oscillating horizon, we drift out to sea and encounter a tidal-current – a stream of sound – created from processed particles of st stro strö... These sounds, from words such as strōm (Old Saxon), ström (German and Swedish), straumr (Orkney Norn), appear across many indo-european languages, and mean ‘stream’ or ‘current’. A number of place-names are derived from this, for example Stroma, an abandoned island in the Pentland Firth, Stromness on Orkney, and Stromfirth, a farm by Loch of Strom, Shetland.

Near Stroma in the Pentland Firth is a whirlpool known as Swelchie, from the Norse svelgr for cauldron. It is associated with a Norse myth about a giant quern stone in the sea that grinds salt. In minnmouth, Alec beautifully describes this as a foundation myth for marine renewables. 

Mixing with the current, and over a low ominous drone, Lucy and I created a sonic whirlpool, from multiple ascending and descending glissandos using swaa, swaal, swell, and svel sounds. As the microtones meet, they oscillate, suggesting a kind of energy production between the voices. At this point in listening back, even I feel sea sick!

5. BOES 08.30 – 09.40 After escaping the swirl, we drift on the horizon-tone, to encounter submerged rocks. The place-names Bods, a reef near Shetland, and the Rock of Bosker, a reef near Orkney, come from Old Norse bo- and bod, meaning two things: ‘a sunken rock’, and ‘the waves breaking on a sunken rock’, also relating to booi, meaning ‘a shoal upon which the sea breaks’, literally a boder or forewarner. Here, the reef and the motion it creates are interwoven.

Though less mimetic than some of the other sounds, Lucy and I worked with bo- sounds in an improvised hocket between the two voices, using stepping interval changes to suggest different levels of rocks disappearing beneath and reappearing above the horizon. At the beginning of the hocket, the voices have a slightly detuned effect to create a sense of foreboding, before gradually becoming more and more human.

6. CURLEW-HAVEN 09.40 – 11.15 In response to the place name Snape, a Suffolk village by estuary saltmarshes, Alec wrote a poem about the curlew, and the way its call mingles with the wind – a nod to Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River. These words became lyrics for a short final song, soaring over trilling voices and harmonies created from fragments of words associated with havens, harbours and hopes. We return to land.

tidesongs is available to listen and download here. (Listening through headphones or quality speakers is recommended.)

Composed and performed by Hanna Tuulikki and Lucy Duncombe, derived from poems by Alec Finlay, 2017. Produced by Hanna Tuulikki; mixed with Pete Smith. Supported by North Light Arts (Dunbar) and Hull 2017 UK City of Culture. Thanks to Kat Jones, Steven Bode, Susie Goodwin, Jenna Corcoran and Amy Porteous.

minnmouth is available here. Read Alec Finlay’s blog here.

The work is being exhibited at 'Somewhere Becoming Sea', a Film and Video Umbrella curated exhibition in Hull, April-June 2017; and at 'FLOERS', a joint exhibition by Alec Finlay and Hannah Imlach at North Light Arts, Dunbar, June 2017