FROM THE UNSEEN WORLD (2012)
for piano and six soundtracks

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Alan Turing (1912-1954) was the brilliant British mathematician who is widely recognized as the father of the modern computer at the University of Manchester, having demonstrated its theoretical possibility in what is known as the Turing machine. He also became famous after his death when his role during World War II in deciphering the German “Enigma” code that was key to the British war effort in the Atlantic finally became publicly known. The composer's work Enigma is an unstaged but dramatic rendition of two key periods in Turing’s personal life, the first from his early years when he became infatuated with the brilliant Christopher Morcom who died young, and the second from his final years when he was convicted of gross indecency (as was Oscar Wilde more than a half century earlier) because of a homosexual liaison and eventually committed suicide.

In between these two sections is a piano and multi-channel soundscape piece From The Unseen World based on the digitally processed “Christopher arpeggio” which turns it into an ethereal swirl of harmonics, the title being a phrase of Turing’s to refer to the spirit dimension – and by extension to Christopher. The pitches that are not part of the arpeggio are heard in a bell-like chord that symbolizes the real world.

From The Unseen World can also be performed independently.

Still image from the "Death of Christopher" video section of Enigma

Materials:

5 files, consisting of various versions of the piano arpeggio, were convolved with themselves and/or other files in various combinations using SoundHack to produce various hybrids, each normalized with high frequency boost, and later EQ'd with fades added; granular time stretching using Chris Rolfe's MacPod was also used.

I. Convolved with itself

Original Source Materials	*self	*self*self	Stretch	*Piano Strings	Spectrogram
Piano Arp3	Arp3*self	Arp3*self*self Arp3*self*self+rev	Arp3*selfStretch	Arp3*self*PS4 Arp3*self*PS4+rev
Piano Arp3D	Arp3D*self	Arp3D*self*self Arp3D*self*self+rev	Arp3D*selfStretch	Arp3D*self*PS4 Arp3D*self*PS4+rev Arp3D*selfStretch*PS4
Piano ArpH	ArpH*self	ArpH*self*self ArpH*self*self+rev	ArpH*selfStretch ArpH*selfStretch+rev
Piano ArpM	ArpM*self	ArpM*self*self ArpM*self*self+rev	ArpM*selfStretch ArpM*selfStretch+rev
Piano ArpL	ArpL*self	ArpL*self*self	ArpL*selfStretch ArpL*selfStretch+rev ArpLStretch1*self

II. Convolved with Vocal Material: Derrick Christian from Temple: D+D'

Original Source Materials	*original	*orig*self	Stretch	*orig*self*PS4+rev	Spectrogram
Piano Arp3	DC*Arp3	DC*Arp3*self	DC*Arp3Stretch
Piano Arp3D	DC*Arp3D	DC*Arp3D*self+rev
Piano ArpH	DC*ArpH	DC*ArpH*self+rev
Piano ArpM	DC*ArpM	DC*ArpM*self+rev
Piano ArpL	DC*ArpL	DC*ArpL*self+rev		DC*ArpL*self*PS4+rev
Piano Impulse		DC*PI*self+rev

Production Score

Recorded performance by the composer

III. Spatialization

All of the material in the work is spatialized with the TiMax2 SoundHub, developed by Harmonic Functions. Our version uses it as a 16 to 8 matrix mixer where at every cross-point in the mixer, an "image" describes how the signal is routed to the 8 output channels in terms of level (dB) and time delay (ms). In this particular work, the images are all members of a family called DelRamp (delay ramp) where one output channel is strongest (0 dB), and the neighbouring output channels drop off sequentially by about 0.9 -1.4 dB and each adds a 10 ms delay. Two subsets of the family are a Clockwise one (e.g. DelRamp1) and a Counter-clockwise (e.g. DelRamp1R). The aural effect of the use of these delay ramps is that the signal is smeared over all of the other speakers, a little like the trail behind a jet. The visual and numerical representations of some sample images are shown in the table below (with the relevant numerical values marked in red, the amplitude levels shown as faders, the delays shown with an up arrow fader, and the output channels listed on the bottom row).

DelRamp1	DelRamp5	DelRamp8
DelRamp1R	DelRamp5R	DelRamp8R

In all cases a Trajectory is created by placing 8 such images in a row, indicated in the Production Score, for instance as DelRamp1 CW->8 which means that the sequence of images goes clockwise around the ring of speakers in the sequence DelRamp1, DelRamp2, .... DelRamp8. Likewise, the notation DelRamp8R CCW->1 indicates that the sequence is DelRamp8R, DelRamp7R, ... DelRamp1. In all cases, the right hand channel is one speaker to the right (e.g. when the left channel goes to DelRamp1, the right goes to DelRamp2, etc.). Note that the speed of the trajectory depends on the length of the file, and in this work, one complete rotation around the 8 speakers occurs during the entire file (except at the end where noted), meaning that each file with its own duration will be spatialized at different speeds.

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