silent revolution [2013]

unhörbares wird hörbar (the inaudible becomes audible) [2013] for flute, clarinet, viola, cello, percussion and electronics
unhörbares wird hörbar is the title of a 1968 book by Konstantin Raudive detailing his experiments "discovering" Electronic Voice Phenomena (that he describes as "disincarnate voices") through various means. The work is “spectral trace”, in which the prominent features of a spectrogram are "orchestrated" for ensemble by means of a scrolling graphical score.  The live instruments perform in conjunction with a re-sonified version of the spectrogram created by mapping a black and white version of the image to 613 frequency bands, where shade is rendered as amplitude.  The original spectrogram itself is taken from a recording of a solo bass clarinet and electronics performance : study for no-input bass clarinet no. 3 part II, which included the  electronic component was generated by an earlier MaxMSP patch "Spectral Transmission" for shortwave radio and electronics.

performed live in Palermo by Decibel (Cat Hope - flute, Lindsay Vickery - clarinet, Aaron Wyatt - viola, Tristen Parr - cello, Stuart James - percussion, Josten Myburgh - electronics).

the inaudible becomes audible [2013]

In Nomine Tenebris is something of a “through the looking glass” homage to Scelsi’s late period. The work takes Scelsi’s short organ work In Nomine Lucis (1974) as a “sound object” and subjects it to radical transformation and distortion. The compositional process involved visualising the work as a sonogram, stretching, warping and distorting the image and then resonifying it. The resonification was then visualised a second time and used as the basis of a score for the five acoustic instruments. The final work combines the acoustic instruments and the electronic sonification. The contours of the instrumental parts are used to control spatialisation and audio processing that expands and compresses the acoustic instrumental timbres in a manner analogous to the distortion of the visual image, but in real-time. Like many of Scelsi’s late works, In Nomine Tenebris focuses almost exclusively on timbre and the transitory nature of sonic spectra.

performance by decibel

in nomine tenebris [2014]

...with the fishes... is a sibling to my 2013 work for Decibel silent revolution. As the title suggests (and despite the nod to The Godfather) the work is a reflection on the future of our oceans (as well as an acronym summing up the situation). Like silent revolution, a range of music notations (including fragments of Debussy's La Mer that wash through the score), are situated in the context of a collage of over 300 images and quotations by scientists, journalists and activists concerned with the state of things below the surface. These issues include the expansion of fossil fuel drilling into every ocean - including the arctic, rising sea-levels due to climate change, pollution from radiation leaks, jellyfish and algae blooms caused by fertiliser run-off, the thawing and release of ocean methane clathrate and the ever growing trash vortex. Although the predictions of the commentators quoted such Chris Hedges, Alan Weisman, Eric Grundhauser (Slate), Gwynn Guildford (Quartz) and Örjan Gustafsson differ - they range from severe to apocalyptic. ...with the fishes... began as an idea for a graphic novel I planned with my son Max and this idea also plays into the aesthetic of the work (and the quote about the fate of climate skeptics). 

...with the fishes... [2015]

Performance by Decibel

watch video and explanation of the score at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjebmvmUZKY

Audio also at: http://lindsayvickery.bandcamp.com/album/transitions-transformations-chamber-music-viii-2009-2010

ghosts of departed quantities

EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) describes the deliberate or inadvertent capturing of the voices of ghosts on electronic media such as tape recorders, video or radio. Around the world many thousands of people participate in projects to investigate spectral presences in haunted spaces by recording and then painstakingly analysing recordings. Whether this is a real phenomenon or an example of mental pattern recognition—finding structures in random data, like an aural Rorschach Test—is a matter of opinion. In this work, a collage is generated from a number of EVP recordings. The performers emulate the sounds with extended techniques on their instruments with the aid of a scrolling score that shows relative the pitch, duration and dynamics of the EVP samples in real-time. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me this is my the third recent work, following Ghosts of Departed Quantities (2010) and The Talking Board (2011), to explore the supernatural.
Also listen at: http://lindsayvickery.bandcamp.com/album/questions-written-on-sheets-of-glass-chamber-music-ix-2011-2012

EVP (2012)

Agilus, Mimoid, Symmetriad (2012) for string quartet (excerpt below) takes its title from three of the “oceanic formations” described by Stanisław Lem in his novel Solaris (1961). Dedicated to Max Vickery. The scrolling score is presented on networked iPads to the four players. Live recording by Sonya Maher, Caitlin Huxtable, Rebecca Smith and Tristen Parr at SHOCK OF THE NEW 19 Oct 2012. (recording from iPhone...)
Video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuLnNR7SafE
Audio of Version 2 of this work (with electronics) at: http://lindsayvickery.bandcamp.com/album/questions-written-on-sheets-of-glass-chamber-music-ix-2011-2012

Agilus, Mimoid, Symmetriad (2012)

Wardang is the Wadjuk Noongar word for crow. The animal takes a central role in the Noongar familial lore, along with the Mannaitch (white cockatoo) defining rules of marriage and association. The recordings in this piece were made at Mooro Katta or Mount Eliza in Kings Park Perth, and include the  three-part call typical of crows in this region and a peculiar almost "mewing" sound of a young crow. All of the electronic material was derived exclusively from this material and then assembled into an audio-collage. Instrumental parts were then added for flute, clarinet, electric guitar and harp, highlights and re-enforcing aspects of the collage.

Lindsay Vickery - Wardang [2019]

​In [opi’lka an improvisation for bass clarinet and electronics was used as the basis for a sort of notational improvisation to create a score. The notation is a blend of "spectromorphological" symbols (i.e. sound-shapes) with more traditional proportional notation as strict synchronisation with (elements) of the original recording. Many of the spectral complexes from the original sound-object are recreated through wind instrument multiphonics and other extended techniques. The unusual title of this work was the result of the inadverted naming of a folder on my computer.

Lindsay Vickery - [Opi'lka [2017]

the last few years I have been exploring the idea of integration of instruments with the non-anthropogenic sound world of nature and machines. Liminario takes a further step in this exploration, by convolving (electronically combining the rhythm of one recording with the pitches of another) Villa-Lobos’ Sexteto Mistico with a field recording of the Amazon rainforest. The Sextet, which I had performed as a student, had always evoked a mysterious rainforest for me and the idea was to allow literal natural sounds to overgrow the mimetic sound world of the original work. The result was a kind of surreal musicbox of sounds, dominated by the irregular but repetitive calls and chirps of animals. This recording was then “spectrally orchestrated“ by directly transcribing a visual representation of the sounds, a spectrogram, into scrolling music performed by a music box of (also slightly irregular) human musicians.

Lindsay Vickery - Liminario [2017]

Like most Tokyo metro stations, Takadanobaba is filled with the very noisy and chaotic sounds of humanity. Sometimes such places seem paradoxically empty and almost still. In this work a field recording of the station underwent an analogous stripping of sound - removing all but the most prominent frequencies and then stretched to nearly ten times its original length. The resulting "empty" recording was annotated and orchestrated for an ensemble of 8 performers. The synchronised networked scrolling score composing a range of extended instrumental techniques is presented to the performers in conjunction with a remixed recording of the source audio. The work extends my exploration of an “Ecostructural” approach into an entirely anthropogenic environment. The sonic structure of the work is derived from the sounds of the station albeit more slowly. It was written for and is dedicated to performers from the Tone List group.

Lindsay Vickery Takadanobaba [2018]

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lindsay-Vickery-Composer/281159362263?ref=hl
http://lindsayvickery.bandcamp.com/
http://lrvickery.tumblr.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/entropology?feature=mhee

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