Month: June 2022

Creative Sound: Digital Hardcore as a Memeplex

What is a sonic meme? 

we can see many examples of a ‘sonic meme’, it could be  anything from: a repeating catch phrase, a particular sound/sonic, a beat tag or the overall production style could all be considered memes that reaffirm their  respective memeplexes. In an interview with Resident Advisor magazine Donk artist Lobsta B identifies some examples of sonic memes through out the generations, saying “The acid bassline. The amen break. The 909 ride cymbal. Even those with a casual interest in dance music can recognise the sounds and samples that have impacted decades of music history.” (Tippit, Z. and B, L. 2022) Each of these sonic memes are familiar and easily distinguishable which Ione of the many factors which helps them propagate. 

Using Dawkins & Blackmore’s framework seeing religion as Memeplex, one could draw the comparison to seeing Genres as sonic/aesthetic Memeplexes with each sonic/aesthetic component being a meme that reaffirms the memeplex that is the genre. The word genre come from the latin word genus which is very similar to Dawkins analogy of Cultural gene clusters. So using this comparison It is not too crazy to link other cultural Custers such as: Aesthetics, Genres and movements. Digital hardcore is a memeplex

Creative Sound: Experimentation

I started off making this track but in the end I decided too 180 and created more of a song as opposed to a soundscape as I felt it was more telling of what I was trying to convey. The chorus was originally half time however I felt that a drums break would be way more appropriate in the context of digital hardcore. 

Creative Sound: Process 2

  • I started off by wanting to create a cyberpunk/dystopian soundscape that incorporated a variety of field recording to create a psychoacoustic effect to transport the listener elsewhere. I started off by jamming out in the synth room to gather samples for me to chop up later. After I had got some analog synth sounds I was trying to make a more deconstructed piece of work compared to what I usually make. After making a couple of field recordings I tried to make a piece incorporating various techniques I decided to make more of a song that reflects the current virtual Neo liberal prison that we have arrived at. I want to combine analog instruments/ guitars and combine it with futuristic synths to creat a retro-futuristic and almost nostalgic piece that harks to a more 90’s depiction of the future. My process was starting off with a synth that chopped up and then programmed drums to accompany the synth, after that I played a riff on my guitar and chopped it up and bit crushed it. After that I was chopping up an amen break to reflect on my research on Memetics and how chopping up breaks is mutation that “meme”.  For the chorus I created my own bass using Ableton wavetable.  After I has structured the whole song I wrote lyrics about being sucked into a vortex of content and information, “virtual vortex”. Once I had everything recorded I cleaned all the Chanel up with EQ and compression and added a little saturation for crunch. Once everything was mixed a ran the bounce through my mastering rack which consists of a limiter and a couple of EQs. 

Creative Sound studies: Plunderphonics

“Plunderphonics is any music made by taking one or more existing audio recordings and altering them in some way to make a new composition. The term was coined by composer John Oswald in 1985 in his essay Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative. Plunderphonics can be considered a form of sound collage.”

Digital hardcore and Plunderphonics share a similar philosophy in the wayy that they view sampling as a weapon against the capitalist concept of copyright and the overtly tedious music industry that a lot of sound exists in. This creates and an anarchic mentality where nothing is out of the public domain and doesn’t have to pay to get a sample cleared, which gives access to less affluent communities the ability to create music without being behind a paywall.

Creative Sound: CyberPunk/Digital Hardcore

Cyberpunk and the idea of what a possible future will be like has been a strong part of society since 1960s and even before. Books like Neuromancer set a presuppose for the aesthetics of what the future would be. As well as films like THX-1138 created milestones in terms of sound design in films and bringing the future to reality that paradoxically manifests itself through the consumption of its depictions. 

