Category: Personal Creative Project

This work is very different from my previous works. In this semester’s project, most of my works pay more attention to melody than art, so I get something completely different when I emphasize art. It’s a strange feeling. I’ve been very programmed in the last few projects, but this time I feel like I care more about my feelings. I add the sounds that I hear to it, more abstract than a traditional melody.

I want to tell a story through this work, hoping that it will exist independently rather than assist the visual effect. After hearing my work, my friends were also amazed because they always thought my major was music production, not sound art. One of my friends said, “She thought it was complete. It didn’t sound like the soundtrack for a movie or a TV show. She has many feelings about the song and recalls watching Peking Opera with her grandfather when she was a child.” I found her description very interesting and got a lot of surprises from the communication with her.

I don’t know how this work works because it is the first time I try this kind of sound with no melody. I always feel a little nervous, but I’m pleased with this one. I also went to many places to record while I was working on it, and I also found a lot of recordings from a long time ago that sound very interesting now.
Because this semester is all offline teaching, so I participated in a lot of activities. I came into contact with a lot of new things and learned a lot of new knowledge. When I was in high school, my band teacher said that music was “organized the sound.” Looking back now seems to be able to understand this sentence better. Similarly, I also hope to do better in the next project and continue to try something new (such as experimental music). In short, I have learned a lot this semester, but at the same time, I suddenly have new ideas about what I want to learn in the future. Before, I wanted to know where the music arrangement was, but now I think art is also exciting.

I recorded a lot of sound material, such as the sound of radio changing channels, the sound of Peking Opera artists singing, the sound of trains and so on.

This is the score of the theme. I found out that the library band can generate an electronic score, so I wrote it directly on the software.

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This time I used new software, and its interface was straightforward. I think it has fewer features than other music production software and mostly simpler ones. But the good thing is that the page is pretty clean, and this time I have a lot of audio snippets. So this time, AU is perfectly sufficient.
Au also has some convenient features. I need most of the sound effects of the recorder for my audio.

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It was a fun activity with lots of different kinds of microphones and some vocalizing props.
The “instrument” I chose was a plastic Microphone, and I also put some bells in it. I stuck the Contact Microphone on the bottom of the plastic box. After the instruments were made and chosen, we began to play. The whole process was exciting, I started with the rhythm and melody given by other people, but then I gradually started to play what I wanted to express. What impressed me most was the sound that the music box made. It made melody when everyone was quiet. Some people put Contact Mic to their throats, and then they can hear the song of the human voice.

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This event is much more formal than the last one and will be performed outside. The theme of this event is “WAR”, and we have a week to prepare for this project.
Because I live in an apartment where the wind is mighty, it makes the sound of wood shaking from inside the wall. I thought it was exciting and recorded it. Then he made a “musical instrument”, a plastic box with stones and bottle caps inside. This time I used Contact Microphone again. After getting everything ready, I put on a black pillowcase my head and began to perform.
First, we played the recordings that each of us had made, and then we started to put in the instruments. This kind of performance mode is very similar to that kind of street performance. Although the black pillowcase did not block the sight, I still felt blindfolded, and my hearing became particularly sensitive.
What impressed me most was the sound of someone Shouting in the back. It’s kind of like the music from a horror movie, but it’s interesting.

It is a rock band that was formed in 1999 and is still active to this day. Because it was founded in northeast China, it has a strong local culture.

Suona, Guzheng, Allegro, Pipa, Matouqin… Their use of Chinese folk music is very rich. “Durenzhuo”, folk art which is definitely out of the range of the trend of young people today, has miraculously shaped the unique face of second-hand rose in the Chinese rock music circle with its own turning tone after being picked up on the rock express train.

For me:

1. Incorporation of traditional Chinese instruments into a rock setting.
2. Maybe I could choose something melodic. (Guzheng, Pipa)

They have succeeded in this respect, and the original texture of rock and roll has not been destroyed. In addition, he added local instruments from northern China to make his band more stylish. It broke my perception of rock and roll and made it more three-dimensional.

