COMPOUNDS
The objective of my work is to tighten the music's bond to experiences of everyday reality, to keep the music open for concrete acoustic phenomena of the environment and to challenge the division made between art and life. One possibility is working with sonic materials found in everyday life which, due to their profane origin, are initially perceived as ordinary, but are loaded by intersubjective experience.
The pieces of the COMPOUND series evolve from recordings of my everyday environment. The recordings are mostly made of sounds I come across, rather than seek out, which grab my attention because of their structure. I value exceptional structures over exceptional sounds, the latter being too easily culinarily perceived and steering towards a naturalistic aesthetic. In principal, almost every acoustic time frame can become a part of the material pool.
A technique that is vital for my work is transcription - the translation of recorded acoustic flow into musical notation, playable by instrumentalists. However, the unavoidable difference between the original recording and the transcription is not the focus of my interest. Firstly, I understand the transcription process itself as a compositional intervention, which involves certain filtrations of the source material as well as an accentuation of particular attributes over others. Secondly, I am more interested in the processing of the transcriptions into derivatives (which will be covered in one of the next paragraphs) and in putting various materials from different contexts into a confrontational situation, causing them to comment on one another.
I do not produce structures similar to an imaginary phenomenon, like a chorus of horns, for example. This is a significant difference from the rather old artifice of onomatopoeia or programme music, where the idea of a real acoustic phenomenon is subordinated to the hierarchy of an artistic body of rules. In my case, the instruments play one concrete and particular chorus of horns and, by combination with the original recordings played back through loudspeakers, eventually become a part of it.
My regarding of the transcription process as a compositionally significant action results in the abdication of easily accessible transcription software, which automatises the transcription, forcing the user to trust in the internal analysis algorithms. Instead, I developed my own transcription software over the last years (the transcription editor mtc), which allows for the user to edit the data "by hand". This way, every event which is eventually going to be a note to be played by an instrumentalist can be set and controlled during the transcription procedure itself.
mtc operates on an abstract layer between digital sound files and musical notation and can also be used to create electronic derivatives of the source recordings.
In addition to electronic variations of the source recordings there are derivatives created from the transcriptions, as I mentioned before. These include coarsenings, simplifications, subjective continuations, associatively composed combinations of particular aspects, filtrations and the like. In some cases such derivatives can be made of multiple materials (or their derivatives respectively) resulting in new objects, which do not allow their components to be easily deduced. I call these objects compound-derivatives. A compound-derivative is not, however, a simple mixture of multiple primary materials, but the result of more elaborate compositonal procedures. Like a chemical reaction two or more elements are being combined into a new substance:
"The physical and chemical properties of compounds are different from those of their constituent elements. This is one of the main criteria for distinguishing a compound from a mixture of elements or other substances because a mixture's properties are generally closely related to and dependent on the properties of its constituents. Another criterion for distinguishing a compound from a mixture is that the constituents of a mixture can usually be separated by simple, mechanical means such as filtering, evaporation, or use of a magnetic force, but the components of a compound can only be separated by a chemical reaction. Conversely, mixtures can be created by mechanical means alone, but a compound can only be created [...] by a chemical reaction."1
Similar to a chemical compound, which can not be separated by mechanical means, and which posseses attributes different from those of it's constituents, the components of a compound-derivative can not be easily deduced, like from a mixture or a montage. They are new entities, which are related to their primary materials, are not necessarily without similarities, but can not be classified without dispute.
By building multiple derivatives of one primary material, the degree of closeness of a structure to the initial transcription can become subject of formal arrangement, different materials of different origins ally with one another to form new structures and the profane quality of the material can be perceived in new ways.
All materials, primary materials as well as their derivatives, are combined into a material network. The network structure portraits connections between materials which have inherited something from one anthother, and other connections, which essentially result from phenomenological similarities. All objects of the network belong to "identities", rough classifications of acoustic material, mostly determined by their origin, which build the titles of the pieces.2 The network functions: as a material pool, as a tool for administration purposes (editing relations between objects and creating connections between materials), as a generator (the combination of several materials into compound-derivatives is not possible without an overview over existing compatibilities), as well as as a base for formal organisation, which will be explained in the next section. The network is growing independently from the work on particular pieces. New materials are being added to the network all the time, creating new possibilities of connection and changing the inner order of the network constantly.
The selection of materials for a piece takes place with precise focus on the instruments to be used3, though not completely without coincidence; if the national soccer team of turkey had not reached the eighth final of the European Soccer Championship in 2008, the chorus of horns at Hermannplatz in Berlin would not have taken place and Compound No. 1 (for two accordeons and electronics) would have become an entirely different piece of music.
The four main identities of Compound No. 1: CAR SEX VOICE HONKER are being taken on by the accordeons during the course of the piece. The accordeons become passing cars, breathing individuals, voices and car horns.
As stated earlier, the imitation of recorded sounds is not the focus of my interest. The point is the shifting, transformation and recontextualisation of identities.4
The network itself is graphically represented as a two dimensional structure. A custom software was developed which, in addition to managing the network with the materials and all their files, arranges the material objects and their connections on a plane bounded by the identities. Furthermore, connections between materials actually are tags, they are provided with attributes, so that the network does also function as a slip box5 which can be questioned.
The structure of the network allows for a new form of montage, which does not emphasize the status by means of the cut6, but which focuses on transformations: In some sections of the pieces a kind of gravitational cloud crosses the network, setting some materials into a temporary center. Objects residing close to that point can then alternate quickly, emerging and descending repeatedly, thus producing a vivid structure while guaranteeing that certain similarities are being preserved.