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Eine VERNACHLAESSIGBARE MAENGE:

nr.1 – pangea

(works-in-progress)

nr. 2 -prime gradient (pg)

nr. 3 - anthropic principle (ap)

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(the name -- translated: "an insignificant detail")

Eine VERNACHLAESSIGBARE MAENGE: nr.1 – pangea is an 11mins-25sec extremely subwoofer-dependent stereo electroacoustic composition, ideally performed on a large acousmonium. This composition was designed and composed in the private studio of H.E.R. Kryptic Visions, in Berlin (Germany), in the winter 2010-spring 2011.

This work is dedicated to Virginie Adkinson-Deforges, France

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(reflections)

It probably goes without saying, that things are only significant in relation to other things, a fact complimented by its converse.

From my earliest exposure to electroacoustic music, I've often, and repeatedly, found myself in concerts longing for a lament or serenade and pained by the incessant necessity of bombardment, aesthetically wonderful though it might be in moderation.

For decades, now, I've struggled to discern whether the digital medium, itself, encourages expression exclusively in exaggerated superlatives or whether the nature of "the message" can only be rendered significant through boisterous rambunctious exclamation.

One is tempted to wonder if the constant "raised voice" might acknowledge a fear, or knowledge, that no one is really listening. Finally, the powerless and fearful screaming is a well documented and common delusion to distract from the obvious.

Ein vernachlaessigbare Maenge actually translates, more literally, to "an ignorable amount"; this quantity is that part of the music, and the sounds from which it ensues, which is missed if you don't strain to hear it. It is fleeting and transient though significant. It is often too brief to be identified while too moving to be ignored. It is that part which is typically overlooked entirely on first hearing and makes all successive hearings necessity.

It is a distant place, where the sound goes, and the path which it takes, on its way to evolving into silence. It is those sounds most easily covered by the brash and insistent ones. It's a kind of crystalline snowy sparkling fairy dust which is left in the air, tossed by breezes, after wonderful things happen and sometimes signalling the passing of the bad times or the onset of terror. It is much like the stuff which thoughts and memories are made of, memories which linger long after all traces of the event have irretrievably dissipated. It's maybe even an unforgettably faint but startlingly familiar fragrance, familiar though one could scarcely say of what.

"an insignificant detail" starts out with the minuscule minutia of massive crowds, reduced to human breath. It ventures on to include miniature and massive sculpted vaulted and tunnelled spaces, both empty, echoing nothingness and filled to the brim, sounding out subtly but tumultously the unidentifiable.

Yes! It is the intangible minutia which somehow creeps, imperceptibly, under your skin and moves, while always unquestionably insignificant.

(a compositional approach)

The process described below produced a series of twenty-three sound-events, presented in sequence over a period of some thirteen minutes (later shortened to 11:25).

In fact, there are two series of twenty-three sound-events, later called the mini-sub-events and mega-sub-events, the difference simply resulting from shrinking the mega sub-events. Ultimately, each mega-sub-event is paired and proceeded by its transposed corresponding mini-sub-event, rendering twenty-three double sub-events.

In some ways, they are the analogue of twenty-three variations on a theme or an evolutionary monologue, delivered in twenty-three statements but expounded on a single circumspect idea.

Later, in this composition, these statements, variations or soli become engulfed and entwined in and give breath to a fleetingly translucent and transcendental "world". They are often overshadowed, in part or wholely, sometimes piloting and sometimes devoured by the ensuing drama of an electroacoustic discourse.

The identity of the actual sounds, the individual sounds, are ultimately as irrelevant, now, as they were from the outset. As a matter of fact, I challenge anyone to find the named sources in this work. They are not used as "sounds", but rather as micro-composite building blocks.

What I needed from them (my "wizardry") was not the actual sounds, themselves, but the hallucination, the "evoked" and the time-warp which they already commanded.

The first sound, simple, a temporal evolution, primal, clocked but not rhythmic, intensity extremes, periodically evolved: a gangster-rap sub-bass groove.

The second sound was elemental and composite, of countless thousands (of people) in a vast space, indulged in irrational elation, producing and commanding pitch and harmony (but, significantly, not melody): a South African "vuvuzela-stadium".

The third sound, tibetan chant, ethereally modulated "sameness", finely articulated but delicately spacious and obscure, was, like the second sound, put through the ranks (virtually identical transformational procedures: filtering, transposition, spacialization, layering). Just like with the "vuvuzela world", the super-event (the groove envelop) was extracted and imposed, producing the twenty-three incident series of individual events (sub-events) which became the foundational pillars.

All I needed from the groove was the temporally sculpted intensity of its evolution, with its "form building tendencies" (a Schoenberg reference).

The entire groove, approximately three minutes, was extracted through tuned filtering and normalized to maximum volume, so that only bass and sub-bass remained. This was gated, to remove intermittent vestiges, while some harmonic tuning was performed during the extraction.

In half-octave steps, this groove was analyzed, stretched and resynthesized until the prescribed length of nearly thirteen minutes was achieved. Special attention was paid to avoid DC drift.

The resulting thirteen-minute super-event, contained twenty-three spaced sub-events, with individual evolutionary identities. These sub-events were serially extracted, to produce twenty-three separate sound files which were sequentially realigned, maintaining the original order, while altering, for "dramatic" and structural relevance, the relative durations between the sub-events.

