This blog will go over my plan for the project in detail, including all the boundaries, rules and mechanics of my graphical score as well as the visual design of my graphical score.
From the initial graphical score, I’m gonna keep the sequence of loops the same, how each instrument gets introduced and the idea of accenting notes at specific times.
The instruments I’m going to use are:
1. Bass guitar
2. Electric guitar
3. Flute/woodwind
4. Voice
The way I’m going to implement these instruments into the track is by making a MIDI keyboard of the sampled sounds for each different instrument and then use a sequencer to play them. The reason I want to use these instruments is that they are instruments I’m the most familiar with and I believe they’re using something ‘classically’ tonal will add to how strange the piece sounds, at least to someone who listens to mainly western music. On top of this, the idea of changing the relationship between the loops is greater represented when there’s a clear relationship between them in the first place. Instead of the instruments being different noise generators in the most literal sense, they’re something that our ears are used to and understand, that then gets taken more and more out of context after each iteration.
While it’s not the same idea, the way I want to accent notes is by using three different filters on each track that are side-chained to every other track. These filters being overdrive, delay and a phaser. The track is going to get very noisy by the end and I don’t want anything to be too unclear. On the other hand, I don’t want to manipulate the tracks too much outside of their ‘natural sound,’ meaning that I don’t want to master the track post-making the track as I feel like that kind of defeats the purpose of a graphical score, because they using performed live and I think it would be more authentic to listen to the piece for what it is. I also want to avoid using reverb as I think it could easily lead to the track becoming quite messy.
The tempos in my track will vary from 40bpm – to 60bpm. This is actually a big change from the initial graphical score as I envisioned the piece to be much faster, maxing out at 180bpm. The reason for the change in bpm is again because the track will become noisy and I want the samples to breathe as there isn’t much reason to introduce the different instruments one by one if they are not heard properly.
In terms of the design of the graphical score, my vision for it is 4 Different coloured records in a diamond formation with links between each of them to show the fact that they are interconnected. On each disc will be the sequence of its sounds as well as a number in the middle to represent the order that comes in. The size of each disc will correspond to how fast it plays, smaller being faster and bigger being slower.
It’s a simple design but would best represent the idea I’m trying to get across as it’s a concept that most people would understand because it references DJ turntables but is convoluted enough to cause different interpretations of what the composition is.
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