Sonic Performance Development
Blog
A week by week blog talking about the development of my sonic performance assignment, discussing the prototyping phase, research phase and the final outcome
Week 1
23rd February – 1st March
The research process began when I saw performances using looper pedals such as KT turnstiles performance of black horse and the cherry tree on later with Jools holland as well as Ed Sheeran’s live performances which is usually done completely on the spot using a looper pedal shown on the performance of “Shiver”. These performances is a full demonstration on how effective a looper performance can be while still being a relatively simple production. Seeing this style of performance is what began me on the exploration of looper performances and investigating how much can be created using layers of just short material, such as tapping the guitar alongside muted string strumming to create a full rhythmic element.
Week 2
2nd March – 8th March
This week I started writing a composition designed to be able to perform a guitar piece running through a looper pedal with inspiration from performances such as KT turnstiles. However one factor that carries the performances of KT turnstiles and Ed Sheeran’s in their ability to sing which is a tool I don’t have. To attempt to counter this lack of compositional tool I tried writing counterpoint melodies to create more interesting and captivating piece of music. Despite this attempt I still felt after a minute of different melodies it begins to lose interest because of the lack of different timbres to flow in and out.
Week 3
9th March – 15th March
This week I built of last week’s issue with the lack of timbres by delving into more experimental and heavy processing using guitar pedals because I felt this way I can still do the unique character of the performance being just guitar but all while creating wider timbres to raise the production standard. This is where I began devising how to get pad and synth like sounds through intricate pedal rigs such as having a combination of extreme reverb and chorus to create a foundational landscape. However, this was still sounding in a timbre sense quite bland because even though the guitar was running through interesting processing it still felt like layers of only guitar. To counter this I began diving further into how the mechanics and character of synths operate for example, often synthesizers use LFOs within their sound to create movement, so within the processing I created an approximate replicate within using a phaser pedal, which created an emulation of this effect synths often take advantage of. When researching synths further rather than traditional guitar rigs, I found there’s a lot of natural movement which wasn’t there with the set up I had, so therefore I began using the volume knob on the guitar while playing to create volume swells creating a more customised ADSR effect and synth like movement. I also intrigued effects such as tremolo to create a personalised step sequencer to further produced more interesting movement that combined to make a less stale production when looping guitar parts.
Week 4
16th – 22nd March
I was quite happy with last week’s development and progress within the guitar synthetic space so I began to push it further and look at inspirations such as Nine-inch Nails gritty, heavily distorted synth tones and guitar tones on the downward spiral album. To create an emulation of this stylistic sound I used a combination of bit crusher and distortion, sometimes two distortions, to heavily dismantle the sound which already made it unnatural and less guitar like. To push it further into a synth space I used octave pedals to make it sound like different layered voices as a tribute to oscillators, alongside a delay which finished the tone off creating this unorganised, uncomfortable texture. This became useful for a narrative sense within the composition process, transiting from the soft, satisfying pad timbres into a devolving, disordinate, industrial metal space.
Week 5
23rd - 29th March
This week became a slight realisation that when designing layered processing with the guitar tones it doesn’t open up many opportunities for multiple compositional ideas to be looped on top of each other such as the counterpoint melodies I was writing in week 2 because the sounds are so full that when another tone is layered alongside it becomes messy so I began stripping back some of the processing used between tones so that space opens up within the mix for the compositional ideas to shine through. Alongside when prototyping the composition having multiple layers of guitar continuously building from a production standpoint still sounded a bit dull despite the tones being varied with synth like and more traditional guitar timbres, so therefore I began adding an orchestral string section to back up the ambient pad guitar tones which made the composition more finalised and professional which will come through the performance of the piece.
Week 6
30th March – 5th April
I further dived into filling out the performance piece with other elements but with the distorted synthetic area of the piece as I was happy with the softer ambient side of the piece. With this I was influenced from artists such as the prodigy because of their use of typical band arrangement such as distorted guitars alongside synths and drum machines to create a heavy dance track. I tried to match this prodigy type characteristic by using the distorted synth guitar tones and layered it with typically distorted guitar tones which when together created a heavy and full sound that fit the techno combined with metal characteristic. This was then further backed with the addition of drum machines and a bass guitar creating a hard-hitting dance characteristic to the song, contrasting nicely with the orchestral/ambient pad section of the composition. I then had to decide how I want to pull off having this additional instrumentation included within the performance, after testing if I could play the elements live and looped I felt it took too long to add the layers and the piece lost momentum when it was supposed to be going into the heavier sections of the piece. Therefore I decided to use the additional instrumentation as a backing track which I would then play all the guitar sections to helping create more of an impact when switching between compositional styles.
Week 7
6th – 12th April
With this decision of using a backing to support the performance I realized this is an opportunity to take the guitar processing further back to where I originally had the guitar rigs at the start of the development process because I can create extreme short sound design material by using the guitar in unorthodox ways alongside the layers of processing. These experimental practices included playing the guitar with objects such as mallets or metal pipes, creating very textured material with a lot of new additional harmonics and sonic material that wouldn’t have been created through playing the guitar normally. One guitarist that is an inspiration for this extremely unorthodox process of seeing the guitar as “Just a piece of wood, its six wires, a few electronics” and this mindset removes the limits of traditional guitar playing and sees the potential to create vastly more material such as creating helicopter noises, or using a Killswitch to create rhythmic stuttering’s or even just playing the guitar cable by itself by putting it through various effects. Following this out of the box mindset was a goal this week when trying to push the limits of sonic capabilities within the guitar to put sound design material within the backing track.
Week 8
13th – 19th April
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