Two events were, eventually, eliminated without shrinkage, to interrupt the unity and "integrity" of the original super-event, as it was, in my composition, to serve an intrinsically divergent role.

I've gotten ahead of myself, having failed to mention that during my initial period of floundering and thrashing, confronted by an empty vessel, I had found myself reading reams of science fiction literature (as
is often the case before starting a new work) and going to concerts of fugues, both orchestral and instrumental.

From this wash of fugues, I became mesmorized by the thrill of "intricately formalized integrity", rationalized in contrapunctual music. I became convinced that pursuing this "minutely formalized integrity" seemed a worthy challenge.

I decided, "trying to electroacoustic the fugue" was a worthy challenge; and thus, the twenty-three sequenced similarly "individual"events; "fugue events" instead of "fugue themes and counter-themes".

Once the sub-events were sequenced and spaced, a new thirteen-minute super-event, the envelope, was extracted and imposed on the second sound (South African "vuvuzela stadium"), which had been convoluted in an imaginary a high-frequency compromised space with progressively less reverberation.

This extracted super-event envelope was also imposed on the tibetan chant sound.

Before imposing it on the "vuvuzela stadium", the stadium sound was preprocessed, removing all the sports-commentary and extemporaneous noises from a live T.V. broadcast, balancing levels on the retained sections and harmonically tuning the cacophony of tens of thousands of plastic horns (the vuvuzela).

Considerable attention (weeks and weeks) was given to sculpting the individual (23) sub-events.

These two super-events, resulting from the imposition of the new thirteen-minute super-event goove-envelope on the vuvuzela stadium and on the tibetan chanting monks--were sculpted, always,
respectively, as two group-events, ensuring an evolution through the twenty-three sub-event incarnations, always with the understanding that each super-event would become but a single layer in the sandwiched "fugue events".

Before layering, however, each super-event (the two with their twenty-three sequenced sub-events) was spacialized -- "sent through" spaces varying from stadiums, to tunnels, to caves – with temporally evolved delays, multi-tap delays, echo or reverb. The resulting "spaces" were appropriated to individual (respective) sub-event, sometimes singly and sometimes transitioned.

These two layers were each sliced into three layers, each of which was frequency compromised; whereby, higher frequency layers decayed sooner and faster than the middle and lower frequency layers.

Their tails were primarily extended (low-frequency layers) or curtailled (middle and high-frequence layers) by parameter control-file shrinkage, and gate-sequencing.

When the pre-sandwiching sculpting was complete and satisfying, some fine-tuning was done, to specific sub-events on specific layers, until the desired identities had progressively taken character. Then came the intensity and volume sculpting, followed by the sandwiching. The, respective, three-frequency layers of the two super-events were then recombined. This was followed by layering of the two super-events.

This new mega-event (evolved from the layered super-events) was then processed in a manner simulating simple (brief) speed variation on a reel-to-reel or turntable. Special attention was given to compensate or balance the lengthening and shortening which resulted from "simulated" physical pitch-shifting, to roughly approximate the original sub-event length(s) and spacing(s).

compressing both the energy and expressiveness of the original layered mega-event.

The individual, now shrunk, sub-events were then cut into twenty-three separate sounds (files) and, subsequently, mapped back onto the temporal template of the thirteen-minute mega event, thereby, pairing the mini-sub-events with their corresponding mega-sub-events; though, shifting before the mega's, to end approximately a-half minute before each mega's begin.

As the mini-sub-events lengths vary, individual adjustments (positioning) were necessary to avoid haphazard overlap or telltale delayed association.

Completing this phase meant, essentially, completing the foundation; though, many developmental dramatic-evolutional and structural design questions loomed, bigger than life, begging to be addressed.

I had, naturally, assumed that the first paired sub-event would start the composition.

Every effort to open the piece that way seemed either emotionless, mechanical or too abrupt.

general: Some Electroacoustic Basics

This music is created to be listened to on large "full-frequency" sound-systems with precision subwoofers.

This music is not intended to be listened to on "computer mini-speakers", with or without a subwoofer,as few are designed for high-fidelity.

It is not intended to be listened to with headphones, as much of the spatial "distance" detail is lost and THE DANGER OF DAMAGING YOUR EARS IS VERY REAL.

This music is not compressed, nor normalized (for those of you who know what that means), as doing either would minimize the degrees of subtleness to every level of acoustic detail.

Consequently, the volume on your sound-system has to be turned up "relatively" high to make the extremely quiet sounds audible; accordingly, the loudest sounds will, likely, be startlingly loud. These extreme contrasts allow for profound shades of emotional expressions and will push your sound-system to the extremes.

You are STRONGLY ADVISED to gradually experiment with increasing the volume from below YOUR NORMAL LISTENING LEVEL, until you find the point at which the music "works" (brilliant imaging and
refined detail) without rattling or destroying your system. You may also want to reduce the bass at first (from "no boost") and gradually return it to "no boost" or slightly raised, experimenting for
"earthiness", to protect your bass speakers.

This music has been performed on systems from modest to high-powered, WITHOUT DOING DAMAGE.

Thusly, listen to this music AT YOUR OWN RISK; I CAN NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR DAMAGE DONE TO YOUR EARS OR YOUR SOUND-SYSTEM!