Background
I thought it would be interesting to talk about the process of writing a piece from conception to performance, in this case my new piece ‘Wind of the Sun’. From the very first ideas emerging in the subconscious, to the practicalities of actually achieving something that holds some of the initial power of the idea.
It is all too easy during the creation phase to lose sight of the initial idea and its feeling in consciousness, to be replaced by shorthand ideas that already exist in the working mind; ideas that exist as a sort of groove of habit. You have to be perpetually aware of when an idea is becoming diluted by pre-existing habits and concepts. This will inevitably happen in most cases, as we all have favoured practices and approaches, and a certain aesthetic identity, but it can be kept to an acceptable level.
The other side of this equation is being open to new ideas that appear in the mind, but which might at first seem unrealistic or uncomfortable. Every project should hold some discomfort I think, either in trying out a new concept, or in performing a new way, or involving a new process.
Wind of the Sun is a commission for Cryptic, to be premiered at Sonica in Glasgow in September 2024, but the initial idea existed before the commission appeared.
Process
It started with a dream in April 2024, a dream in which the Sun was literally tearing up the fabric of reality, the ground buckling and being pulled up into the air. It was accompanied by the knowledge that this was the ‘wind of the Sun’. The whole imagery was repeated again, this time with the accompanying phrase ‘the gravity of the Sun’.
Whilst the dream is personal, it occurred to me that it was a powerful image for the changes currently at play in the world. Our society is in the process of collapse, and in an even more fundamental way our planet is itself losing the ability to support life as we are living it. The Sun in the dream could be seen as an image of the archetypal forces at play in the world, fulfilling their role of fomenting and enforcing change regardless of the petty concerns of the material world: an unstoppable and natural force of change.
I generally find that this is how an idea begins, with simply an image and accompanying ideas and feelings. In this case, words that might be used to describe the feeling and emotions would be awe, power, life, nature, tension, thrum, and a sort of writhing coiled tension. On top of this there is the imagery of the Sun, the magnetic storms of its surface, the solar wind, the whorls of its structure and the sheer electromagnetic power of its being. The final set of images relate to its interaction with the world of matter, the tearing up of the ground, the gathering momentum and impending sense of power approaching. The Sun is also one of the oldest images of the divine, one of the original gods of primitive societies.
I’ll let these ideas sit in the subconscious, without analysis or planning, and allow ideas to surface naturally over the following weeks and months. Questions such as how to represent the power of the Sun, how to represent the gathering of forces and the feeling of approach.
In March 2024 I was given a two week residency at Cove Park by Cryptic in order to focus on the work and put some ideas down. Having a fortnight of uninterrupted peace and quiet to focus on a single project is a great luxury, but I can recommend the same concept to anyone persuing a creative path, even if it simply means isolating oneself at home or in a cheap airbnb in the off-season. Cove Park used to have no phone reception and only patchy internet, which was an added luxury, and again something I’d advocate replicating at home.
In any case, having the time to sit with the project and with my DAW open in front of me, ideas began to coalesce. As a side-note here I should also mention that for this kind of idea generation, I favour using a DAW like Ableton or Bitwig, where there are greater avenues available for sound design and unusual routing. My other software also largely reflects this way of working, whether that is Kyma or the Eaganmatrix that powers the Osmose synth.
Some ways of approaching the fundamentals of the piece began to appear:
- The magnetic resonance of the Sun and the natural harmonics of creation are well represented by the natural harmonics of the musical scale. These are in fact literal correspondances, the natural harmonics of the scale representing modes of vibration in all matter. When a tube is blown through, it will naturally produce a range of notes corresponding to the harmonic series. This can be heard in alpine music or traditional brass music, where the instruments have no valves and can only produce these particular notes.
- The writhing power of the forces can be reflected in the use of notes which are not fixed, and which can buckle and detune. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, both with an MPE keyboard and with the use of fluctuating delay lines.
- Feedback effects are also key here, to create that sense of liveness, and of forces operating just within the bounds of control.
- The approaching storm would have to be accomplished by the use of multiple speakers and the manipulation of sound in the space. More reverb and less high frequencies makes the sound seem further away, whilst greater brightness and direct sound creates the illusion of closeness.
- By this point I also knew what my performance venue would be – Govanhill Baths – and I knew that I had access to a massive acoustic in the next door main pool room. Therefore I knew that I would find a way to use this second room to create a sense of distance and subsequent approach.
- An idea that presented itself was to use a musician playing in the large pool, and to have their sound ‘piped’ through to the performance space so that not only could they be heard playing live in the huge acoustic some distance away, but that their sound could then also be brought directly into the performance room and manipulated in software and through the multiple speakers.
- I already knew that this instrument would be a French horn. A couple of weeks before Cove Park I had been walking down the street and past a large stone courtyard in which someone was practicing the horn. The sound left an impression and immediately suggested the ‘Wind of the Sun’ project. It just sounded ‘right’. An added dimension to this is that the French horn is golden and round and hence solar. This may sound a little contrived, but this type of physical correspondence is actually one of the oldest modes of thought on Earth, and at the very root of all magical and spiritual traditions. This idea is repeated in further aspects of the piece, as detailed below.
- The storm could also be represented audibly by the actual recordings of the Sun and Earth’s electromagnetic fields interacting. There are many good sources online of various types of interactions, whether that is solar storms interacting with the Earth’s upper atmosphere, or the sonification of other types of solar radiation.
- It was Nikola Tesla who said that the universe could be understood by means of energy, frequency and vibration. These principals can all be applied to acoustics, with resonance and harmonics being key. Any synthesis I did for this project would represent that.
By the end of Cove Park, I had a working outline of what instruments I would use, and roughly how I would approach the routing in Ableton. I also had a large number of field recordings of solar activity and the Earth’s magnetic fields, and a number of patches written for Kyma which incorporated them.
Instrument/Sculpture
Another idea that had been swimming around my mind for a while was the creation of some unusual speakers. I had recently bought an Osmose, one of which’s many gifts is being able to emulate the Ondes Martenot, an unusual early electronic French instrument recently made more famous by Jonny Greenwood, amongst others. This instrument also came with a range of unusual speakers designed by the original inventor, including ideas of resonance and harmonics. So naturally , this was of interest, and later of relevance to this project too. So I began to explore the idea of creating a gong speaker inspired by his original design.
A gong speaker is essentially a speaker driver attached to a gong instead of the usual paper or polyurethane cone. You play sound though the speaker driver and it vibrates the gong like a speaker, creating a sound with a strong metallic quality. An added advantage is that the gong is circular and golden, again reflecting the identity of the Sun, and it can also be mounted in any number of creative ways.
With this in mind, I decided to create a gong stand that would symbolise the idea of the interaction of archetypal forces and matter. Again, this happened extremely naturally and just ‘fell’ into consciousness: the stand would be the shape of the ‘vesica piscis’ of sacred geometry, symbolising matter and the feminine (I say ‘’create” but actually this was beyond my technical abilities so was created for me by Kate at the CCA workshop in Glasgow). The gong is a fitting symbol for the Sun, which also represents the masculine principle.
The final phase for any site-sensitive project is to rehearse in the space and to see what works and what doesn’t. Ideas which were cherished for months may fall away, and new ideas may appear through happy accidents. I always like to keep these performances largely improvised, in keeping with the philosophy of “right time, right place, right people”. Each performance has a different feeling, and each crowd a different sensibility. It is not something one can necessarily define, but it is a valid aspect none the less.
And that is as far as I have got – the first performance is on 21st September in Glasgow and if you are interested to attend, there are a limited number of tickets available here.
