Thursday 31st May 2012 – Follow the Smart Trail along Deptford’s Secret Soundtrack – London Sound Art

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Jay

Local Sound Art to Showcase and Promote Deptford High Street.

‘Secret Soundtrack’ uses ‘3D sound’ recorded in Deptford Market, based on and around Deptford High Street, to create a theatrical atmosphere that people can experience as they wander around the market. Sound art, as a relatively undiscovered art form, seems like the perfect way to bring attention to one of south London’s lesser-known gems: Deptford High Street. I have created ‘Secret Soundtrack’, a work of sound art, which will be interactively-accessible on the High Street throughout June, in collaboration with local businesses/organisations.

To take part in ‘Secret Soundtrack’ you will need a smart phone equipped with a QR Code reader and a pair of earphones. ‘Secret Soundtrack’ can be accessed from 1st June to 30th June 2012 by scanning the QR code on one of the posters located at ‘The Deptford Project’ cafe, ‘Bearspace’ gallery, art supplies store ‘Arch Materials’, delicatessen cafe ‘Deli X’, and ‘Deptford Lounge’ library; all based on and around Deptford High Street and chosen as supporters of this neighbourhood and community arts.

Scanning the QR Code takes you to the ‘Secret Soundtrack’ website where you will be given instructions on what to do next. You will be encouraged to explore the market while listening to the audio streamed from the website, making sure not to drown out the live sounds. You can expect to hear sounds recorded from the market, reproduced in such a way as to become something new when played in conjunction with listening to the live sounds around you. It is this mixture, when experienced together, that gives you access to a secret audio world created from the local environment. The market takes place every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and a visit on one of these days is recommended to experience ‘Secret Soundtrack’s’ full effect.

I wish to see the local area prosper so that it may continue to inspire and grow. With the 2012 Olympics, Britain and London, in particular, are being celebrated this year and I strongly believe that Deptford High Street is a fine example of what it means to be British: Culturally diverse, traditional, forward thinking and quirky. These are some of the area’s special qualities that provided the inspiration for ‘Secret Soundtrack’, which I hope to see flourish; and I’m hoping this work will contribute. Inspiration has also come from ideas put forward by experimental musician John Cage in pieces like 4’ 33”. His notions on what an audio performance can contain have been central to the project

It is free to be a part of ‘Secret Soundtrack’ but your mobile network may charge you for streaming the audio necessary for the experience. I have also created a separate audio atmosphere for ‘The Deptford Project’ café which will be on display there from 1st – 8th June.

What are you waiting for? Go and put a Secret Soundtrack date in your diary!

Deptford Market takes place every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, from around 7am until 4pm and is home to stalls that sell fresh fish, groceries, antiques, clothes and other collectibles.

Poster venue opening hours:
The Deptford Project -
(café – 121 Deptford High Street, Deptford, SE8 4NS)
Monday to Saturday: 9.00am – 5.30pm
Sunday: 10.00am – 4.00pm

Deli X -
(café/deli – 156 Deptford High Street, Deptford, SE8 3PQ)
Monday to Friday: 8am – 7pm
Saturday: 9am – 5pm
Sunday – Closed

Arch Materials -
(Art Supplies – 17 Resolution Way (off Deptford High Street), Deptford, SE8 4NT)
Monday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.00pm
Sunday – Closed

Bear Space –
(art space – 152 Deptford High Street, Deptford, SE8 3PQ)
Wednesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.00pm
Sunday – Tuesday: Closed

Deptford Lounge –
(Library/public space – 9 Giffin Street, Deptford SE8 4RJ)
Monday – Friday: 7am – 10pm.
Saturday and Sunday: 7am – 7pm.

Take a look around my site for further works of sound art. You will also find soundscape works created for events, composing works and sound design. If you would like to commission a work of sound art contact me with your project’s requirements

If my work in soundscape for events, sound design for film, or composing interests you join my mailing list to find out more.

Thursday 26th January 2012 – The Pier

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Jay

Fast Tube by Casper

Here is a short animation by Jason Bennett for which I have recently finished an alternative sound design for. ‘The Pier’ is a beautifully creative and dark animation that speaks further than it’s basic plot. The characters are outlandish and strange but also emit a certain familiarity. The setting evokes a sense of civilisation but also a sense of the power and domination of nature over this. Throughout these aspects, an attention to detail and aesthetic creates a backdrop of beauty which the message and the story, in all it’s discomfort, rests against.

