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

Shortwave - Soundwave reflects a love I had for playing with radios when I was younger. I remember enjoying the sounds between the channels far more than the actual programmes. The radio like sounds in the piece became a frame for me to take that love further by pushing them to their limit creating a far wider palette than I had as a child. With that palette I have retained the playfulness I used to twist the dial and move the aerial with and then painted on a far grander canvas than I could have imagined at that age. 

The title is also a passing reference to the 1980's cartoon series Transformers. Soundwave is a character for the bad guys (the Decepticons) whose role is reconnaissance. He often transforms into radio like contraptions in order to communicate with the other Decepticons or spy on the good guys (Autobots) conversations.

shortwave - soundwave

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

“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


shortwave - soundwave

tim_bo

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