Category: Projects

Synchronised record player recordings of Ricercare

March 6th, 2012 · · Audiograft 2012 Diary No comments - Tags: , , , , ,

ricercare [ˌriːtʃəˈkɑːreɪ], ricercar [ˈriːtʃəˌkɑː]
n pl -cari [-ˈkɑːriː], -cars (in music of the 16th and 17th centuries)
1. (Music / Classical Music) an elaborate polyphonic composition making extensive use of contrapuntal imitation and usually very slow in tempo
2. (Music / Classical Music) an instructive composition to illustrate instrumental technique; étude.
[Italian, literally: to seek again]

ricerca pl. -che /riˈtʃerka, ke/
f.
(studio) research (su into, on);
(risultato dello studio) study, survey, piece of research;
~ sul campo field study, fieldwork;

This post features 2 synchronised recordings made by Felicity Ford and Valeria Merlini during Audiograft 2012.

The idea behind these 2 synchronised recordings was to try and capture the specific qualities of the performance of Paul Whitty’s Ricercare at Modern Art Oxford. This version of the piece involved 3 performers, who would each take a score and a corresponding recording of that score. Picking a moment from each page of their chosen work, performers would then search through their recording in order to hear that moment. Once the phrase, chord, note etc. was played out loud and clearly heard, the performer would pick another moment from the next page in the score, and then search for that in the recording. After methodically going through one score and recording in this way, performers picked up another score and record from the pile in order to continue this process.

The performance lasted for 6 hours.

Performing in Ricercare involved intense listening – especially as the noise from the other performers searching on their recordings often interfered with one’s own listening process. The sounds resulting from this listening process were a discontinuous medley, featuring snippets of classical music, mixed with moments of beautiful quietness as notes were sought, scores consulted, or records replaced in their stacks around the table. The sounds of the records themselves and the technology used to play them were also a prominent feature of this performance.

To try and demonstrate the active listening involved in performing the piece, Ford wore headworn binaural microphones as she leant over her record player and craned her neck towards her speaker, trying and determine where she was in the work. At the same time, Merlini attached a contact microphone to the arm of the record-player, to pick up some of the materiality and surface noise of the recordings themselves, which added a patina of dust and time to this methodical, research-based creation of complex, polyphonic music.



Here is the score for the piece;

ricercare or where the f*** are we?

Paul Whitty

Sept 2008 rev. Sep 2011

for tim parkinson & james saunders

to be played by any number of performers with found scores; recordings; turntables; cassette players; CD players; and any other appropriate sound reproduction devices.

materials
1. select a pre-existing score or scores – they can be of the same work in which case each performer should select a different edition – or of different pieces.
2. search out as many alternative recorded interpretations of the work or works as possible on a diverse range of formats.
3. procure the means to play the recordings.

activity
1. select a single event from each page of your score – use a systematic method of your own choice. in this context an event is considered to be a single action – it could be a chord or a single note – the event or action ends when the next event or action is performed.
2. search out the chosen events on the recordings of the work – in performance you should be seeking out the events for the first time. searches should not be pre-prepared
3. do not seek to minimise the sounds resulting from your search – for example do not use headphones or turn the volume down to a level lower than the level at which you will finally play the selected event.
4. when the event has been found – play it once. as far as possible seek to isolate the event from the other events surrounding it.
5. once the event has been played begin to search for the next event on the same or an alternative recording and format.

amplification
Where possible use internal amplification – where external amplification is required the volume should be at a domestic level.

The performance ends once each performer has found an event from each page of their score or when a pre-determined number of events or a pre-determined duration has elapsed.

Acoustic recordings vs. Desk recordings

March 5th, 2012 · · Audiograft 2012 Diary No comments - Tags: , , , ,

At Audiograft 2012, Felicity Ford and Stavroula Kounadea performed their new work, “Towards an Excellent Finish”. This piece included a sewing machine, a handbuilt Atari Punk Console, and a Dictaphone containing a software cassette for creating “classic knitting patterns” made for the Spectrum 48k computer. A light-sensor attached to the sewing machine, 2 contact microphones, and an electronic coil were also fed into the mixing desk where Ford mixed the sounds, while Kounadea employed scissors, pins, fabric, and her sewing machine to make the piece.

A phono-cable from the main output on the mixing desk to the line-in on a FOSTEX FR-2LE allowed Ford to capture the sounds of the electronic signals of which the piece was ultimately comprised, but Valeria Merlini made some recordings from the point of view of the audience, using a Zoom H4, with an Audio Technica BP4029 stereo shotgun microphone. This set-up allowed Merlini to capture some of the ambience in the room, and also to focus in on specific sounds, such as the sewing machine pedal being put to use, the audience surrounding the performance, and the texture of the cheap amplifier which the duo used to amplify their sonic materials.