From the film, you can see that desolation is common through-out: the overall setting is bleak; the grass is caught up in an uncomfortable breeze; and the pier itself is in a state of disrepair. I wanted to reflect this with background noise and sparse use of music; the main musical (Cello) theme, used at the beginning and end, being a reflection of this desolation.

The main character is humanoid, bird-like and exotic whilst the monster character is stealthy, exotic and (initially) seen as closer to nature due to its juxtaposition with the main character. This meant that the main character needed a bird-like voice and was to be represented by an exotic instrument (Esraj, an Indian string instrument) . For the monster I chose delicate sounds to represent it and therefore the delicate sound of the recorder-like Shakuhachi from Japan as it’s musical theme (also, the playing techniques used give an air of the sinister). However, it is fair to say that these instruments are only exotic to the non-Asian but due to the obvious parallels between our main character and Man I didn’t let this worry me. To be truly outlandish and exotic to all I could have warped the sounds and also maybe used some kind of micro-tonal scale.

Because I saw both characters as being a part of nature, caught up in it’s endless cycle, I decided to bring them both together at the end by bringing their musical themes together; and to show that they are both part of the desolation that nature has created, these themes are both used in conjunction with the Cello theme at the pinnacle of the film. You may think that my use of the word ‘desolate’ in relation to nature is not fitting but nature creates desolation as well as beauty and the former is prevalent through-out the film (anybody that thinks only Man creates desolation should consider if Man is a part of nature or if there is an opposite pole of which Man is created).

To make the atmosphere of the film as realistic as possible, I added audio detail to compliment the visual detail and used sounds that reflected what was going on rather than using them to bring attention to the narrative. The exception here is the noise coming form inside the main character’s belly: this had to be disturbing and ‘in your face’ to get the main point of the film across, not just to be gross! The main chracter’s voice also gave an opportunity to try to induce this realism. For this, I didn’t use a bird sound as I wanted to tie the creature in with human emotion. Instead, I recorded myself making straining noises (insert joke here) and manipulated them with filters to get the desired effect. This meant that the emotion behind the noises remained intact even though the character of the sound had changed.

Below, I have included a link to a scanned copy of my original (rather messy) notes that I made prior to starting the project, set out as the animation’s timeline. Have a look to get a more detailed idea of my thoughts regarding the interplay between the different aspects and themes within the film (any non-highlighted sections beyond the first two boxes are yellow – this doesn’t scan well!). Please do feel free to comment on this post to tell me what you think of my version and you can also click here to see/hear the original with wonderfully atmospheric music made by James Slater.

The Pier – Notes

Thursday 7th July 2011 – Wee Willie Winkie

Posted on July 7, 2011 by transientmusic

Download:

Ok, I heard you snigger… apparently, this is what the Jacobites used to call William III but Wikipedia tells me that the nursery rhyme wasn’t a reference to this…

Anyway, after a wonderful week in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales with my family I have got straight back to work on this redundancy plan.

One of the important things about having this redundancy plan is that I have devised it to be realistic but also to get everything I want done; it’s no good working yourself too hard and I am already seeing that my productivity has increased very much. I recommend sorting a plan out if you are in a similar situation so please do get in touch if you need advice on that. I’m no expert but it’s working for me and I like to help! It’s far too easy to let your worries and emotions take over when in a bad situation but it doesn’t have to be like that….

Despite the alarm that redundancy can cause I have decided to keep my planned holidays and use them to unwind and think about my situation. A clear head is a fertile ground for great thoughts…. As well as doing a lot of beer testing and chilling out with the family in the Dales, I managed to record a fair bit of the sounds that were surrounding me: Waterfalls, streams, sheep, the ambience of the Dales, a country fair, etc. Some ideas of use have already hit me but I have the sounds now and will be able to use them for anything I please.

The two musical/sound parts of my plan that I am carrying out at the moment are an ‘ambient London’ project (see my last post) which is as yet un-named and a follow-up to my Bedtime Nursery Rhymes CD. At the moment, I have it so that the new BNR will be a sort-of prequel to the first and have taken feedback I have been lucky to gain into account… I’ll be working on the rhymes until mid September and should finish the ambient stuff by the time I go away to Italy for three weeks in August (may need to buy a bigger memory for my Roland R-09HR sound recorder for this one!).

