Author: Uinseann Mould

Before I fully formalised my idea for this project I decided to do some research on graphical scores, history and also just find some inspirations for this project.

One big inspiration and also where I had first seen a graphical score in media was the Swedish movie ‘Sound of Noise’ in which one scene the composer for the group spend the night creating this long graphical score. What interested me was how in this movie was of course the music and how it was created. It reminds me of the idea I’m trying to represent in my work but in reverse. The movie recontextualises noise to create music, whereas I’m trying to recontextualise music to create noise.

Another small inspiration for this project was a song by Ben Howard ‘Finders Keepers’. It’s a big departure from Ben Howard’s normal style of music but I think it’s a great and strange harmony between noise and tonal music.

I wanted to find examples of graphical schools outside of the examples we’ve seen lesson, and I came across John Cage’s ‘Fontana Mix’ and Steve Reich’s ‘Pendulum Music’

‘Fontana Mix’ is a graphical score that consists of 10 transparencies with lines layered over a representation of a four-track cassette tape. This score is a great inspiration to me as it’s really practical, all the information for the piece is there and while it’s up for interpretation, there is clearly a right interpretation. I would say it’s akin to something like a spectrogram and it’s kind of the direction I want to go with my piece in terms of how it’s meant to be interpreted. While I think isn’t a good reason for every variable to be accounted for in my graphical score, I want to make it clear that there is a correct way to perform it, or at the very least it can be performed incorrectly. I think that’s clearly shown when you listen to ‘Fontana Mix’ because it sounds exactly how it looks despite the sounds themselves not being set in stone.

‘Pendulum Music’ is quite similar to ‘Fontana Mix’ if we look at it from the perspective that there is a right way to perform the composition; however, as shown it’s a completely different type of graphical score. Instead of being a literal display of the piece itself, it’s an itinerary of how to perform it. What I find interesting about this piece is that it doesn’t start when the sound starts, instead it’s a performance more than it is necessarily just a sound piece. I also love the way Reich frames the graphical score in respect to how it created such an elaborate setup that only amounts to maybe less than a minute’s worth of actual ‘sound art’, yet the line “performers then sit down to watch and listen to the process along with the audience,” makes it sound as if swinging of the mikes would last an eternity. One thing I really want to incorporate into my work from this is how all the tools to perform the composition are given; however, the way it sounds is discovered by everyone for the first time only when the piece is being performed. Despite that, one thing I don’t want to do is put words into my graphical score, partly because I wouldn’t want it to be limited to English speakers but also because making clear senses isn’t something which comes naturally, as one can easily tell.

I find it interesting to research a topic when I want to discover the process of it not necessarily the meanings behind it, and I’d like to think that this research has been fruitful as it has defined more what the graphical part of my score will actually look like.

After a bit of deliberation, I’ve decided to go down the route of graphical scores. There are two main reasons why I want to create a graphical score piece for this project. The first is because I have deep roots in the visual arts and fine art. In most of the projects I’ve done so far for this course, I’ve always made a visual stimulus to focus my thoughts and to remind myself of my vision for the respective project. There would always be something visual that informs my work, so I thought it only made sense to make a graphical score for this project.

My second reason is that I’ve found a way to make creating a graphical score thoroughly interesting for myself, and I think the best way to describe that realisation is to recount what happened during our lesson on graphical scores, the quick graphical score I made in that lesson and the logical conclusions I came to in the end.

In the lesson, I understood that a graphical score was classically used as an alternative score, like TAB technically, but has also been used more abstractly. Multiple projects I’ve done in the past came to mind because of this, especially the one where I used my fine art as spectrograms and then edited the dynamic range and relative frequencies to manipulate the art itself. I couldn’t do the same project again because that would be boring so I thought about my previous projects some more and then I came across a digital painting of a ‘Tascam 38 Eight Track Tape Recorder’ that I never finished.

While the magnetic tape wasn’t an idea within my graphical score, it did get me to think about shellac records and loops. The idea of a cyclical piece in which ideas are introduced and constantly repeat but never change themselves became the basis of my graphical score.

