三轮车 Trishaw

Music: 郑维诚 Albert Tay
Lyrics: 王中言 (Chen Shi Song)
Arranger: Albert Tay 郑维诚， 
Conductor: Albert Tay 郑维诚, Vikung Ruljadeng 吳蒙惠 
Choir: Natus Cantorum (Taiwan) 天生歌手合唱團

天生我的家 2022 天生歌手家族年度音樂會
29 December 2022 (Thu)
National Kaohsiung Centre for the Arts, (Weiwuying) Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
國家表演藝術中心衛武營國家藝術文化中心，高雄，台灣

你是我的家 You Are My Home

Tsk Tsk - A Musique Concrète Étude

Tsk tsk. A clicking sound, often read as /ˈtɪskˌtɪsk/ interjection — used to show disapproval often in a humorous way. Accessed October 11, 2024, Britannica Dictionary.

The work is a satirical meditation and reflection on life, and how people all around us sometimes take offence so easily and quickly - tsk tsk-ing here there everywhere… when we should learn to tune out the noise and not miss out on the beautiful things that are around us if we learn to listen more carefully. As per my modus operandi, a cool “easter egg” can be found in this composition. Hope you will have an Amazing time finding this Grace-ful insert.


Process
I was always fascinated by the sounds that one could draw from normal instruments via extended techniques. I’ve wondered why so many orchestration and composition textbooks do not seem to think of, or talk about the human voice and body as an instrument, let alone cover possible ‘extended techniques’ that the voice is capable of. Au contraire, the human body deserves a far longer chapter than any man-made instrument - in the hands (pardon the pun) of a creative mind, and in view of the sophisticated state of artificial amplification of sound today, the human body is capable of contributing a palette of colours and sounds that might be more interesting and wide-ranging than a violin or an oboe!

I explored numerous possibilities that included extended vocal techniques and timbres ranging from overtone singing, vocal fry, modal voice, falsetto, to the tapping of the body in unusual places, vocal percussion etc. Experimentation with conventional microphone distances, as well as extremely close microphone distances due to the nature of sounds that I wished to collect (teeth tapping was especially challenging). Despite having collected over 20 unprocessed sounds, the final mixing and assembly of the étude saw a major “composing with an eraser”, using 4 objet sonore and employing the full gamut of processing techniques on both the processed sounds and the final étude: 

Cut, copy, and paste
Fade in/Fade out
Waveform reverse
Tape speed variation (affecting pitch and duration simultaneously)
Amplification
Multitrack sound layering
Stereo panning (L/R balance and spatialisation)


Albert Tay
11 October 2024
22:22hrs
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
Urbana, Illinois, USA

Tsk Tsk - A Musique Concrète Étude

Love Remains

Have you ever loved someone who’s ‘not here’ or have a partner who is not quite present in the moment? Were you ever in a long-distance relationship where loving the Other means interacting through a machine? Would you turn back time if given a choice and what would the sonic equivalent of walking time backwards sound like? What about the musical equivalent of a gradual fading of a memory? Where humans fail, what might it be like to be in a relationship with AI instead? What would it be like to be playing an intimate duet with a computer? Will the performance still elicit emotional responses from the performer(s) and audience? Are such interactions ‘real’? Can a piece of music convey the sense of love (or emptiness?) that remains after such interactions with a screen?

“Love Remains” may be performed as a piece of ‘Performance Art’ in the following format: 
‘Live’ performance for two humans
‘Live’ performance for one human and pre-recorded track (choose between primo or secondo)
Entirely pre-recorded track

Some of the compositional ideas include equal distribution of piano octaves between the two players, hand crossings, meeting of hands and notes, taking over of musical foreground between the two duet partners etc. The motif is a musical metaphor for Yang and Yin, made up of two parts, ds,rsfl, and rs,drf.

“Love Remains” is written for dancer Dr. Danny Tan’s “Reimagining Love” performance as part of Odyssey Dance Theatre Ltd’s (ODT Ltd.) “The Launch”, a prelude to their 25th Anniversary Celebrations. “Love Remains” is premiered on 7 October 2023 (Sat) 7:30pm at ODT Gem by Albert Tay and his MacBook Pro. 

Albert Tay
7 October 2023
http://tayalbert.com

New tracks tagged #albertsannotations