Catch and Release: Field Recordings as Source for Instrumental Composition

Yvonne Freckmann

The richness and variety of sound in field recordings has inspired numerous electro-acoustic and soundscape compositions, but what about the traditional composition realm? Is there a way to translate for and combine soundscapes with another medium? “How can field recordings be used as a source for instrumental compositions?” is the main research question under investigation here, which developed out of my creative pursuits in composing for instruments and field recordings. The first method I personally applied was to transcribe a field recording by ear for a mixed ensemble for Train, which simultaneously played the transcription with the original audio. The process and results of this piece prompted me to think and read more about mimesis in music, and how the two worlds of electro-acoustic/soundscape and instrumental music can combine. This research paper contains a short introduction to the historical context of mimesis in music (vocal/instrumental and electro-acoustic) to provide the connection of current trends to the past. To investigate the main approaches I proceeded to analyze and categorize music of field recordings with instruments. Using these analysis tools and categories, I investigated examples within roughly the past sixty years of pieces that use field recordings as source for instrumental music, be it for transcription, score, background, or for live interaction. The research results are detailed in four chapters, “Analysis Tools”, “Five Categories”, and two chapters on original compositions. The concepts of place and live versus pre-recorded sound were interesting to investigate as well.

Introduction

The world and daily life are filled with sound: rich chaotic noise, buzzes, hums, voices of people and animals, weather, and machines. Some sounds are signals (a walk signal or ATM, the ring of a phone), some are a result of a process (the hum and 'whoosh' of an air-conditioner or an insect's wings), some sounds are related to weather or acoustic spaces (a train station or office cubicle or an open field, the beach), and some are difficult to categorize. Field recordings enable us to capture and preserve a version of these events and bring them to a place of communal focused listening: the concert hall.

Such recordings are not a new approach, especially as material for electroacoustic pieces, with a rich history initiated by Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) with his musique concrète and R. Murray Schafer (b.1933) with his soundscape approach. By using this technology, sounds of the world could become music (abstracted or representational) and enter into a dialogue with classical instruments about: the nature of sound, sound sources, and place. Mimesis and sound painting of the 'real world' has been part of music since humans could imitate birdsong by whistling or singing, or raindrops on a skin drum. Now hyper-sensitive microphones and high-quality loudspeakers reinforce this human urge to a new extreme.

In this research I focused on field recordings combined with instruments as an intriguing category, mixing sounds of traditional instruments that bring their various associations and histories with the audio that carries information of (perceived) time, place, life forms, events, and space. My interest in this topic began when I challenged myself to transcribe a complex sixty-second field recording inside a train for a small mixed ensemble. I had not expected to find such a rich source for transcription and composition in my daily surroundings aided by a simple hand-held audio recorder! I was drawn to investigate existing repertoire and the effect/affect and meanings I was creating with these type of projects. Soon I discovered that even with years of music composition, history and theory training, plus electro-acoustic/ electronic education I would need to develop new categories and tools for analysis of this type of music. Thus my main research question became the following: How can field recordings be used as a source for instrumental compositions? During the research process other questions came to mind: What are the main approaches and considerations? What happens in the intersection and blending of electro-acoustic and instrumental music? How much imitation or interaction happens between the tape and the instruments? Which parts are live or recorded? These questions arose as I investigated more of these pieces, and I worked on a categorization system for them based on liveness-time of the elements. Each category I devised includes definition and work examples. As apt to happen with any categorization, some pieces may fit in more than one category.

Musicologist, educator, and keyboardist Bob Gilmore (1961-2015) describes the effect of using field recordings inside a music composition as “rather like making windows in the fabric of the piece and inserting photographic images...”¹His podcast “Tentative Affinities: Field Recordings and New Music” outlines common sonic materials for these types of works: environmental sounds, especially bird sounds, warfare, weather, water, and the sea, all of which are archetypes that appear in earlier instrumental compositions as well. This resource led me to various interesting pieces and ways to think about commonalities and differences in this genre.

Overview

Following a Historical Context overview of instrumental and electroacoustic composition as related to mimesis and transcription comes an outline of my Research Method and detailed results. Chapter 1: Analysis Tools is one of the main results of the research: suggested parameters to analyze and think about field recordings and their transcription/recombination, and key terms by experts in the field. These analysis tools are applied throughout the paper. In Chapter 2 “Five Categories” I describe in detail five categories with composition examples. The categories are based on the place of performance and “liveness” of the two elements: field recording and instruments. The venue is either “Indoors” (sheltered and controlled space such as a concert hall) or “Outdoors” (uncontrolled, unsheltered space), and the “field recording” can be pre-recorded or live, and the instrumental performance can be pre-recorded or live. In Chapter 3 the analysis of my composition Train details my approaches to transcribing the sound layers for seven players, and my experimentations with form. The basis of this piece and the one of the following chapter is a short 1-minute and 1-and-a-half-minute tape loop, like a passacaglia. Chapter 4 focuses on the analysis of my composition Escalator, which is an audio/visual translation piece using Yamaha Disklavier. The Conclusion includes final thoughts, reflections and questions for further investigation.

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