Ian Fredericks: Some Quiet Graveyard (1984)

Abstract

"Some Quiet Graveyard was inspired by thoughts of the awesomeness of the universe. Hanging raggedly off an insignificant star in a minor galaxy somewhere on the outskirts of the universe is a minor planet which on a cosmic time scale can at best be considered' some quiet graveyard'. Beyond the moon Beyond the darkness Starkness One small cloud of dust Just Some Quiet Graveyard Beyond the spee of light. In most cases when I compose a piece I use the work as a study for the exploration of some aspect of the technology. This leads to a very intimate relationship with the technology and often involves design and construction of equipment and/or the development of computer software. A feedback situation then exists where musical requirements directly dictate technological research and design and these in turn modify the musical possibilities. Two things were of special interest in Some Quiet Graveyard. First, all waveforms used in the piece were generated using a synthesis technique which I call 'continuous dynamic additive synthesis'. This was implemented on an Apple II computer with Mountain Computer music cards installed. A real time performance instrument was designed which allows a joystick continuously to vary the relative levels of a family of sine waves which form the harmonic of the sound. By moving the joystick during performance, timbre constantly changes. All sounds in Some Quiet Graveyard were generated using this device - not by changing a 'voice patch' but by 'playing' the joystic. The second interesting feature was the continuous spatial manipulation of all sounds. Several performance devices were designed and built for this. One was a foot pedal operated device which varies parameters relating to the relative distance of a sound source from the listener. This was used to generate envelopes for the drum-like sounds. These 'notes' were then panned into four channels using a small computer built for the purpose. Hand controlled devices were used for the melodic lines. The end result of this technical work was a studio full of ~tuff which allowed me to play the various musical lines onto multi-track tape recorders while continuously manipulating timbre and spatial position. The versatility of such performance control considerably influenced the composition of Some Quiet Graveyard. Melodic movement is related to spatial movement in several ways: melodic intervals are seen as variations in Doppler Shift, dynamic range (particularly crescendo and diminuendo) is derived from the 'nearness' of a note to the listener and melodic climax is heightened by causing the instruments to move close to the listener. A counterpoint between spatial movement and melodic movement is established using only one melodic line. For the concert performance of this piece, four channel playback is used and a visual element is included. This consists of the projection of computer generated images derived from photographs of stars and galaxies. The colour of the projection is continuously varied by altering the relative brightness of red, green and blue projections which are then mixed to a composite colour. The mixing process here is similar to the process of mixing relative levels of harmonics to derive a composite sound tone for timbre synthesis as described above. The result is a close relationship between musical timbre and image colour. This piece is dedicated to my wife Dawn." -- Ian Fredericks Show more