Here is a draft of the second nursery rhyme I have worked on so far. As with the first BNR I have taken aspects and atmospheres from the words of the poem and tried to convey them with sound; some are quite abstract, others more obvious… There are a couple of aspects that I feel need a change or slight diversion but please do let me know what you think, there is no such thing as bad constructive criticism!

Wee Willie Winkie

Download:

Thursday 2nd June 2011 – Rebirth

Posted on June 2, 2011 by transientmusic

It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. After something like 3 years half of the members of the band I formed, Lunar Rising, decided to leave recently. They didn’t all go at once but the reason behind it was the same: They decided that work should come first and they couldn’t be sure they could commit in the future if things got more serious.

After the last exodus, when the band pretty much collapsed, I can’t say I was surprised. We have gone through countless musicians in audition and various other band members that generally left because of that same reason. It follows that it’s not so weird some founding members treat their lives in the same way; in any case we all do really, just in different ways.

I mentioned that it’s funny how things turn out, and I say this because I have a growing interest in sound design and regular readers will have read bits and pieces about that. I envisioned a while back how the future of the band may sound and look; I have talked about creating unique shows, and creating atmospheres in a live situation as well as a recorded situation. As you may have read, I have recently got my hands on some new gear which allows me to experiment with these ideas, but I always thought the band wouldn’t be ready to take these ideas on-board for a long while. It’s quite a happy coincidence that this growth in interest has occurred now that I am building the band up again with the other two remaining members. And another happy coincidence in that it means we can sound just as huge without packing a stage out with eight people. The three of us that are left have expressed our dedication to our project and we all now have more control over how it progresses. We do also have a violin player interested in joining us too and things there seem hopeful but unlike before, our new setup will allow us to adapt if history does repeat itself.

So, I have talked about how my ideas are colliding and about the advantages of this new setup but I haven’t actually talked about how this will actually work. With my main interests being in sound design and atmosphere, this will be the core of what I base the band around. Using a laptop computer and my guitar synth, I have a huge range of sounds at my disposal, and these sounds can all be tailored to satisfy an aspect of each song. In the same way as I have created a sound for an aspect of a picture, I will now be able to design a sound based on the sentiment and story of a song. The computer will also give me power to loop phrases I play and sounds I produce but don’t be fooled into thinking that the computer will do all the work: The phrases can be played live and looped to play continuously and then cut out and brought back in as needed. All the while this will free me up to work on producing another sound or phrase or even change instruments… This will require careful planning in terms of timing and how many jobs I give myself to do at any one time but the sense of build-up and going from small sounds to huge layered soundscapes will be a natural by-product of having to do one thing at a time. Of course, this all has to be done under the glare of venue lights on a stage where, if anything can go wrong it will, as the old adage goes. This will mean that I will be forced to concentrate more, to be more prepared and to not drink so much beer… All good things to get used to!

The new sounds will include synth sounds that I have designed for specific purposes but will also include sounds that I have recorded out and about on my handheld recorder (Roland’s R-09HR); this will allow the final product to be cohesive in terms of atmosphere and concept. These sounds can be adapted and/or warped to lend themselves to the particular song in creation depending on how subtle I want their core make-up to be. Also, elements of the sounds may find more aesthetic or functional uses, making them contribute to melodies or rhythms far removed from their intended concept.

Of course, this band won’t be just me; singer, Dominique Allan and drummer Pavel Stanev are still on-board (hopefully along with a new violin player). Being a smaller, more tight-knit unit this means that we can all work on creating the sounds and sections beyond our respective instruments without confusion or over-doing things. Being a fan of Bjork, Dom brings similar ideas to my own to the project and you will know what I mean if you are familiar with Bjork’s work. Pav loves to push the boundaries and experiment; and being a musician that works on feeling rather than notation and dull, well-rehearsed standards he has an ability to transpose his ideas from instrument to instrument.

Before, the previous incarnation of Lunar Rising worked towards making atmospheric music that contained a sense of journey. This will still prevail but now the band will be much more focussed on the end product as our relationships are more fully defined by ambition and the ways we will achieve this are also more fully defined. Of course, who knows what may happen to disrupt this in the future but all I can say is that the intention is now fully lodged in my mind and somehow I will make sure these ideas are made concrete…