"Non-payment of wages" by Haworth Hodgkinson, performed by Intuitive Music Aberdeen at St Andrew's Cathedral, Aberdeen, 7 October 2017. See www.intuitivemusic.co.uk/2017/st-andrews-cathedral for details.

St Andrew's Cathedral, 7 October, 2017

Non-payment of wages (Haworth Hodgkinson)

In 2020, Kathy Hinde invited creative responses to Erik Satie's piece "Vexations". You can see more about Kathy's project at: https://satievexations.art/

"Convexations" is my response, a set of procedures for deconstructing and reconstructing Satie's piece. This is one possible realisation, using 28 synthesiser voices.

I began with Satie's original "Vexations", a short piece lasting less than two minutes. Satie, in one of his typically bizarre remarks in the score, tells us that if we were to play this piece 840 times we would need to prepare ourselves physically and mentally. This has often been taken literally, with the piece repeated 840 times, either by a single pianist or by a relay team of performers. At a couple of places in the score Satie puts a sign and says it is "customary" to play the unharmonised bass line at this point. I chose to disregard this custom, so in my version I am only using the two harmonised paragraphs.

I counted 28 distinct pitches in the original, treating enharmonic equivalents as the same pitch. I rewrote the original as 28 parts for 28 instruments, where each instrument can only play one pitch.

I added or subtracted beats from each of the 28 parts so that they are all different lengths and will slip out of phase when they repeat. I aligned them, however, so that they begin out of phase and come into sync at the very end.

I then thinned out the texture, so that I begin with only three voices, playing their three notes with silent gaps, gradually adding more pitches until all 28 are present just before they come into sync for a recognisable iteration of "Vexations".

(Haworth Hodgkinson, May 2020, Central Buchan, Aberdeenshire)

Convexations

Cruden Bay is my nearest point of contact with the sea, though not close enough to justify visiting during lockdown, so I haven't been near the sea for four months. This is an unedited slice of environmental sound from Port Erroll Harbour, Cruden Bay, made at about 6.30pm on 11 July 2020.

Cruden Bay

The sound of water going down the plughole of the bath in the house in Rossendale where I grew up, slowed down to one-quarter speed but otherwise unmodified. (Note: picture shows a different bath, also in Rossendale.)

Plughole

Download the full remix here - https://stephenkirkwood.bandcamp.com/releases

Phonin The Cooncil - Stephen Kirkwood Techno mix

Phonin The Cooncil (Stephen Kirkwood Bangin Melodic Techno Edit remix)

Another slice of life in North-East Scotland: Peterhead town centre on an August afternoon.  Recorded 13 August 2020.

Peterhead: Broad Street

Take the devil

Wherever You Will Go - The calling cover

The Upper Lake in Haddo Country Park, Aberdeenshire, recorded 21 September 2020.

Haddo: Upper Lake

The wind in the trees at Loudon Wood Stone Circle, recorded 1 November 2020 during Storm Aiden.

Take the devil

sephe

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