Comparing the desk recording with the field-recordings Merlini made during the performance is interesting; the desk sounds have an electronic purity about them and give a very detailed representation in particular of the electronically-generated sounds, such as those produced by the Atari Punk Console. However the desk recording also totally lacks any sense of space, air, or acoustics. Contrastingly, the field-recordings created by Merlini are full of atmosphere, and reveal many of the sounds heard during the performance which the desk recording failed to pick up. Examples include audience sounds; the sound of the sewing-machine pedal being operated; and the resonant sounds of the mechanisms inside the sewing machine reverberating as Kounadea used it. Both are useful for the future development of the work; the desk-recording gives an idea of how well the levels were mixed during the piece, while the field-recording is useful for showing how the performance sounded in a real place.

Roughly one minute of each recording is included here, for comparison and interest. What do you make of the difference?



Felicity Ford’s electronic desk recording of “Towards an Excellent Finish” (excerpt)



Valeria Merlini’s field-recording of “Towards an Excellent Finish” (excerpt)

Lost & Found: – found sound – lost recording

March 4th, 2012 · · Audiograft 2012 Diary No comments - Tags:

During Catherine Laws’s performance, featuring work by Juliana Hodkinson, I recorded a breathtaking combination of sounds, a melange of performance sounds, audience noises and sounds of the Building. Almost inaudible, gently touched, piano keys/tones, a crescendo from a squeaking toy pig – woven together with the sound of exited shuffling feet, singing creaking floorboards and the bell-clear laughter of a young female audience, captured in a moment and lost forever. I did not realize that the flash card had only very limited capacity, recorded generously and when full, thankfully accepted a spare card from a workshop member. I did not check before use and recorded happily on a full flash card. My recorder did not indicate the full card.

This post is by Christina Bringmann-Smith and is a text-based recording of sounds heard during the Lost & Found Concert at the Holywell Music Room during Audiograft 2012

Micro sound diaries from the launch night of Audiograft 2012

March 2nd, 2012 · · Audiograft 2012 Diary No comments

Extending the idea of the Audiograft 2011 diary, a documentation workshop will be running throughout Audiograft 2012, exploring issues around documentation and storytelling in sound. Throughout March, this site – Sound Diaries – has become an online sketchpad for sharing the workshop’s explorations of sonic documentation.

Kim Laugs, Toby O’Connor, Christina Bringmann-Smith and Charlotte Heffernan are attending this workshop, which is being co-run by Felicity Ford and Valeria Merlini. Participants are listening to the sounds of Audiograft, exploring how they might be documented, and making many field-recordings.

The workshop is also considering how the soundworlds of the work presented at Audiograft relate to the soundworlds of the contexts and sites involved in the festival – for example the sounds of the campus where the installations are being presented; the acoustics of the buildings where the concerts are being held; and the sonic qualities of the objects used in performances throughout the festival.

This workshop extends the theories and ideas explored during the Framework Radio Documentation & Production workshop led by Ford and Merlini in Tallinn, 2011. One output from this workshop will be a framework radio show; the other will be a series of mini-shorts and miscellaneous audio recordings to be presented here, in keeping with the Sound Diaries mission which is to explore what it means to record life in sound.

This short is comprised of recordings made on Wednesday 29th February, and features the following sounds from the Audiograft programme:

Lee Riley’s guitar installation
plucking the strings of a gutted/broken piano in the Richard Hamilton Building
excerpt of amplified sewing machine from “Towards an Excellent Finish” by Stavroula Kounadea and Felicity Ford
excerpt of “Guitar Drag” by Christian Marclay, performed and adapted by Lee Riley (outside)
doors opening and closing in the Richard Hamilton Building
high heels exciting the acoustics of all the spaces around the Headington Hill Campus
excerpts from inside and outside the Drama Studio, where John Cage’s “Cartridge Music” was being performed by Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Lee Patterson, Robert Curgenven, Patrick Farmer, Ferran Fages, Daniel Jones and Stephen Cornford
the audience applauding inside and outside buildings around the Headington Hill Campus
excerpt of Joseph Cox’s installation, “Selection of prepared Records”
the audience leaving the Drama Studio
a heavy trolley being dragged around the Headington Hill Campus

These sounds were recorded by all the participants in the workshop, and then selected as a shortlist of sounds to represent this night of the festival programme. To demonstrate how the editing process can change the way we perceive sounds, Valeria and Felicity made individual remixes of the shortlisted sounds. The group then discussed how different sounds and editing ideas might be extended or changed in order to build a longer radio piece. Apart from being cut and pasted together, and some volume boosting or reduction in places, these sounds are as they were heard on Wednesday 29th February, 2012. It is hoped they convey not only the essence of the works included, but also something of the experience of encounter; of the ear being led through a space in which the sounds of the world collide with the sounds of art.


