The work of piston serves well the spirit of this play.

@eagleeagle: Thanks, I'll have a look next week.

I love this! Sounds great, congrats on a great track!

This really is a veritable feast. Oozes style and imagination. Very sonically pleasing, great quality recording & master! Dynamics are fantastic :) Good work!

I'd love to sample this part right here, it's fantastic! Nice ending :)

Sounds are carefully poured from one place to another. The sounds are watchful not to disturb their sediment.

Decant

Haydn - Cello Concerto in D 1st movement with cadenza
Melinda Gourlay - Cello
Susannah Wapshott - Piano

Haydn - Cello Concerto in D Movement 1

This piece explores the idea of sound romances (1) and aural memories that connect us to a specific time and place in our lives. Changing soundscapes can tell us a lot about the history of a place and how it is has changed over time. The sounds may have changed due to industrial engineering and economic developments. As composers we can create virtual soundscapes that can document the sounds of the past and recreate it. We can use the medium of Electroacoustic music to express the importance of changing soundscapes through the creative use of field recordings and spoken word. It is interesting to see what sounds people remember from their past. Why do they remember certain sounds more than others? Is it because they are disturbing? Is it because certain sounds are associated with a particular feeling from a specific time and place? 
This composition brings together elements of soundscape composition, spoken word and electroacoustic techniques within an 8-channel speaker setup. 
Sound Romances: Any past or disappearing sound remembered nostalgically, particularly when idealized or otherwise given special importance. Whereas new sounds are often experienced as sound phobias, old or past sounds are often elevated to the category of sound romances in memory.
Truax, B. (1999), Handbook for Acoustic Ecology (CD-ROM), Vancouver, Cambridge Street Publishing.

Spoken Word: Tiernan Martin 

A Bit Closer to home

Now remastered and available on  CD at https://electrocd.com/en/album/5849/Alistair_MacDonald/Cabinets_de_curiosité 
Between 1854 and 1862 the explorer Alfred Russel Wallace travelled throughout the Malay Archipelago (now Malaysia and Indonesia) studying nature and collecting "specimens of natural history".
One hundred and fifty years later I visited some of the jungle Wallace had explored and made my own (rather smaller) collection of sounds. I imagine the glass collecting-bottles Wallace used for insects, and the fish, "all well preserved in clear spirit in hundreds of glass jars". And the Wunderkammern or 'cabinets of curiosities' of preceding centuries - fabulous collections of objects and artefacts, gathered together, ordered and displayed to stimulate curiosity and wonder in the viewer!

Wunderkammer

This is the soundtrack plus a few unused sketches for the film "To The Journey's End", an educational film about Scottish salmon not available for general release. Although I've been composing for a while, this is my first soundtrack.

To The Journey's End - Opening

I enjoy sound for sound's sake. Nevertheless titles are required, hence Catgrease: the music of trying to catch a greased cat in an expanding and contracting space.

Catgrease

version for 6 trombones and tuba

Friction is the force that resists motion in materials in contact. The piece explores many sounds and motions that act as a metaphor for various aspects surrounding friction such as a sense of kinetic energy and the resulting release of heat. In particular the piece references internal friction, the force resisting motion in solids which are undergoing deformation.

I imagine this process in the sliding trombone sounds which seem to push against some kind of imaginary sonic barrier. The materials become less and less stable as the musical atoms making up the piece distort and split up. Once separated the material reforms into new but related shapes. It is as though the new material shows us inside the original.

Friction is dedicated to Richard Greer and was composed as part of a cultural exchange between the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Paris Conservatoire and waspremiered by De Profundis in February in Paris. 

commissioned by Diaphonique, Franco-British Fund for Contemporary Music

De Profundis, trombone, tuba and percussion ensemble
Clément Carpentier, conducting

recorded at Saint-Louis des Invalides, Paris, February, 2. 2012
sound engineer : Alice Legros

Friction

“Fall•Drop•Sink” is the blunt-edged description of the piece’s point of departure: quite simply, drops of water cascading into a resonant metal sink. The sink inflects the sound of droplets, splashes and bubbles and these, in turn, are accentuated by the treatment of sound within the computer.

The music yields to a contemplative section where the density of activity is suspended. This is the transition from a ‘formal’ world of sound for sound’s sake, to one which hints at another narrative: we emerge onto the flat horizon and brooding North Sea of the Norfolk coast on a grey day in October. The ‘drips’ remain as hints of rain, rock pools and ethereal electronica suspended above the opening seascape. Eau naturel?

FallDropSink

PlaneCrash

Hickory Dockery (2010)
My mother had three wind-up clocks. The said clocks, collectively and individually,  were more or less reliable. Between five to and five past and twenty-five to and twenty-five past they would fizzle, whirr and karrrunk into action either together or as part of a discrete, tuneless litany.  
This is my homage to those clocks: not a piece about time, but about timepieces. A piece in which the proverbial mouse scampers up and down, setting in motion arcane horological activities.

Hickory Dockery

I am a composer equally at home in the electroacoustic studio as I am working with acoustic instruments. My recent music features sonic collisions both in the use of disant sound materials and instrumental forces. These collisions inhabit my own real, surreal and imaginary sonic landscapes.

I've been generously supported in the pursuit of my Masters by Ms Christian Duff, the EMI Sound Foundation via the RSAMD trust, the Ropner Trust and a Dewar Arts Award


Friction

tim_bo

Recent comments

flaub

hectik

hectik

JamesMakasi

Related tracks