The piece deals with noise, clicks, and pure tones as material, realizing the paradigm of a "wash" in three cycles. This notion could be generalized to hint towards mechanical agitation, cleansing, swirl, particle separation, or wear by the action of a strong flow. Musical form arises from the ebb and flow of spectral qualities, densities, and intensities, across small and large time scales. The contrapuntal interaction between textures, gestures, and spatial cues tightens the musical trajectory of a material that features powerfully chaotic characteristics. Within this flow, the abstract nature of the sound gains tangibility, induced materiality that transcends hearing and has a dynamic towards involving other senses, into some clear, somehow familiar yet unknown, unnerving yet strangely soothing imaginary process.

Noise Wash Synesthesia

Mixing highlights from my recent "Disco Accuracy" album, now on Bandcamp https://giannoulakis.bandcamp.com/album/disco-accuracy
Circuit-bent toys, micro modular setup improvisation, surfing between noise and beat.

Disco Accuracy Mix

The title is inspired by Geology, where it is used to describe layers consisting of rock and mineral fragments. The piece is based exactly on this idea, namely a flow of sonic fragments that retain their hard boundaries and at the same time belong in a much larger structure. The musical discourse that evolves is based on their temporal and spectral relationships across various time scales.


Fragmental

Using samples from the Apollo11 mission radio communications.
All instruments, recording, mixing by Stelios Giannoulakis.

One Small Step [DayMix 3]

Jazzy, folk, dense dub step jungle exercise.

Jazzy Dog Dub-Step [day mix 2]

The piece reflects an important influence at the time, new spaces. I had just moved to Wales, living in halls of residence, then moving to a flat and always working in the Main Arts Building, the old university edifice. Corridors, windows, halls, lots of doors, utility rooms, staircases leading to an indefinite number of floors, inhabitable shapes, textures, colors and acoustics. The piece also incorporates other personal elements, real or imaginary, indoor sounds that had some importance in my everyday life and some outdoor sounds that signified transitions and special events – the maze as concept could accommodate a huge variety of materials. I made a piece about framed space, with continuous weird transitions from one type of room acoustic to the other through secret openings or acoustic and imagined optical illusions. The listener is on an adventure tour inside a magic dream labyrinth. Various recognizable objects are bubbling up from distant to very near, instrumental passages and abstract sounds are transforming into each other, warping in rhythm and threading through harmony.

1 min excerpt from the first part of the 15 min piece

The Maze 1min

Mosquito Pie 1min 2014

NoiseRomantics Miniature Recut

The main idea behind the piece is a discourse between two main types of sound material which are clearly differentiated and in general maintain their morphological identity. A noisy, glitchy and aggressive sound object set with repetitive behavior and full spectrum activity, against a soft continuous drone-scape with identifiable pitch elements and harmonic content. As the piece progresses, the sound streams meet in counterpoint and along the way they somehow manage to share more than they seemed to intend to. An analogy, as implied by the title, is drawn with the physical sciences and the distinct states of matter that can coexist in a system, with associated phase transitions and interfacial phenomena.
9:45 - stereo for multi-speaker diffusion, Athens 2015.



Distinct Phases

This work started with the mental image of a sonic alchemist experimenting on weird sonic substances and audible compounds. He plays with home made instruments and contraptions, not caring about much else other than the joy of doing just that. Interacting closely with his material, it almost feels like he is having long intimate conversations with his sound creations. Perhaps he is having these conversations with himself, as mirrored onto the sonic world he is progressively surrounding himself with. After a while he realizes that he has been creating something which has a life of its own, something that very soon takes on new and unexpected properties... What is the meaning in all that, he asks. Is there actually any meaning? In his creative journey of personal discovery and invention our hero stops trying to reason or explain. His work exists just to be experienced and re-imagined through some personal esoteric process beyond words. Well, it is just sound. Or is it?

The SonicAlchemist

The Sonic Alchemist

Based on recordings of Athens centre, done for the project "The Soundscape we live in". Avoiding to disrupt the flow of recorded events, I looked for musical motives and using various techniques I isolated prominent tonal or noisy parts of the spectrum. This way I ended up with a new musical flow, a distillate so to speak of the city noise.

Athens Noise Orchestra

A study on composition with improvised vocal material. 

Kleri Doukoumetzaki: vocals, text
Stelios Giannoulakis: live processing, editing, sound design
http://giannoulakis.bandcamp.com/

Word Pop

Materialisation		10:22		2011-2012

This work is discussing the process of coming into being. In an abstract sonic world, made with additive synthesis and frequency manipulation techniques, entities acquire various degrees of tangibility while their apparent causal connection to other entities, series of events and modulating environments develops as music.

Το έργο διαπραγματεύεται τη διαδικασία έλευσης στην ύπαρξη. Σε έναν αφηρημένο ηχητικό κόσμο, φτιαγμένο με προσθετική σύνθεση και τεχνικές χειρισμού της συχνότητας, οντότητες μοιάζουν σχεδόν απτές ενώ η φαινόμενη αιτιακή τους σχέση με άλλες οντότητες, με σειρές γεγονότων και μεταβαλλόμενα περιβάλλοντα εξελίσσεται σαν μουσική.


Materialisation

Particle Chant

I collected a large number of granular sounds, using mainly analog synthesizers and contact microphones, as well as synthesis and processing techniques which helped me get granular textures from other types of sound material. My initial goal was a strictly monomorphic piece, something like a study on granular discourse. Along the way and as the piece got longer, I decided to introduce additional sounds of a contrasting nature. These I created from the existing material or anew. Eventually, the piece finds a fragile balance between the pointillist and the continuous, ‘presence’ and ‘environment’, following one of my main compositional concerns – fusion and dialectic between contrasting and complementary sonic forms, towards a dynamic equilibrium.

2019 -2020

2020

Particle Chant

Break Even

message electroclash

lounge funk

The material for the piece comes from a lengthy electroacoustic improvisation with the soundscape of Athens, circuit-bent toys, and modular synthesizers. About one and a half hours of recorded sound material was edited into a piece with much tighter form, and select contrapuntal behaviors among the various elements of a relatively wide yet defined palette. Winds of traffic, electro-mechanical lifeforms, and organic meta-images lead us into a meditation on noise and the interplay between texture and gesture.

Athens Modular Soundscapes - edit

A piece inspired by spirits, apparitions, and other immaterial agents that might be inhabiting cold silence. Jan2021

Spectral Spirits

Composer, sound designer, improvising sonic artist, multi instrumentalist, music producer, creative music technology instructor. 
MA Digital Music Technology, PhD Electroacoustic Composition.
Music for concert, radio, dance, theater, multimedia, installations. 
Performances include electroacoustic diffusion, live electronics, and cross-genre projects and collaborations.

Popular tracks by Schema Musicalis