https://soundcloud.com/triermusic/party-line-politeness-disquiet0309
I decided to take the concept kind of literally, taking a spoken word “broadcast” and marring it with volume changes. Six “changes” seemed about right, so then I tried to find a poem short enough to read and process six times in this piece.
I ended up finding an old writing exercise - I only had the results of the exercise, not the prompt, so I have no idea where these words came from. I think the challenge was to take six random words and use them in a poem.
I read it six times in a row. From there, I used envelopes to make six “variations” on this spoken-word theme, according to the matrix.
- Increasing volume, increasing “noise”
- Same
- Random changes in signal strength and noise
- Increasing volume, increasing “noise”
- Decreasing volume, decreasing noise
- Decreasing volume, random changes in noise
At first I mapped this all out to make a magic square, but I realized I would end up with linear movements, and that’s boring. So then I used a random number generator to put me at random points on the x and y axes of volume and noise.
To get noise, I ran the recording of the poem through a vocoder, using a glitchy jam session from years ago.
That felt a little boring, so then I ran it through SPEAR to figure out any pitches, and I wrote a piano part based on the pitches that showed up.
After that I felt like the glitchy jam session was a little too familiar to me (I’ve used this particular recording more than a few times), so I tried to also feed in some highly processed vocals into the mix.
That felt, conceptually, a little better (voice interrupting voice), but then I lost the noise that inspired the piano accompaniment. So I blended the voice in with the noise.
Not sure this is done (or particularly listenable?), but it got me writing again after a dry spell and made me challenge myself, which is good!
Trying to give the photo thing a shot - here are some pictures(?)
