AudioChem: The Sound of Chemistry

AudioChem is a software instrument that lets you play the sound of the different chemical elements.

I wrote the software back in 2008 as part of my undergraduation dissertation. It takes the emission spectrum (see below) of each element and turns it into a harmony, creating a unique sound. The software was written for Apple Mac and runs on OS X, up to OS 10.6. The download link is below. I'd really appreciate any feedback on the software, as it's still really in beta.






DOWNLOAD THE SOFTWARE

AudioChem is a software composition. I call it a composition since it did not assemble itself: it required construction on the basis of aesthetic principles. It is an example of data sonification, taking information about the elements of the Periodic Table as its starting point. In this respect, it is a totally systematic work, and yet both aesthetic choice and aleatory form are intrinsic elements of its construction and final form. It is an example of a Gesamtkunstwerk: a synthesis of different artforms that links general and specific, aesthetic and intellectual, forms of expression to create ‘super-complete thoughts’, denoting actions, things and qualities all at once. It also uses continuous change within the form-rhythm-pitch spectrum, while separating itself into discrete, perceivable objects. In this way, it brought together many of the different areas of thought that preoccupied me at the time.

At the time I wrote AudioChem, I was searching for ways to organise microtonal harmony into cohesive 'tonalities'. There seemed four main approaches possible:

• The first approach is to use some sort of system, a set of formulae or algorithms. This was the approach used by the Serialists, for example, when tackling the issue of how to create cohesive 12-tone tonalities;
• The second is more akin to musique concrète. If we view the world as the result of a set of processes or algorithms, the end product will have a certain kind of unity that we then simply record in the field and play back at home;
• The third could be viewed as either an abstraction from, or an extension of, the second, collecting data from the real world to then turn into audible sound. This data sonification approach is the one I took here;
• The final one is to use the creative imagination to provide a cohesive unity, for example in improvised performance.

I later somewhat rejected data sonification as a really fruitful avenue of aesthetic investigation, for reasons it would take too long to go into here. However, the results in this piece were intriguing and certainly worthy of note.

In terms of the sound, the data displayed is the emission spectra of the elements: the wavelengths of light emitted by the electrons of each element as they drop to a lower orbit round the nucleus of the atom; these wavelengths are then transposed into audible wavelengths of sound.

Here is an example of the kinds of sounds the programme generates:

Amphibolous release on EM Records

The latest Amphibolous track is out now on EM Records' OuTpUt SeVeN compilation. Helping Blind People is the culmination of several recordings we made at a garage in Everton. It's a prelude to where our music is moving, and we're planning on working on a new album soon, as well as a track for the BBC, so plenty in store for all you avid listeners.

In the meantime, here is the release:

The a.P.A.t.T. Orchestra | Musical Settings Part III

Earlier this year I played in the a.P.A.t.T. Orchestra's Musical Setting's Part III in the Crypt of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool. The concert featured works by Howard Skempton, one of the founders of the Scratch Orchestra along with Cornelius Cardew, on which the a.P.A.t.T. Orchestra is based, including a newly commissioned piece written by him for the event.

Here is Howard Skempton's new work, Hope St Melodies:



Other pieces included Air Melody, based on techniques from mediaeval music:



And Lament. This was the one piece of Skempton's I really liked, having turned his back on the avant-garde after leaving the Scratch Orchestra. It was interesting, however, that Skemtpon did not conduct the most interesting version of the piece. During rehearsals, the orchestra's director, Jon Herring, had conducted, taking it much slower, with much less rigid timing between chord changes. This created a highly textural piece, where the chord progression became just part of the timbral evolution. Skempton's version, however, was rigid and compacted, not allowing the music to breath. Judge for yourself:



Jon Herring also had a piece of his own in the concert, which he had written specially. It was inspired by the spiral staircase in the Crypt, and features a section that uses the 'Shephard tone' aural illusion to create a sense of continuous downward motion.

If Only...! There and Back Again

Last month I organised If Only...! with Roger Hill. If Only...! is a night of varied performance run at the Bluecoat in Liverpool. Two of my projects were included in the night, both interactive installations in which the audience would become the performers.

The first project was Inari Dive, a collaborative project with Japanese artist, Inari Nishiki, exploring the experience of diving. The project was Inari's brainchild. My part of the collaboration focused on the soundtrack. Participants would be blindfold and given wireless headphones, cutting off their senses from the outside world. They would then navigate through a labyrinth of ropes while the soundtrack played through their headphones. The track explores ideas of depth in different ways, and uses a new way of transforming sounds into each other I have been developing using Pure Data. Here is a link to the track:


The second project was The Sensorium of Sensational Scents, an olfactory-visual installation that used a range of perfumes I made from a wide variety of unusual ingredients. While smelling the scents, the participants' reactions would be videoed and projected onto the wall of the room, turning the audience into performers. I'll be releasing my range of perfumes soon, and they'll be accompanied by a free download code for my album, Oh Oca O. You can see some pictures from both installations below. The pictures are by Dan Williams.

In creating the night, Roger and myself wanted to explore the notion of performance. What is it? And who are the performers? We wanted pieces in which there would not just be audience members watching performers on a stage, we wanted to include work where the audience themselves would become performers, such as the blindfold participants of Inari Dive, navigating their way through the labyrinth. We also wanted to explore the idea of art as experience, so included projects that worked on a wide variety of senses. Sight, sound, touch, smell, equilibrium were all explored, and we finished the night with taste, as provided by Squash Nutrition. Here's a short video with highlights of the night's events:

 

The a.P.A.t.T. Orchestra: Musical Settings Part II

Well, it's 2012, and what a busy time I've had since my last post. Things have happened too quickly to let you all know about them. But here I am, finally, with a bit of a catch up.