As you can tell this score isn’t very graphical, in fact, it looks more like a key to a map than it does a composition of music; however, I think that it would be very interesting to explain the initial idea.

The main premise was that there would be four different loops from four different instruments which would play at different tempos as well as having different lengths in terms of notes or ‘transients’. There would also be someone who keeps the tempo and guides each instrument as they would come in in a cannon, as vaguely explained on the sheet. An idea I added on top of the main premise which the accenting of notes at specific times. This would mean that each performer would accent the notes in a loop that would correspond with the number of instruments in play. For instance, with one instrument in play the first or ‘1’ note would be accented and when the second instrument came in the second or ‘2’ note would be accented instead.


As one who has a great interest in coding as well as puzzles, this graphical score came to me in flash but I soon realised that performing such a score was exceedingly difficult, as it would soon be seen when my score was picked to be performed last and no one understood what to do.

While I found no fault with the performance by my classmates because my ‘instructions’ were very vague and not what anyone was expecting, it did frustrate me that my idea hadn’t come to full fruition, which is why I want to do a proper graphical score for this project.

I plan to make a set of rules before I actually make my piece, with the same core idea taken to its logical extreme. My aim is to fully flesh out my interpretation of my idea but have a graphical score that leaves enough room for anyone to have their take on my ‘composition’.

But why do I want to make a piece like this. the group idea whose project is change; however, when I get excited with the process I kind of leave the ‘higher meaning’, so this is my take on the topic of change.
My piece is trying to show how things can change in context, taking sequences do not change throughout the piece however their relationships with each other change creating a new relationship.

This piece is called ‘4 Position’.
A graphical score that relies on only four different instruments or performers. Each performer would play a sequence repeatedly with a different time signature and tempo from the other performers. Despite this desynchrony, each performers’ part affects another’s part, affecting things like accenting a note, using tremolo, using more or less distortion, et cetera.
‘4 Position’ is trying to recontextualise the sounds of four different instruments, constantly changing for relationships between them, breaking away from what would be expected from such instruments.

Change, is it always good? Is breaking away from the status quo always righteous, always with the best for humanity, always for the greater good. It only takes 1 misshapen cog to stop a whole machine but it also only takes one dissenter to cause a revolution.

But why ‘4 Position’? it’s a simple concept. All of the parts are different, different in difficulty, scope and meaning; however, the same cannot be said for importance. Each part has a relationship with every other part, unique relationships that constantly affect the sound they make. Even when that relationship changes, ebbs and flows, it is still there and it’s still just as important, it is only when that relationship stops that the 4 position collapses in on itself.

As is the notion of the ‘4 Position’ finds harmony amongst themselves than with those outside of the system.

This blog is a reflection on the piece I made in the end and why I decided to stop where I was.

The piece I made was exactly how it should have sounded, well at least exactly how it would have sounded. Unfortunately, that sound wasn’t necessarily nice or interesting. But again, it’s what you would have expected with the idea I had.
I think one of the big pitfalls I faced in this project was making it tonal at all. The piece is meant to be tonal and then taken out of context for it to become atonal, and almost see I achieved that; however, the piece didn’t have enough interesting ideas to carry it through its runtime. This is mainly an oversight on my part as I thought the idea itself would be interesting enough to carry it to the end but that wasn’t enough. What should have been done to make it more interesting was raising the average amount of samples for each instrument and also having each sample be very different in terms of frequency. For example, the bass guitar part was too infrequent while for vocals were way too frequent and this meant that I couldn’t really raise the tempo because it would thus become too cluttered.
Another problem I faced was sidechaining the FX. In Ableton, there wasn’t any native plugin to sidechain specific potentiometers and I honestly didn’t have to know how to make a plugin for it ( nor did I have Max for Live). This meant that I couldn’t put any relevant automation on my FX, contributing even more to the problem that it became stale over its course.
The biggest drawback I found was that the program I was using, Ableton, did not support my idea as the tools just were not there. If I was to do this again, I would make it in pure data as it should be able to handle the ideas I’m trying to realise.

