This is my first year, final studio composition, and also the first electroacoustic piece I composed.  All sounds featured are a result of editing and processing sound clips of glass bottles being smashed, trodden on, or blown. 

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

Study In Vitro (March 2015)

This is my second year, final studio composition, which draws upon childhood themes and sound material; the child’s voice is my own (from VHS home videos), and recorder and colouring-in sounds (hence the title) represent most children's exposure to art and music. These main components are present in literal and abstract ways, helping to structure the music and present the overarching ideas of nostalgia and childhood.

This upload is the original submission, and I have not yet modified the piece according to teacher feedback, but maybe I’ll post an edit here sometime!

Colouring Inside The Lines (May 2016)

A short compositional exercise to explore different processing effects, using sounds recorded in October 2015.  The recorded items include a wine glass, film camera shutter and flash re-charge, pans, and buttons from an old phone keypad.  As a montage, I didn’t really focus on linking sections, instead composing 3 different sections to try and explore a range of (perhaps unlinked) processed sounds.

Montage (December 2015)

The brief for this piece was to compose an electroacoustic work to accompany or represent an artwork, for an exhibition in the Barber Institute of Fine Art Gallery.  My chosen artwork was 'Grande Arabesque, Third Time’ by Edgar Degas (pictured in the album art, designed by myself).  To hear the other fantastic pieces in the exhibition, visit this page: http://www.beast.bham.ac.uk/soundingimages/ 

My description of the piece for the exhibition programme:
"The juxtaposition between the fluidity and movement of dance, and the static, metallic nature of the statue itself was the main inspiration for my piece.  I was interested by how such an active, traditionally sophisticated art form could be captured in such an industrial way by contrast.  This conflict was made more interesting upon learning that Degas originally moulded this statue in wax, which I feel can unite the gap between flowing dance and harsh metal.  

From a distance, this statue has great grace, yet up close, it hasn’t been gracefully crafted; there are no facial details or fingers, with rough moulding, revealing Degas’ thumbprints.  I’ve tried to capture this in my piece, as it provides interesting perspectives as both a listener and a viewer.  I feel it can capture how ballet is elegant and beautiful from a removed point of view, but has a grittier side, involving gruelling training, which is apparent under closer scrutiny."

Arabesque (April 2016)

A miniature I composed over the summer break - the focus was the number 50.  Here, the square root of 50 (7.071) has influenced the length of this miniature, at 70.71 seconds per playback.  Additionally, a pentecontagon is a 50-sided shape, barely distinguishable from a circle.  In view of this, the piece can be played in a near perfect loop to represent the near perfect roundness of the titular shape.

Any feedback is most welcome, and I hope you enjoy!

Pentecontagon (August 2016)

A solo clarinet recording assignment from December 2016, recorded in the Elgar Concert Hall, Birmingham.  I planned and setup the mic layout, engineered the recording session, and edited the final cut. Thank you very much to Tristan O’Leary for playing so wonderfully!

I Got Rhythm - Paul Harvey (December 2016)

A piece I recently composed, inspired by the October 2016 fire at the Royal Clarence Hotel (Exeter).  This piece is composed using image, text, video, and webarchive files of coverage of the fire, which I ran through Audacity as Raw Data to create the sounds heard in this piece.  The destruction of these files represents the destructive nature of fire, which is a theme throughout the piece.

The Royal Clarence Hotel (March 2017)

This is my final submission for my third year Studio Composition module.  As the title suggests, this piece is based around the idea of “entropy”, where musical patterns (rhythmic or pitch-based) or traditions (such as a rigid form) are established and eventually set into chaos, to build relationships between otherwise separate musical ideas.

Entropy

Entropy (May 2017)

A recording of the Redwood Quartet, performing Michel Corrette’s “Concerto Le Phenix” on bassoons,  in the Elgar Concert Hall. I planned and setup the mic layout, engineered the recording session, and edited the final cut before deciding on a final mix. Thank you very much to the Redwood Quartet for playing so beautifully!

Concerto Le Phenix - Michel Corrette (March 2017)

Recent graduate from the University of Birmingham, with an interest in electroacoustic composition, ethnomusicology, and musical ethics.

Adele Franghiadi

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