The voice is one of the most dynamic instruments that we have access to, our society is based on oral tradition and languages were spoken before written in a lot of my recent music i have been deconstructing how i use my voice in relation to the pieces i have made. I was experimenting with creating ambient drones and new instruments using various pitches of my voice and then running it through multiple FX such as reverb and a bit crusher to change it from a lead vocal into more ambient chords. In going through this process i realised how much my vocals can be manipulated to create almost anything.
Beginning in 1971, Oliveros began designing short programs for each meeting. This was out of necessity: the group had begun to experiment with nonverbal communication, as the scholar Martha Mockus describes in her book on Oliveros. The archived program for the sixth session, dated November 30, 1971, is typical:
- Mirror
- Kinetic Awareness—Make your last audible breath a sung tone
- Circle—Visualize your signature letter by letter slowly. Simultaneously hearing your name. Do this forward, then backwards. (Without sound) See your signature in a selected color. Do these with eyes closed and eyes open.
- Bowl Gong Meditation. If you lose track of the pitch or want to verify your memory hit the gong again.
- Walk once around the room as slowly as possible backwards
- Teach yourself to fly as long as possible
Several of these instructions would develop into the now recognizable text scores from the “Sonic Meditations.” At some point, however, distinctions between musical work and bodywork became blurry. Was Oliveros’s indication to walk “as slowly as possible backwards” an exercise in Kinetic Awareness? Or was it an early version of “Meditation” No. 5 (“Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears”)?