The Digital Domain

Record Production & Phonology

Developed for RMIT Media Arts

DIGITAL DOMAINS

The previous examples we heard to do with Record Production (Voice, Orchestra & Ensembles) dealt with ways in which INSTRUMENTS were PERFORMED in an ACOUSTIC SPACE. Such examples - and indeed the history of analogue recording - have at their centre a dynamic relationship between the sonic event and the microphone. The arrangement of microphones in a space are integral to shaping the RECORDED SPACE which contains (in either REAL TIME or TAPE TIME) the events of the musical performance. As such, analogue record production is as much based on the sound of the SPACE in which sound happens, rather than exclusively the SOUND being made in that space.

Once you shift this paradigm into a DIGITAL RECORDING ENVIRONMENT, many things change:

ANALOGUE RECORDING
• Sonic event in real time/space : real instruments played in a real space in real time
• Modular time-tracking : passages of real-time recorded are synchronously overlayed through multi-tracking
• Event-dependent duration : the duration of the recording is based on the time passages which were originally performed
• Recorded time/space : the finished recording is temporally relative to the envisaged time of the original composition

DIGITAL SAMPLING
• Sonic event in digital time/space : real instruments (sampled) or hyperreal instruments (digitally constructed/edited voices) played in a cyber space (no actual spatial environment required) in fragments of real time and MIDI time
• MIDI time tracking : passages of real-time and MIDI time are hyper-synchronously (ie. can numerically shifted to any synch relationship) overlayed through the editing, syncing and alignment of MIDI events
• Serial & modular duration : the duration of the recording is based on wherever and whenever and however the passages of hyper-synchronous time might potentially be constructed
• Virtual time/space : the finished recording has no pre-determined temporal or spatial inter-relationships because real space and real time figured little in both the original elements and their performance.

EXAMPLES

FREQUENCY EXPANSION

The following examples demonstrate FREQUENCY EXPANSION. Here, sampled sounds and constructed instruments are aligned with each to generate extreme frequency difference. Thus you get extremely low rumbles and piercing high screeches -not because the original 'sounds' have those innate and material quality, but because their digital processing pushes the into these hyper-realms.

The Age Of Love - THE AGE OF LOVE (1992)
Note the use of the soft booming bass drum and how it is juxtaposed against the very high hi-hats. The piece starts off to clearly delineate this frequency domain, and then progressively ''fills' it with other sounds. Note also the resonant filter sweep which theatrically fills the gap between the outer frequency points.

Microglobe - HIGH ON LOVE (Long Hot Summer Mix) (1992)
This piece is more of a stylistic approach to outlaying an expanded frequency domain. Two musical styles or sub-genres are contrasted by their clash against each other: mainly between Euro-House style piano thumping and the more Berlin/Detroit hard Techno samples. Note, though, that each are playing the same melody. This means that the melody is simply a vessel for the texture of the sound. In para-schizophrenic fashion, the piece stylistically attacks itself, often breaking itself up with a voice saying "OK now let's get to the real thing" etc. Style itself is rendered as a potential moment which could possibly stylistically appear that way.

Ilsa Gold - UP (1993)
A more extreme and complex clash of styles and frequencies. The first half of the piece paints a kiddie-Techno sound based on computer games sfx. The second half of the piece is obliterated by a digitally-distorted kick-drum. Effectively, most sounds incorporated in this piece are deliberately designed to be opposed by all other sounds, giving the effect of a hyper-heterogeneous construct. The sounds by themselves have no specific or fixed 'meaning' (hence the absurdity of many of them) but their purpose is realized by their placement against one another in the clashing environment of their expanded frequency domain.

NON-APPARENT CONSTRUCTION

The following examples demonstrate ways in which the compositional process is essentially itself the document of a possible sono-musical construct. Because neither the 'song' nor the bulk of the 'instruments' exist prior to the digital construction (sampling & sequencing etc.), the flow, shape and dynamics of a piece are always NON-APPARENT. They become evident through the act of construction.

Luke Slater's 7th Plain - PEARL (1994)
A good example of creating a spatial hierarchy by simulating an acoustically displaced space. In a sense, most musical composition is based on the notion of an ideal or centralized point of experience, where everything can be heard clearly. Analogue recording, for example, is centred around this notion, because an actual event of sound-in-space exists prior to and simultaneous with the recording. But when those events and components do not exist as an a priori, neither does the ideal or centralized point of experience. Digital compositions can thus create displaced listening perspectives and sensations - like this piece (and other similar ambient pieces) which sounds like it's coming from another room.

Paperclip People - THROW (1994)
Not as radical with its construction of virtual space as the previous example, this piece nonetheless demonstrates well the absence of constructional logic which usually governs musical composition. Note how the piece fades up a relationship between extreme foreground background - but then holds this without developing it further. Then, after about 2 minutes of being locked in this groove, the percussive texture changes momentarily, breaks apart, and then resumes its original configuration. A good example of 'incidentalism' - where incidents are treated in casual and non-dramatic fashion in the musical composition, and thereby given more weighting than notions and events of melody and rhythm.

Ultramarine - SARATOGA (Upstate mix) (1994)
An example of complex layering and overlaying of musical samples, so that dense effects of simulation and 'musical-genetic fusion' occur. By this mean that samples are used exclusively in order to blend with each other, so that the difference between what is sampled and what is digitally performed is blurred. The musical compositional process is thus focused on how one can facilitate such blurring and blending, making this approach quite the opposite to those dealing with FREQUENCY EXPANSION.

FRAGMENTATION

The following examples demonstrate ways in which the whole compositional process is based on FRAGMENTATION. The general desire and intention with such pieces appears to be to neither join, blend, fuse nor contrast the sounds.

Influid III - THE DESTROYER (1994)
An extreme example of fragmentation, here a single kick-drum pulse is soloed and highlight, moving from a low tempo through to a high-pitched digital squeal as it cycles at a BPM over 1,000(!). Note also the way in which the sound of the kick-drums is processed to delicately reveal and detail the exact nature and density of the distortion effecting the kick-drum. Ultimately, this piece makes direct monolithic statements of bass, beat and noise: the fragmented essences of Techno.

Dyewitness & The Nightraver - THE FUTURE (1994)
Fragments are employed here to generate the simulation of a live rave. The perversity of this piece and many of its ilk is the way that a 'live' event is digitally created, using the white noise of a virtual crowd to generate energy within the piece. Such pieces are composed of fragments of crowd noise, synth pulsing, drum machines and occasional vocal chants and phrases. The point is that they appear to be 'relating' together when in fact they are totally isolated in the digital domain of sampling and sequencing.

Hyper On Experience - LORDS OF THE NULL LINES (1994)
Jungle Techno is perhaps the most extreme form of linear fragmentation, in that every sound, sample and event is treated as a mono-dimensional incident. This emphasis on a linear trailing of incidents renders the compositional process as one of linking things together more than layering them. The high BPMs (c. 190-220) create a rushing surge that works to prevent you from experiencing the sounds in any way other than a fast flash of incidents and events replacing each other as they flash by.

Text © Philip Brophy.