MAP Project: Pedram Diba — Write-up
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Pedram Diba — Write-up
In this short paper, I will talk about my research and collaboration with violinist Jeanne Côté and how the use of binaural recordings contributed to our work. I will talk about the perception of new timbres and spaces, which brought forth new material to experiment with. I will also discuss how the approaches from the different backgrounds of composer and performer shaped the discourse of the research and the final work.
As a composer, I am always interested in timbral qualities of sounds in my listening. These timbral qualities could be shaped from various parameters such as harmony, morphological shapes, energetic distribution between the components of a sound, orchestration, and so forth. During our initial audio/video exchange, Jeanne and I both had a shared interest in the quality of space that was captured via the binaural recordings. Considering this shared interest and the important role of space in perception of timbre, we concentrated our focus on the concept of space, more specifically, space as perceived by binaural recordings.
After sharing ideas and discussing how we thought of space, we realized that we had some similarities as well as differences in regards to this concept. Some similarities were: space as a mean to communicate timbres, distance of various sound sources, and size of the room the listener is put in. I also shared my ideas with Jeanne about movement and polyphony of various sounds in the space, and Jeanne shared her ideas about the personal space of the performer and the sounds that are perceived within that space (involuntary noises from the body, touching the fingerboard and so on). This idea was very interesting for me because this space was something I had not considered before. It also created the possibility to explore new sounds and material that were very subtle, soft, and delicate in nature, and much better perceived in the intimate sonic space of the performer.
After narrowing down our focus on the intimate sonic space of the performer, we decided to explore various sounds within this space as well as exploring this space from a poetic angle. From the poetic point of view, the theme of intimacy was very prominent while exploring various sounds in this space as the binaural recordings also captured a lot of the close and subtle human linked sounds such as breathing. The use of binaural recordings was especially helpful with the recording of the hair sounds, as it established a strong sense of intimacy by creating an embodied experience for the listener. When listening to the hair sounds, I could follow the movement of the violin over my head and hear all the subtle timbral changes. This sound was also interesting in the way it combined both of our unique ideas about space (movement of sound in the personal space of the performer).
We then decided to explore sounds in an anechoic chamber. This space can amplify the perception of sounds in the intimate space of the performer, especially the human linked sounds.
We had three main goals in the anechoic chamber. The first goal was to record various soft and delicate sounds on the violin that we had previously decided on. Some of these sounds were, rubbing the fingerboard with the hand, rubbing the fame and the body of the instrument with fingers, hair sounds, etc.. The space in the anechoic chamber allowed for these sounds to be captured without any sound coming from the outside of the performers intimate space. The second goal was to sit in silence with the lights off for 15 minutes. By turning the lights off, we hoped to make the listening even more sensitive to the human linked sounds that were already perceptibly amplified by the space of the anechoic chamber. The binaural recordings of both the violin sounds and the sounds captured during the 15 minutes of silence (breathing, digestive sounds, swallowing and so forth), helped to intensify the intimate aspect of these sounds as well as giving a clear idea of the timbral quality of each sound for a listener listening from outside of that space. Some sounds were similar in nature, such as rubbing the frame of the violin and rubbing the body of the violin, however, when listing to the recordings, the timbral differences were very clear. Lastly, with the help of Florian Grond, we recorded impulse responses in the anechoic chamber to be able to recreate the close and intimate space of the anechoic chamber on specific sounds in the composition of the electronics portion of the piece.
As Close As Breath, a piece for amplified violin (with binaural microphones) and electronics written for this project, explores the ideas that Jeanne and I experimented with. The title of the piece refers to being so close to someone that you feel the blow of their breath. This touches on the closeness of the space as well as the intimate aspect of it. Additionally, the last thing the performer does is breathing into the f hole of the violin. For the instrumental part, I used several sounds we explored in the anechoic chamber. The use of binaural recordings helped me understand each sound’s characters and timbral qualities. As a result, I was able to put these sounds into musical time and discourse to create a cohesive formal structure.
A lot of these sounds redefine the performer’s relationship with the instrument in the way that they are produced, therefore, an efficient system of notation is necessary to communicate these ideas. During one of our conversations, Jeanne explained to me that the hair has three main timbral regions (the top, the middle, and the bottom). This gave me the idea of creating a clef in the shape of a head and a 3 lined musical system where each line represents one of the timbral territories. For the other sounds explored on the body and fingerboard of the violin, I used a violin clef similar to the one Helmut Lachenmann uses in Pression.
For the electronics, I used some violin sounds that we recorded in the anechoic chamber as well as other sounds to create a variety of textures and timbres. With the electronics I had three main goals. My first goal was to create a musical discourse that goes back and forth between more open spaces and very close spaces. The reason for this was to make the moments with close space more striking by going into them from a more open space. Additionally, by using the anechoic chamber impulse responses on some of the sounds each time the space opens up, I was able to create a sense of closeness on these sounds and design a sense of polyphony and discourse in the space. My second goal was to create a sense of ambiguity in the source of the sound. Jeanne had told me that when she was sitting in silence in the anechoic chamber, she
could sense her own heart beat, but she was not sure if she could hear it more or feel it more. I hoped to create a similar sense of ambiguity by the relationship of the sounds coming from the violin and the sounds coming from the electronics combined with the visual aspect of what is seen. Lastly, one of my main goals was to recreate the human linked sounds (heartbeat, breathing sound, swallowing, and digestive sounds) in the electronics as well as the instrumental part. I was interested in Denis Smalley's idea of increasing the remoteness between a sound gesture and its sound source. I wanted for these sounds to be remote enough from their sound source that they would be tied entirely to their spectromorphological qualities. As a result, I created three categories of sounds where each category has specific spectromorphological qualities. The first group is the grainy sounds (swallowing and digestive sounds), the second group is noisy sounds with swelling morphologies (Breathing and hair sounds), and the last group is short attacks (heart beat). There is an interplay between the instrumental part and the electronics throughout the discourse of the piece where various sounds with these qualities are explored. In future research projects, it would be interesting to use binaural recordings to explore the perception of space from the point of view of the performer in a variety of spaces.