New piece for GreyWing for the concert Artificial Field - rising water. A field recording by Leah Barclay of flood waters in Queensland was resynthesised: firstly by using frequency data to control amplitude and amplitude data to control frequency; secondly by "threshing" - using and sustaining only the strongest sinusoids (the lower spectrogram); and finally by "freezing" the frequency spectrum at points of prominent amplitude transitions (the upper spectrogram). The spectral freeze points were then used to derive a sectional formal structure for the work. "Lyrebird" software was used to create a "base" score representing strongest sinusoids and coloring them according to their timbral qualities. This score was then separated into three colours (timbres) and distributed to the three instruments (bass clarinet, electric guitar and harp). Then layers sometimes obscuring this score were built by transcribing shapes from the "thresh" and freeze" spectrograms. The variation in this material was used to define the sectional structure (which had been derived from the data in the original recording). Thanks to Leah Barclay for letting me use another of her fantastic field recordings. Below is the opening few seconds of the "full score".
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