Audiogentry
Adrian Moore
Programme notes
Audiogentry is a short soundscape work using field recordings made by staff and students in and around Kelham Island Museum. Prominent among the sounds recorded is the huge River Don Engine with squeals and bangs. Just off the island, on the other side of the Don, but still sitting easily against the loft apartments, restaurants, cafes and gastro-pubs was Woodware Repetitions Ltd (wood turners), part of the famous George Barnsley dynasty. It was important that I captured “working” sounds of then and now. On the wood turners’ factory floor you hear a repetitive saw as blocks were continuously cut by hand.
All of these sounds are — to most people — loud (everyone on the Woodware factory floor had ear protectors), noisy (full of frequencies), harsh and ugly. Part of my process therefore was to bring these sounds under control by setting them in a new audio environment and exaggerating aspects of their pitch and rhythm. Squeals are extracted and turned to musical pitches and loud, industrial noises are given a mechanical pulse (perhaps made to breathe). Harsh sounds are coloured to extract drones and harmonies. The noise of the dirty is rendered clean and popular through the addition of a layer of pitch and the structure of pulse. Gentrification of noisy audio
One of the techniques used at the beginning of this piece (and adopted again in the wt_ pieces) is side-chain compression. This is where one sound’s amplitude “controls” the dynamics of another. You often hear this technique in dance music where the kick drum dampens the synth momentarily and then the synth comes back in. Technically it allows both sounds to have more amplitude and remain louder in a mix. For me it also gives sounds a sense of related pulse or energy transfer.
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Audiogentry was realized in 2019 at the composer’s studio in Sheffield (England, UK) and premiered on July 17, 2019, during the event From Brooklyn Works to Brooklynism
Premiere
- July 17, 2019, From Brooklyn Works to Brooklynism
: An Evening of Sonic Art and Poetry, Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield (England, UK)
- Composer(s): Adrian Moore
- Year of composition: 2019
- Duration: 6:37
- Instrumentation: stereo fixed medium
- Publisher(s): Ymx média
- Commission: Kelham Island Museum
- ISRC: CAD502510008
