One of the
most enjoyable and productive composing experiences I had ever had were
the two weeks in 1979 I spent at the electroacoustic music studios in
Bourges, France, referred to as the GMEB. They were best known for
their annual festival and competition, among many other activities
including commissions. The invitation was part of the award for winning
1st place in the Computer Music category in 1977, the first time that
category had been offered.
The studios there represented the best of what I often call the “high analog period”, and were amazingly equipped, including full-time technicians and excellent mixing and monitoring facilities (left-hand photo). The irony was not lost on me that my computer music work, at the time, was done in noisy computer labs, often late at night, with long hours spent programming, waiting for calculations to be computed, and trying to get musical results within the limits of a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter that had to be custom designed for the mini-computer I was allowed to use in a different Department from where I was employed. At the time, could anyone have imagined that in the next 10 years, analog studios would transition to digitally based ones?
Knowing that the Bourges studio would follow the French norms and their acousmatic traditions of electroacoustic music, I brought with me several recordings from the World Soundscape Project, one of which, the bells of Salzburg cathedral, was particularly rich in terms of its spectrum and timbre. This proved to be a good choice because, indeed, the studio was equipped with a huge range of filters and equalizers. A custom-designed patchbay had been constructed (right-hand photo) such that individual units could be connected for processing each channel simply by pushing a button. Multiple units could also be applied in series if needed.
Therefore, it
was very easy to construct a parallel circuit that would
process the bells differently on the left and right channels, with
quite sharply defined bandwidths that could emphasize specific
frequencies in the 7-bell full peal, recorded on Palm Sunday 1975. The
work went so smoothly in the efficiently organized studios that I was
able to complete The Blind Man in one week, which left time to
do another piece the next week!
The sound example below is from the opening where, after all the bells have joined in, including the lowest pitched one, Salvator Mundi, this complex sound mass is cross-faded with the filtered version, designed to eliminate the attacks, and leave only an array of richly resonating partials in the lower range – a classic parallel circuit cross-fade. When you listen to it, try to hear the left and right channels separately, perhaps one earpiece or speaker at a time so you can hear the differences between them.
Compositionally, this seemed to be a perfect way to introduce this text-based work and the first line of Norbert Ruebsaat’s poem, “The wind is invisible / it does not want to know / already it has come / and is leaving again.” The bells, like the wind, have come, but have left again (or at least their attacks), yet their memory remains.
(click here to enlarge with the zoom tool)
A footnote to the story is that in 2018 I was commissioned by the studio in Salzburg to compose a new work, and I couldn’t resist using all of the still excellent sounding recordings made by the World Soundscape Project in 1975 on a Nagra recorder to map out a day in the Salzburg soundscape, which is always populated by church bells, and augmented on religious feast days. The result was The Bells of Salzburg in 8 channels, but this time, I used auto-convolution (see the next module) to process the bells, not filters, and of course the piece is in 8 channels. Best of all, I finally got to hear the soundscape of Salzburg live when I arrived there to premiere the piece in December 2018 – and indeed, the bells were magnificent!
The full documentation of both pieces is available in my HTML teaching materials in the WSP Database. The entire work can be heard on my page at sonus.ca
Barry Truax
The studios there represented the best of what I often call the “high analog period”, and were amazingly equipped, including full-time technicians and excellent mixing and monitoring facilities (left-hand photo). The irony was not lost on me that my computer music work, at the time, was done in noisy computer labs, often late at night, with long hours spent programming, waiting for calculations to be computed, and trying to get musical results within the limits of a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter that had to be custom designed for the mini-computer I was allowed to use in a different Department from where I was employed. At the time, could anyone have imagined that in the next 10 years, analog studios would transition to digitally based ones?
Knowing that the Bourges studio would follow the French norms and their acousmatic traditions of electroacoustic music, I brought with me several recordings from the World Soundscape Project, one of which, the bells of Salzburg cathedral, was particularly rich in terms of its spectrum and timbre. This proved to be a good choice because, indeed, the studio was equipped with a huge range of filters and equalizers. A custom-designed patchbay had been constructed (right-hand photo) such that individual units could be connected for processing each channel simply by pushing a button. Multiple units could also be applied in series if needed.
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The sound example below is from the opening where, after all the bells have joined in, including the lowest pitched one, Salvator Mundi, this complex sound mass is cross-faded with the filtered version, designed to eliminate the attacks, and leave only an array of richly resonating partials in the lower range – a classic parallel circuit cross-fade. When you listen to it, try to hear the left and right channels separately, perhaps one earpiece or speaker at a time so you can hear the differences between them.
Compositionally, this seemed to be a perfect way to introduce this text-based work and the first line of Norbert Ruebsaat’s poem, “The wind is invisible / it does not want to know / already it has come / and is leaving again.” The bells, like the wind, have come, but have left again (or at least their attacks), yet their memory remains.
Transition from the full peal of bells to
a resonant afterimage
(click here to enlarge with the zoom tool)
A footnote to the story is that in 2018 I was commissioned by the studio in Salzburg to compose a new work, and I couldn’t resist using all of the still excellent sounding recordings made by the World Soundscape Project in 1975 on a Nagra recorder to map out a day in the Salzburg soundscape, which is always populated by church bells, and augmented on religious feast days. The result was The Bells of Salzburg in 8 channels, but this time, I used auto-convolution (see the next module) to process the bells, not filters, and of course the piece is in 8 channels. Best of all, I finally got to hear the soundscape of Salzburg live when I arrived there to premiere the piece in December 2018 – and indeed, the bells were magnificent!
The full documentation of both pieces is available in my HTML teaching materials in the WSP Database. The entire work can be heard on my page at sonus.ca
Barry Truax