Something in the Wire
Ideas can have strange beginnings.
I taught on the music and sound courses at the National Film and Television School after leaving the BBC. For one project, students were asked to form groups and come up with original ideas for new audio productions. One sound design student, had just moved into a new flat, and was intrigued and somewhat unnerved by a mysterious noise that kept attracting her attention. She wondered whether it was a guy revving a motorbike in the basement, but every time she went to investigate, the sound had stopped. There was no motorbike. In fact, there was no one there at all. She teamed up with a couple of other students, and decided to make a drama documentary featuring their relentless efforts to track down this elusive noise.
We are all pre-programmed to identify anything that might threaten us, and there was something about that piece that addressed a much darker level of the subconscious. Perhaps there was something here that would act as inspiration for a new composition?
I am not a classically trained musician, but have always operated spontaneously and reactively to the music I am composing. In many ways, I regret the lack of musical expertise to fall back on, and have enormous respect for those that have not only undergone that training but have retained a strong sense of creativity. Without that ‘outside in’ contribution from learned skill, for me the direction of travel is reversed. The ‘inside out’ method means that it is the sound that you are already making that suggests what should happen next. Ideas rise up from the piece itself, as if you are stripping away everything that is stopping you hear what is already there. To repeat a much quoted cliche about sculptors, we are simply removing unwanted material. Hidden deep in the cacophony of our early attempts, there is a sound yearning to be discovered. What would happen then, if this presence, the possibility of something already existing, becomes an obsession?
Of course, with the possibility of there being something there, it is a short leap to imagine it being humanised, having a voice of some sort. So coupled with my abiding interest in voice manipulation, what happens next is almost inevitable…
Having lead myself into this unearthly place, there seems little alternative but to forge ahead, allowing the material itself to morph into whatever it wants. By the time the piece finishes, we are in the presence of a curiously robotic tenor (created in Virsyn’s ‘Cantor’) and a full string orchestra!
By the way, the student’s mysterious sound turned out to be the electric gate to the underground car park. Oh and one member of her team was a certain Segun Akinola!
You can find Something in the Wire in Latest Music, and the whole 4 minute piece on Spotify, iTunes, Amazon and other platforms