Synthesize Me! First steps into a new project with learning disabled musicians
As detailed in my last blog post the Carousel House Band is embarking on a new project called Synthesize Me! The project will focus on creating music informed by sound manipulation, inspired by the work of pioneering music concrete / electronic musicians Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram. We began the project by watching clips from this documentary about Delia Derbyshire and her work at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the mid 1960's. here is a link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2dvGQ32q8g
We discussed how technology has advanced since then and looked at one of Delia's key techniques; creating sound samples from objects using a reel to reel tape machine and microphone which she would then manipulate by speeding up or slowing down the tape playback speed.
We are using Ableton software but we can emulate the effect of speeding up or slowing down a reel to reel tape machine with digital pitch shifting within our software.
As a way of introducing this theme we played a game which i devised to encourage the band members to think about how many different sounds we could create using a basic item. Each band member worked with a simple sheet of A4 pape to explore it's sound possibilities; scrunching, ripping, shaking, etc. It was quite amazing to see how many sounds we could create!
It worked well and the band members seemed to enjoy the challenge of being creative with such a simple item. The sounds were recorded into the software and then i was able to quickly demonstrate sound manipulations such as pitch shifting. I think this activity set the scene well for the next part of the project which i will detail in my next post!
Please visit the links below to find out more about Carousel, a learning disability arts organisation based in Brighton, UK.
Website:
Twitter:
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/carouselartuk
Instagram:
www.instagram.com/carouselartuk