Re: [microsound] levels of abstraction

[Phil Berdecio <pberdecio@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well it's definitely pretty dense for the most part,
but I feel like it relates to microsound because it's
heavily processed and contains small pointlistic
sounds of obvious digital origin within a sort of
ambient, droning haze. I record most of my sound
sources on a cheap microphone plugged into my
computer; I bang, scrape, and otherwise coax sounds
out of whatever objects happen to be lying around my
room at the time. I think the  selection and use of
objects undetermined before I hit "record" adds a
level of spontaneity to what I'm doing. I also use
samples from my huge cd library, but process them to
the point of unrecognizability. Once agin, I often
just grab a cd on a whim while I'm working, without
any particular idea of what sort of sounds I am
looking for. 
My early stuff sound like a total post-Mego mess, with
these samples run through huge webs of audiomulching
contraptions. I sort of disregard this digital noise
overkill improv stuff: I can't tell if it sound
derivative or if it's just too busy, but something is
lacking. I mostly now use these tracks, if ever, as
source material in newer pieces. Like I said, I make
both abstract ambient/drone things and more rhythmic
music as well. I think my most interesting music
combines the two approaches. For example, I have a
couple of pieces where I simply went ballistic in my
bedroom and threw things about, generally making a
spontaneous racket. I recorded about five minutes of
this, then ran that recording straight through a dl
granulator in audiomulch. I added other effects and
elements, quantizing parts to different degrees, and
basically ended up with rhythmic music that changes
unpredictably due to the irregular clattering source
material. I randomized a lot of the rhythms, so it
never really repeats, per se, although there is a
general rhythmic framework that everything falls
within.
That's just one example, and I have stuff that sounds
entirely different, ranging from straight techno to
completely arrhythmic electroacoustic compositions. I
suppose the one unifying factor in all my work is sort
of random, timbrally eclectic flows of sound running
through larger structures of varying density and
degrees of quantization. In other words, on one level,
there is alot going on, but as you "step back" and
shift focus from the details to the overall piece,
these busy streams of sound relate to one another in
more simple arrangements.
All this might make it seem like I have an overall
conceptual plan to my music as a whole, but, as to why
i do it...Well it's just experimentation based on a
love of sound, approached as a tactile material to
play around with. Maybe at some point I'll develop
some sort of conceptual agenda, but at this early
stage, I'm just improvising and having fun, and using
the results of my spontaneous explorations within more
thought-out pieces. I like the tension between messy,
chaotic elements, and structures for those elements to
operate within. I'll make some stuff available for
download or mail interested people cdrs, but i need to
weed through alot of the garbage that's accumulated as
the inevitable result of my happily haphazard working
methods.

phil
 
> that's great.  what's it sound like?  Why do you do
> it?

>elisha

> hello- 
> 
> This is my first post, and the first topic that, due
> to its fairly subjective nature, I feel confident to
> comment on at this early point in my use of digital
> audio. 
>   I tend to think of sound in visual terms, usually
> imagining a space in which the various sounds are
> projected or simply manifest themselves. Event
density
> and relations of discrete sounds are common rough
> parameters that determine my perception of where a
> piece is going and where I'd like to take it. I
often
> imagine dense flows of sound as having internal
> relationships that are consistent within the
> particular cluster or stream of sound independent of
> the stream's overall relationship to other elements
in
> the piece. I work mostly in Audiomulch (never even
> seen Max/MSP), and after some initial confusion, I
> think it's turning out to be a good interface for
> translating my personal conceptions of sound into
> pieces that more or less match up with what I had in
> mind. It's especially good for stuff that moves
> between metered rhythm and abstract "free form"
> segments (although I tend to stick to one or the
other
> most often, from piece to  piece).
>      So, no, I don't think in terms of numbers,
> algorithms (sp?), etc. Stuff like that makes my eyes
> glaze over. My musical background in psych-noise
> guitar and house/techno djing, which are both skills
> acquired with hands-on learning, so I have no formal
> music training or background in music theory and
> notation. My approach to sound seems to be best
> attributed to my work as a visual artist, and my
> life-long love of abstract painting. 
>     I hope this was relevant. I'm sure at some point
> I'll be able to more precisely verbalize thought
> processes that seem so intrinsic to my personal
> creative processes that I've hardly taken the time
to
> examine them "externally".
> 
> --Phil B
> 
> 

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