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Looking for my own rhythm through (spoken) words and (plant) touch
STORY ABOUT TOUCH
The baseline in this multi-track is my own voice speaking, "I don't know" which I then looped and altered using pitch and eq. I was trying to use words and the speaking voice as a way to find rhythm, while making the words themselves into word-less sounds.
With the blackberry recordings, I touched the dried leaves with my fingertips, and recorded using both a rode and condensor microphone. In Reaper, I experimented with keeping the frequencies below 40hz and between 8-12khz. Knowing that the high frequencies in entering your head and body, can cause immediate physical reactions in me (like when a baby cries), I wanted to play with sounds that can potentially annoy as well as lower frequencies that can sooth or resonate with lower body parts/organs. I find that the combination creates space in the middle, although a very specific kind of unnerving space, due to the high frequencies.
EXPERIMENTING WITH WORDS
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I'm exploring singular words as a way to find rhythm, as well as overlapping them until only consonants or syllables are recognizable. How many words can be simultaneously overlapped and still be understood? I think 3-4... The hearing of them is immediate, but the understanding of the word(s) comes later.
body explodes
flow category
flow category low pass
I recorded on my Tascam (with its internal speakers) myself speaking singular words. I then uploaded those words to Soundplant and played with finding a rhythm with them, overlapping and speeding up. I recorded some of these experiments and edited them in Reaper. For both "flow category" tracks, I lowered the high frequencies, but in the one titled "flow category low pass", I lowered also the middle frequencies beginning at about 500hz.
In the original recording with the Tascam, the word tree has some kind of extra sound, like a low beat... this was unintentional! I think it was made by accidentally touching the microphone; I would need to redo these recordings for my final performance.
blackberryblackberry
Blackberry in your head 20Khz
Some Thoughts
Listening to and watching Delia Derbyshire's films, she creates space and mood with the sounds and tones she uses. The voices speaking, for example in "Falling" from the Dreams (1964) describe experiences they've had in dreams, and some of the sentences are repeated. It becomes a narrative poem that creates abstract images in my mind. The sounds hold these images within one world; leading me to join it.
If I am a storyteller
a speaker
can I become a
LOUDSPEAKER
or a micro-pho(ton)-ne?
Brian Eno talks about his music as touching the parasympathetic nervous system, as opposed to the sympathetic which reacts quickly to outer stimuli. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for unconscious actions of the body, specifically for those occurring after sympathetic ones, for example, after eating, sex, fighting or flighting.
My perception of these sounds feel like they enter more deeply into my body, whereas the fast, alerting sounds enter just below my skin. I'd like to explore the parasympathetic nervous system, the unconscious as one of the pieces the body consists of; to explore how to touch those unspoken, nonverbal, and deeply internal parts.
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