Have you heard of spatialization?
I took a recording of a bell, and made it into a drone. Surrounding you, you couldn’t find exactly where it was coming from, until you listened, and when you listened, listened very closely, you could hear that it was the all-too-familiar bell; the same very one that you hear at everyday’s end.
My university has an 8-channel class, and it was one of the more impactful classes I’ve taken. If you’re not familiar with 8-channel, it’s a sound system where one is surrounded by 8 speakers- there are multiple formats, but ours was “2 in front, 2 on each side, 2 behind”. It gave me a strong understanding of how sound works when surrounding a listener.
I took a recording of a bell, and when you heard it surround you, you were worried. Is it ever going to end? Is it ever going to give us the release of the final toll?
I had an idea for another electroacoustic piece, and I wanted to write it down before it was lost to memory. If I’m able to get an academic sample of someone’s voice, I would want to have them read gibberish into a microphone. Very carefully selected gibberish- I would need common phonemes, I would need common consonant sounds, and I would need weird sounds as well. I would love to make a study on how “almost-voice” sounds can affect a listener. (Are they disconcerted? Are they fearful? Are they fascinated? I know I would be the latter.)
Because audio can be placed in a ring around the listener in an 8-channel array, one could do some experiments with the sound. If sound is coming from four directions at once, what does it sound like if it’s all gibberish? What does it sound like if most of it is gibberish, but one is a reconstructed phrase?
I took a recording of a bell, and took it down to its very core. The resounding toll of the recording of a bell finds its core disrupted as I apply Pitch II to its deceived aspirations to end.
I plan to go into our studio again this summer, to pursue this idea. When I do, I’ll make sure you can hear it.
And when the tolling finally ends, it’s mundane.
Dryophoenix (Neph Hillis)