I wrote my piece on our new album, “Metal // Skin // Cones” for our fifth show at the Ace Theatre in 2016. I’d been exploring Spectral composition around that time, which is a form of composition where you analyze acoustic sounds to identify their harmonic content, and then use those frequencies as the basis for new music (link to one of my favorite Spectral pieces). Complex sounds can be thought of as a series of pure sine tones at various frequencies and amplitudes. Each frequency that is stacked on top of each other is called a partial, or harmonic. Spectral composition is the idea that you can use the frequencies of the partials to compose a new piece of music that will have acoustic properties from the original acoustic sound. The end result is microtonal music, as the frequencies inevitably don’t fall inline with the twelve discrete pitches in our most often used Western scale, but that strucure is replaced with one derived from the acoustic sound itself. The compositional process then becomes playing with and transforming the partial data, so the similarities to the original sound can be left intact or abstracted as desired.
About a year before beginning this piece I began working on software that could analyze and re-synthesize these partials, and the software allowed me to play with the pitch and timbre of the partials that make up the sound.
The show was taking place at the Ace Theatre, which is a large, beautiful old theater in Downtown LA. I thought it would be cool to do a piece using 4 percussionists surrounding the audience. I wanted their instruments to be un-amplified so that I could play with the psychoacoustic effects of the space. I decided to place a speaker by each performer so that the electronics would emirate from the same space as the acoustic instruments, so I could therefore play with the blending of acoustics and electronics. Coming out of each speaker would be re-synthesized partials that were taken from each instrument, and because I knew the frequencies that made up each instrument I could blend in and be as invisible as I wanted, or morph the partials into transformed versions of those instruments.
I decided that each musician would have the same instruments (brake drum, snare drum, bass drum, and cymbal) and would be structured around the same core phrases. I added textural complexity to those phrases by giving each player their own click track, which diverged and re-converged as part of the compositional process. I could have them start together, slip out of time, and then slam back together at various moments, for instance.
During the planning process for the show we conceptualized the flow of the evening, including a few sonic 'surprises' in instrumentation throughout the evening. We realized that percussion embedded in the audience would be a nice break from the orchestra on stage, and we had brass and choir in the audience that were only used for certain pieces as well.
Being able to blend electronic sounds into acoustic ones and then morph states to something else entirely has been a goal of mine from the time I first began to make music. The end result of this type of spectral exploration is that it’s effectively another tool I can use towards this goal.
I’d like to thank the entire Echo Society family, and especially the players that helped me realize this piece - Petri Korpela, Hal Rosenfeld, Hyke H Shirinian, and Nick Stone. Without their collaboration it would not have been possible. The amazing Petri Korpela recorded all 4 parts of the piece for the studio version.
- Benjamin Wynn (Deru)