Probably the hardest decision during the process of making ‘4 Position’ was making it nicer acoustically. I had to decide between breaking away from the graphical score and actually submitting something a little bit decent, and this was the a little bit decent path. I mean this in a way I used effects stop that wasn’t connected to the audio signals of the other instruments and that I also changed the notes of an instrument so that the piece at the very least fits tonally, which made it a lot less jarring to listen to.

The thing with my graphical score is that I loved making it, but the product isn’t anything I would like so it’s hard to judge my own piece critically when I can’t necessarily appreciate it for what it is. I do think that there would be people who like this, even if those people are far and few between, but there are reasons why I stopped where I did.

Firstly, it’s been a struggle to actually finish this project, there wasn’t much free time, had to work a lot, and honestly, the creative flair wasn’t there like it was in previous projects, which of course stagnated the progress of the projects and also meant that I didn’t iterate enough.
Secondly, it’s an idea I want to revisit but I know I don’t have the time to completely change what I’m doing. It’s polyrhythmic so maybe I’ll just use drums. Maybe with more loops, it would have been more effective, instead of there being no real weight between over instruments. Maybe I should have made one of the instruments the “guide track”.
On top of this, I’ll need to learn coding to fully realise this idea in its best form, which I think could probably be quite similar to what I’ve done in this project but with the changes I said I would make if I did it again as well as using very similar instruments that can make a variety of sounds for each instrument (like a synthesiser, drums or woodwind).
Another way to rectify some of the problems I had with this project may be to make each part play the same sequence, but still at a different tempo and time signature.

While the result wasn’t necessarily what I was looking for, this project is probably the one where I have done the most growing because I’ve made the most mistakes in it. I need to prototype more, I need to iterate more, and most of all I need to learn the necessary skills to realise my ideas instead of relying on the skills I already have. That last point is something I’m personally proud of because if this project has shown me one thing about myself, it’s that my idea generation is not restricted by my skill set but instead by my interests, so if I really want to push myself as a sound artist I need to broaden my horizons.

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.

This initial blog will be talking about the content from a few lessons we’ve had so far and about the group theme that I believe we decided on.

The lesson we had on ‘The Voice’ was one that greatly interested me as I am something of a singer myself. Within my sound art, I’ve always struggled to incorporate my voice and I feel like a big reason for that is the notion that understanding and meaning are derived from language and without it, the human voice isn’t being used to its full potential. While it wasn’t something we are formally taught in the lesson, what left a lasting impression on me was the active reluctance to use normal language in the examples we were shown as well as the case studies that are on moodle, and how that helps in conveying emotion and meaning.

Speech deprived of words means that one doesn’t have to decipher what they are hearing in terms of language as they cannot even attempt to understand that aspect. I feel like this is useful in sound art especially because it’s one of the more niche arts and sometimes the barrier to entry can be high; however, by taking out the intellectual part of the voice, all that is left is to feel what the piece is trying to stay instead of just listening.
Something I’ve been thinking about for a long time is tone and how one’s tone can completely change the meaning of what one says, and this lesson helped me link that to the voice in general instead of just language, putting in perspective the power of the voice before anything is technically said.

Another thing that stood out to me was how listeners can contribute to a sound piece. It’s not a new concept to me as everyone has heard of John Cage’s ‘4’33″’; however, the ways in which that can be applied are more numerous than I thought, from things like directly manipulating the sound created to the sound causing a physiological reaction in the listener that changes the way they hear it.

The group theme is ‘Change’, at least it was last time I checked. Honestly, I have no ideas upon hearing about this topic, not because there aren’t things to say or things I could talk about, it’s just there’s nothing I want to say or at least nothing that should be said in a project for university, unfortunately.
I’m quite stumped in the meaning behind my work so instead, I’m planning to focus more on the process. What I mean by this is making the piece interesting through how it’s made and not necessary what trying to say.