Xie Zhongqi, a.k.a. Wolfenstein, is a sound artist, computer music composer, and the member of Taipei Sound Unit. He received awards in BIAS Sound Art Exhibition and Sound Art Prize in the Digital Art Awards Taipei in 2006 and later released his debut album Napoleon’s Kef in 2009. His lately live recording is included in a split album Cyplosion, with the Chinese sound artist Wang Changcun, released by Kandala Records in 2015.

https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/artists/xie-zhongqi/

“hongqi Xie’s music often combine human voice morphing with detail electronic sound. From deepest and lowest beat to offensive hi-frequency sound line, he draws an electronic but also poetic picture for our ears.”

This is the work I want to talk about. The combination of the human voice and the electronic sound effects is very much like the sound of a malfunction that has inspired me a lot.
I wrote earlier in the draft that I wanted to make a sound effect that was like coming from a radio or radio. If the sound of the fault is added to it, it can make the whole work more story-like and have a sense of the past. It can also make the whole work sound richer.

https://www.newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue/olivia-de-prato-streya/

This song is music by  Samson Young and performed by Olivia De Prato.

Taking a whole piece apart and adding some sound effects in the middle does not make it incomplete. On the contrary, it makes the music sound more interesting. This one is very similar to hongqi Xie’s work but not quite the same. hongqi Xie also incorporates electronic sounds, but people can’t hear the original melody, but this one retains the melody to a certain extent.

Although it draws—moderately—on modern techniques of juxtaposition and disruption, Streya retains a lyrical continuity underscored by a dramatic use of dynamics. Sampled keyboards, organs, voices, and strings “drenched in delay and distortion” provide the pre-recorded accompaniment to the solo violin part. Slithering glissandi begin the work, interspersed with quick scale bursts. 

https://www.newfocusrecordings.com/catalogue/olivia-de-prato-streya/

Xu Cheng is a sound artist who works and lives in Shanghai. He is engaged in experimental music, improvisation, electronic music, etc. Aside from ontology of sound, Xu Cheng also pays attention to the correlation between sound and social space, the related behavior and its presentation.

http://www.minshengart.com/en/category/activity-list/detail!ling-ting-fen-lan-hei-se-bing-shan

This is an album made by a group of artists from China named Anthology Of Experimental Music From China.

Due to its more deeply underground roots free of academic institutions and hierarchy, Chinese electronic music ranges the full gamut from elegant minimalism to abrasive noise, often within the same song. 

https://unexplainedsoundsgroup.bandcamp.com/album/anthology-of-experimental-music-from-china

I like the song made by Artist Xu Cheng in this album. For me, this piece of music is like standing in the middle of a valley and listening to the wind. This song reminds me of what I learned in class before using the same voice to complete a piece of music.

This song reminds me of a piece of music I heard before. Although they may have nothing to do with each other, I can still relate to it.

A group of Chinese artists made it, and it’s called 《东京杀人事件》. The first time I heard this music was about two years ago, and this is my first exposure to sound art. This kind of music is called experimental music, unlike traditional music, which has no specific beat and melody, and the main idea is to “let the sound speak for itself”.

Back to the music, the middle and late stages of the song are shouts. It’s an unmistakable voice that allows me to hear the woman’s desperation at the time, and that’s what I hear. Perhaps in this creation, we can not write such musical things but reflect the sound and record the sound.

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I wrote an essay about Chinese opera in Global Sonic Culture. At that time, I researched and listened to a lot of Chinese opera. Then I had the idea of doing something related to Chinese opera.

In addition to traditional Chinese Musical Instruments, Pingju can now also include Musical Instruments such as violin. (A combination of Chinese instruments and Western instruments).

It’s an interesting combination of these different musical styles, and I wanted to try to do that type of thing.

Some ideas：

The History:

1. This song is surround sound.
2. I love the sound of the whale at the beginning.
3. 1:40-2:30

Some notes:

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Before I made it, I watched an animation called “ZIMA BLUE”, one of the Love Death and Robots series. Although it is not a music-oriented animation, it still arOUSes my thinking, thinking about art.

The process of pursuing ourselves. Perhaps art is not an objective reflection but a carrier to convey individual thinking and emotion.
How can I integrate my feelings into my works, or what stories I want to tell with my results, maybe what I need to pay attention to in future production.