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Winner of the Elizabeth Mills Crothers award for best composition 2010.
As a performer in an early vocal music ensemble, I reveled in the tonal quality created when our voices, moving in and out of the most subtle vibrato, we were able to meld together as one voice. The connection that this vocal timbre created with the other performers was an incredibly immersive experience for me as a performer. This is a similar feeling I have when listening to fm-synthesis, with the slightest variation creating the most subtle of timbral changes. This lead me to placing simple synthesis sounds with these voices and through the addition of panning and multichannel placement, melt each element together and starkly separate them as well.
As I began to delve further into ideas of embodiment in performance I began to write exploratory elements into the piece. I used spatialization as a way to draw attention to what is understood as embodied sound in vocal performance. In the middle section the singers start out singing without amplification. Together, they raise the microphones and suddenly the sound is both localized and removed. The audience sees their mouths open yet hears a sound coming from behind. This is then repeated with the sound appearing from the front. This was not meant to disorient the audience; it was simply meant to explore the effects of spatialization and amplification on perception. This section concludes with harsh metallic processing accompanied by synthesized electronics. The timbre of the processed voices was similar to that of the synthesized electronic FM stabs, in effect presenting the voices on par with the electronics.
Please see the full score for voice and computer here.