Valeria Merlini’s mix


Felicity Ford’s mix

Applause

February 26th, 2012 · · Audiograft 2011 Diary No comments - Tags: , ,

As per this post and in anticipation of the forthcoming Audiograft 2012 festival, during each day in February 2011, a recording created during Audiograft 2011 will be played here as a Sound Diary entry. The whole series will act like an album of sonic snapshots from the festival; though without frames, without borders, and filled with the overspilling sounds of the surrounding world.

This recording features the end of Paul Whitty and Stephen Cornford’s performance of “it pays my way and it corrodes my soul” at Modern Art Oxford during Audiograft 2011 and the applause that followed.

That concludes our Audiograft 2011 Sound Diary; look out in mid-May for the Audiograft 2012 Sound Diary, and at the end of February for the entire Audiograft 2011 archive.

“It pays my way and it corrodes my soul”

February 25th, 2012 · · Audiograft 2011 Diary No comments - Tags: , , , ,

As per this post and in anticipation of the forthcoming Audiograft 2012 festival, during each day in February 2011, a recording created during Audiograft 2011 will be played here as a Sound Diary entry. The whole series will act like an album of sonic snapshots from the festival; though without frames, without borders, and filled with the overspilling sounds of the surrounding world.

This is a recording of Paul Whitty and Stephen Cornford performing “it pays my way and it corrodes my soul” at Modern Art Oxford during Audiograft 2011. You can hear the audience and the acoustics of the space very faintly in the background, underneath the amplified sounds from the performance which filled the room.

James Kelly introducing his set at Modern Art Oxford

February 24th, 2012 · · Audiograft 2011 Diary No comments - Tags: , ,

As per this post and in anticipation of the forthcoming Audiograft 2012 festival, during each day in February 2011, a recording created during Audiograft 2011 will be played here as a Sound Diary entry. The whole series will act like an album of sonic snapshots from the festival; though without frames, without borders, and filled with the overspilling sounds of the surrounding world.

Here, James Kelly introduces his set at Modern Art Oxford while the audience settle to a hush and someone puts a glass down.

Rhodri Davies talking about quiet in the “Concept as Score” Concert

February 23rd, 2012 · · Audiograft 2011 Diary No comments - Tags: , , , ,

As per this post and in anticipation of the forthcoming Audiograft 2012 festival, during each day in February 2011, a recording created during Audiograft 2011 will be played here as a Sound Diary entry. The whole series will act like an album of sonic snapshots from the festival; though without frames, without borders, and filled with the overspilling sounds of the surrounding world.

Here we hear Rhodri Davies talking about his experience of quietness and focus amongst the audience the “Concept as Score” Concert in the Holywell Music Room earlier in the festival programme. Rhodri Davies and Max Eastley were preparing for their performance at Modern Art Oxford that evening, and Felicity Ford was interviewing them about that when Davies offered this insight into that Concert (excerpts here here and here). While Davies and Eastley talk, the sounds of the experimental DJ performance – “Sh*T! I can DJ” taking place upstairs at Modern Art Oxford can be heard from the floor above.

“Sh*t! I Can DJ” with Lisa Busby and James Kelly at Modern Art Oxford

February 22nd, 2012 · · Audiograft 2011 Diary No comments - Tags: , ,

As per this post and in anticipation of the forthcoming Audiograft 2012 festival, during each day in February 2011, a recording created during Audiograft 2011 will be played here as a Sound Diary entry. The whole series will act like an album of sonic snapshots from the festival; though without frames, without borders, and filled with the overspilling sounds of the surrounding world.

In this recording, “Sh*t! I Can DJ” featuring Lisa Busby and James Kelly can be heard, playing in the café area at Modern Art Oxford during Audiograft 2011. If you listen hard, you can detect the acoustic of the space, the slight clink of plates being moved, and the sounds of someone walking across the floor.

Coats, microphone sounds and “Ceremony” by Mike Blow

February 21st, 2012 · · Audiograft 2011 Diary No comments - Tags: , ,

As per this post and in anticipation of the forthcoming Audiograft 2012 festival, during each day in February 2011, a recording created during Audiograft 2011 will be played here as a Sound Diary entry. The whole series will act like an album of sonic snapshots from the festival; though without frames, without borders, and filled with the overspilling sounds of the surrounding world.

The low hum in this recording is the sound emitted from 12 speakers, in an installation by Mike Blow entitled “Ceremony“. You can also hear the sound of manmade fabric rustling as Felicity Ford and Mark Stanley walk around the installation space, listening to and looking at the piece; and the sound of an Audio Technica BP4029 picking up even the slightest of hand movements through its pistol grip.