First up is the second of the a.P.A.t.T. Orchestra's Music Settings series, entitled Into the Deep. The concert contained a number of premieres by local musicians, including Ex-Easter Island Head and Ben Fair, as well as a performance of Philip Glass' Music in Similar Motion, which we played in the Planetarium along to one of their shows. Now, as many of you will know, I detest the ground on which Philip Glass walks, however, the music is interesting to play. And I always say know your enemy!

The rest of the music was much more interesting. Here is a YouTube video of Ex-Easter Island Head's piece, which was performed around an Easter Island head, just for good measure.



And here is Ben Fair's piece, which made use of a video score to allow complex polyrhythms to be conducted without the need for superhuman feats of coordination.

Oh Oca O

This month I released the first full-length Hot Hail album, Oh Oca O. It's been several months' work of recording, composing and editing, but it's all paid off in the end. The album is available from Probe Records in Liverpool, or from my Bandcamp site, where buy the physical album or download the digital release.




The album is an exploration of perception. Throughout, different aspects of the way we perceive the world are explored and manipulated: from the right-left sidedness of the brain, to notions of continuity and the way our mind perceives objects. Several new stereo techniques are developed and explored, and each track divides the sidedness of the brain's attention in a different way, opening new perceptual experiences.

Another theme of the album is the exploration of both the micro and macro worlds of sound. Everywhere is constant evolution, from the global level right down to microscopic manipulations. There are many layers of fine timbral nuance throughout the album, so for best results listen through headphones. Then you'll make the most of the stereo effects too then.

The a.P.A.t.T. Orchestra: Musical Settings Part I

On Sunday I played with the a.P.A.t.T Orchestra in a concert that included work by Cornelius Cardew, Liverpool composer, Richard Harding, and Argentinian composer, Alan Courtis. The concert was the first part of a series of events that will take in various unusual locations in and around Liverpool. This one was at the bandstand in Sefton Park.

The first piece was Alan Courtis' In-Formed Music for newspaper ensemble, which was much as described on the can: creating sounds and textures using newspapers, which had been supplied by the Echo newspaper. More interesting was the next piece, Richard Harding's Untitled, which, while tonal, used aleatoric and improvisational processes to create shifting clouds of sound. Finally came Cardew's piece, Paragraph 7 of The Great Learning. The work is for voices, and with the 23-strong ensemble sounded quite stunning, resounding in power and beauty in equal measure. Using guided improvisation, Cardew's piece starts with dense and dissonant harmonies, slowly evolving into a sparser harmonic field, though still retaining the power of the massed voices.


Here's a short article about the event.



There are also some photos of the concert taken by Michael Pace-Sigge.

Hot Hail: new solo project

I've started a new solo project called Hot Hail, a solo extension of what I've been doing with Noise Club for the past 8 years. I've got a few tracks completed already, some released by myself on Bandcamp, and a track in an upcoming sampler release from net label, Electronic Musik (I'll post it here when it's released).

Here's my first completed release under the Hot Hail name.



The piece is called coram, from the Latin for 'in the presence of' or 'before'; a symphony of sounds, shifting through evocations, moods and ideas, exploring subjective perception and constructed meaning. The sonic landscape is made up of metamorphosing timbres and clouds of sound; sometimes the textures are jagged and moving, other times the music is supremely desolate in its delicate beauty.

The entire piece is performed with egg slicer and feedback.

Nektar 2017 Volume 3

My latest composition, The Closeness of Being, has just been released as part of volume 3 of Nektar 2017. The piece was composed under the Noise Club name, and was a response to Nektar 2017's theme of Macro / Perception / Micro : Evolution.

You can listen to my work here...

And the whole compilation can be found here...

The entire piece is built out of a very small number of initial sound fragments that are put under the intense scrutiny of the microscope. I wanted to capture a sense of moment, an exploration of that moment through time by elongating it beyond the instant of its existence. The fragments of sound are explored and developed in themselves and in their connections, creating a continuous evolutionary process that takes us on a journey that has no length. A moment is but an instant, and yet it is connected to every other moment; networks of possibilities develop in dynamic relationships that are constantly changing as each new moment arrives. A moment is not a singularity, it is an evolutionary process, the past changes with the present, the future spreads anew. Like all such evolutionary processes, there comes a point at which the quantitative changes in the relationships between the underlying dynamics beget a qualitative change, the moment is born anew, a revolution.

Musically, the piece explores the idea of Klangfarbenmelodie (sound-colour melody), as well as my own theories of continuous rhythm and melody, and the pitch-rhythm-form continuum.

'Intensity', by Karlheinz Stockhausen

I've just finished editing the audio of a recording of Intensity, part of Stockhausen's From the Seven Days. It was recorded at a Frakture workshop I led a few months ago. It was Pete Jones, one of the Frakture regulars, who suggested using Intensity for a workshop, since it was based on written instruction, rather than a conventional score. Unfortunately he wasn't able to make it himself.

I thought the idea of visual images would be something interesting to explore in conjunction with Stockhausen's piece, so structured the workshop around this, building up to a performance of the piece itself. The recording was made in the Sandom Room at the Bluecoat.

Players:
Reinhard Fuchs: voice, laptop
Myself: piano
Phil Lucking: trumpets
Phil Morton: accidents and treatments
Neil Murphy: flute
Adam Webster: cello