Volume, and other musings.

Volume. Dynamics. Space. All these things have been really penetrating my process over the easter break. I've been working on some music for Alice's dance class, and some more Glasfrosch stuff for our new EP. The piece I'm working on for Alice's dance class is also something I'm submitting for Spacial Practice. The piece explores specifically space and physicality, but it's also a exploration of colour, volume, process, and rhythm. The jist of it is this: I spend a few hours in the dance studio woth the girls during their class, and recorded the sounds they made in the space during their warm ups and improvisations. then I found the parts that had a good natural musicality to them and made little phrases from them as the foundation for the rhythm. Then I cut up some individual hits and assigned them to an impulse kit in Ableton Live, and set about programming the beats. I used minimal fx, filters and EQ mostly, let the natural reverb of the space be the only reverb sound, I reversed some parts and panned them around the space and then set about using volume - dynamics - to sculpt the form. I'm going to go back to the space with y toy piano later this week, and record a little passage in the space to add some extra tonal colour to the end of the piece. The whole thing is sounding like a total Autechre rip off, but I don't mind. So what does this have to do with Volume/Techniques and Processes?
I guess this Spacial Pracitce piece is kind of serving as a precursor to the volume piece we've been set to compose for T&P. I've started paying particular attention to the dynamics and relationship to space in my process, and thinking about "volume" as we did in class last week (the jug analogy) I feel like approaching a volume piece needs to involve these two parameters. Volume isn't just about dynamics alone. Or at least, since last weeks class, I can't see it that way anymore. Volume = the dynamic relationship to the space it is in. So things like loud and soft aren't absolutes, but particular to perception within this contextual relationship. On Good Friday I went to the Gasometer to see some friend's bands play, the space upstairs there is tiny and the speakers/pa system is massive. The sound was so loud, I stayed downstairs for most of the show. It could have sounded so good and still loud at half the volume, and would have been more enjoyable, but this was painful. That same system at the same setting would have sounded tiny in a bigger space, but the room size made the whole thing seem louder.
The piece I've started for the volume experiment uses three main parts. A little repetitive plinky loop that will stay soft for the whole piece, but change tone ever so slightly across the piece to change the ways in which it stands out from the rest of the sounds.  a deeper less frequent part that will expand and grow in volume each time it arrives, and a third, long, growing layer that will take the entire length of the piece to reach it's peak. It is my aim to reach a point of absolute engulfing sound before the end, which will be very difficult to do.

Studio Piece 1 (work in progress) by Glasfrosch_Justin