Digital hardcore came around in the 90s and felt like a sonic extension of the overall cyberpunk aesthetics coming both the cyber and the punk aspects into one homogenous entity. My goal with my track was to reference digital hardcore but add a modern edge with the technology available to me because of Ableton. 

https://rateyourmusic.com/charts/top/album/all-time/g:digital-hardcore/

Visiting Practitioner: Fari Bradley/ Hannah Kemp-Welch

Bradley (b. Iran) is an artist engaging with listening, language and the environment.  Her research-based practice spans the mediums of performance, broadcast, installation and sculpture. Core methodologies revolve around experimentalism, deep listening and exercises in modes of communication and reception.Bradley’s works employ treated found objects, textiles and electronics. Her live performances stage interplays between architecture, public space and history, provoking and repositioning the listener, questioning our sense of self and our place within both society and nature.

Work

Hannah Kemp-Welch is a sound artist with a socially-engaged practice. She produces audio works with community groups for installation and broadcast, using voices, field recordings and found sounds. She also delivers workshops, makes zines and builds basic radios, aiming to open out sonic practices and technologies for all. Hannah is a member of feminist radio art group Shortwave Collective and arts cooperative Soundcamp. 

https://www.sound-art-hannah.com/projects

Visiting Practitioner: Felisha Ledesma

“Exploring a music of presence and ultra subtle inference, ‘Fringe’ is the 2nd release by Ledesma, student of Berlin’s estimable Universität der Künste, following from a debut for Enmossed x Psychic Liberation earlier this year. Using AMQR – a software synthesiser built by Ledesma together with Ess Mattisson – both pieces here shimmer with elusive timbres that occupy a realm that feels lost between worlds – neither electronic nor acoustic, but more a sort of observational sound that radiates togetherness and warmth.

Operating at insightful levels of synaesthesia, Ledesma poetically turns ostensibly humdrum sources into clouds of smoke – emails, voicenotes, walking along the water, a poem attached to an email, walking alone in New York during lockdown, going for a swim at sunset in the desert – all turn into a smudge of memory. When ‘Beamsplitters’ opens with a tangible human presence – a voicemail from a friend – it startles with its earthly pull, eventually getting lost in a tangled spool of found sound leaving just a trace of iridescent, intimate reverie.

On ‘Golden Mirror’ Felisha gently diffracts a lonesome guitar phrase into a humming thizz with a steeply uncanny ability to jog the memory in a similar way to how olfactory stimulus can conjure feelings of nostalgia. It’s a trick familiar from an emergent new realm of lower case composers creating something like submerged, small scale symphonies that work counter to notions of classical excess or anodyne ambient, instead focusing on microcosmic, highly peronalised sort of worldbuilding that’s impenetrable, yet somehow entirely open.”

https://felishaledesma.bandcamp.com/album/fringe

Visiting Practitioner: Hannah Wallis

Hannah Wallis is an artist, curator and researcher based in the Midlands. Marked by an attention to the boundaries between making, performance, locality, curating and disability rights, Hannah’s practice exists at the intersection of these disciplines; concerned with how visual and performative knowledge production can inform and be informed by collectivisation, collaboration and long-term research cycles.

Collaborating under the moniker of Dyad Creative with artist Théodora Lecrinier since 2014, and supported by organisations including a-n, East Street Arts, National Centre for Writing, Kettle’s Yard, and Arts Council England, Hannah has led residency programmes and learning projects, developed interactive commissions and curatorial research, as well as managing several temporary artist-led spaces.

Visiting Practitioner: Lindsay Wright

LINDSAY IS AN AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER & MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST COMBINING TRADITIONAL PRACTICES WITH EXPERIMENTAL TECHNIQUES. SHE WEAVES ELECTRONIC TEXTURES & PROCESSED ACOUSTICS THROUGH A CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL PALETTE TO CREATE A DISTINCTIVE SOUND FOR EVERY SCORE.

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Lindsay recently scored a five-part drama for ITV, as well as the thriller series Without Sin for Left Bank Pictures in collaboration with Tawiah. Her work in film includes an upcoming BBC documentary; BBC 2’s This Is Joan Collins; HBO‘s The Mystery of D.B. Cooper (with Tim Atack) and feature drama Things Unsaid.

https://www.lindsay-wright.com/listen