Vultures (raw version)

Massive Divider (raw version)

1. Massive Divider
2. Vultures
3. Nightwalk
4. Serenity

Single Point - Full EP (continuous version)

Massive Divider

Vultures

Nightwalk

Serenity

Last summer I inherited a dulcitone, an unusual keyboard instrument. The sound is produced when a range of tuning forks are struck by felt covered hammers activated by the keys. These instruments were made by Thomas Machell & Sons of Glasgow in the late 19th century and were designed for the missionary market, being relatively lightweight and portable. The use of tuning forks meant that these instruments didn’t go of tune when moved to different climates. For most of my life this dulcitone had resided in a sleepy corner of my Grandparents’ Victorian house. When allowed, I played it and fell in love with its gentle bell-like sounds. With the sale of the house the dulcitone came to live with me in my Edinburgh flat. It is a dear friend, but it is getting on in years and is creaky and some of the notes do not ring true.
 
On playing back my first attempt of recording some simple motifs on the dulcitone I realized that the blaring siren of a passing ambulance, which I had been unaware of at the time, had hijacked my recording. This led me to reflect on the selective nature of the hearing process and how we can be oblivious to certain sounds depending on our focus of the moment. City dwellers seem to acclimatize to the multiplicity of intrusive sounds on the streets. Perhaps however, they are unaware of the pernicious disquiet that this brings to their lives. Noisy environments often upset my Grandfather, with his digital hearing aid, as he heard everything all at once without the ability to zone out extraneous sounds.
 This piece aims to do just that, to bring to the listener’s attention that strange juxtaposition of sounds that occur in our every day busy lives. With a limited palette taken from the sound sources of the dulcitone, a prepared piano, a short field of recording of a single incidental conversation and the original recording of dulcitone and siren, this piece is deliberately calculated to encourage a reassessment of how we listen and how we make sense of what we hear. I have highlighted both the discordant and accordant, the quiet and loud and the depth and distance. The piece builds from the purity of single notes played on the dulcitone to multiple layers of different textures. The recurrent motif of the siren injects a sense of unease and urgency throughout the piece, which is accentuated through dramatic shifts in volume following the pitch curve. The introduction of dry stuttering texture of the prepared piano comes to the fore emphasizing how our minds subconsciously sort sounds in terms of their proximity and attempt to make sense of what we hear. This piece plays with the ratio of intensities between direct and reverberant sound to surprise and take the listener in and out of their comfort zones.  A focal point comes near the end of the piece with a paring down of all the intense layers and textures of sounds to the light melodic clarity of arpeggio played on piano. The piece ends with the siren and dulcitone fading to silence. 


Perception

Adults like to tell children that their schooldays are the happiest days of their lives. Many however would perhaps dispute the veracity of this statement. In truth it seems that this saying has more to do with the condition of being an adult rather than that of being a child and the notion that with adulthood comes many responsibilities in contrast to the carefree times of childhood. For most of us our memories of primary school days are fleeting and sporadic and more often than not ‘bad’ memories such as getting a punishment are mixed with good memories of fun times such ‘playtime’. As adults we forget how young children for the most part live in the moment and judge an activity in terms of its enjoyability. 
This piece aims to reflect the busy world of a primary school and both the light and dark aspects children’s experiences here.   All the source material was recorded during a day’s visit to my old primary school. Unsurprisingly the building seemed smaller than I remembered it but at the same time was reassuringly familiar, still the school of my childhood full of chat, laughter and singing and the indefinable, yet instantly recognisable mêlée of playtime sounds. 
 The piece is fast passed and ever-changing reflecting the ephemeral nature of a childhood memories and how children’s attention flits from one activity to another. At the same time the piece attempts to give a holistic overview, creating a whole that reflects sum parts of a primary school day, the multiplicity of activities from the quiet to the loud, the reflective to the boisterous.  There are moments in the piece that should be familiar to all and are particularly evocative of childhood - the class chanting of songs, the interruptions of ‘shouter outers’ and the squeak of plimsolls on the floor of a gym hall. 


Playtime

When we experience something, our neurons create a code to represent a series of disparate facts about the scene or idea that live in different areas of our brains. Recalling specific events or "memories" is actually a process of pulling together these details to essentially reconstruct a version of reality.   - David Hirschman

This piece was inspired by how memories are formed. On the day of the “Scottish Independence Referendum” on 18 September 2014, I made a sound diary using a hand held recording device as I travelled across Scotland from farmland to forest, from East Coast to West, ending up in the heart of the city of Glasgow. From listening to the sporadically taken field recordings, I began to reflect on the fragmentary nature of memory.  There were some events I could recall perfectly and where others seemed disjointed and strangely distant. My piece aims to reflect the way in which we reconstruct memories and how these can become confused and disturbing, embellished and altered not only in the conscious but also in the subconscious mind. The memory is what remains of the past, a rich panoply of personal sensory experience.
 This piece aims to take the listener on journey through a soundscape of light and dark places using field recordings and tonal material produced by a chord organ. It aims to put the listener at ease, only to build a growing sense of unease as everyday sounds are manipulated and layered. These become cluttered and frantic, creating textural dissonance. Throughout the piece the sense of physical movement and the perception of the proximity sounds is whether near or far, is accentuated and played upon not only adding a sense of heightened reality but also of the surreal. Abrupt shifts in volume and density of the field recordings aim to unsettle and unnerve the listener and instil a sense of foreboding. This is brought to a climax in the piece as the field recordings of a child calling for her dad and a door slamming are incorporated into the growing stridency of the chord organ material.  The piece ends quietly with a nod to normalcy with the reassuring and recognisable sounds of people chatting and laughing. 


James Buchan Wright