April 24, 2015

8.00 am. A brief admin round up before assembling two processed sound files of the Welsh and English text engravings derived from the Second Commandment, in a multitrack session:

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I’m exploring the possibility of incorporating a recording of the Second Commandment read in Welsh and English. This recording, too, would have to be engraved, in keeping with the project’s governing concept, by transferring a digital capture to a vinyl record (which involves an intaglio process). The re-recording would, then, serve as the source.

12.30 pm. A business lunch at Tree House with my colleague Dr Roberts:

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For two hours we bandied ideas and plans, and dreams and aspirations, pertaining to a proposed sound symposium — the first in the series of ‘Noise PROJECTion’s. Reasons for discouragement, a persuasive rationale for throwing in the towel, and paralysing uncertainties threaten. Thus, we make our compact: ‘Just do it!’

2.30 pm. Homebase. On with ‘Image & Inscription’. If voices were used. Whose would they be? Diagrammatizing makes me think clearly. I need to see ideas in order to better understand their relationships:

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One source; two text; two languages; two recordings; two modes (writing and reading); and two voices (like the languages, these should be distinct (male and female)). The doubling is appropriate, since the Ten Commandments were given to Moses on two stone tablets (Exod. 20.1-17).

4.30 pm. At the School, Miranda and I held a early and final assessment tutorial with one of our second year students, who’ll be leaving us this year to be fruitful in another way. We wish her well. She’ll be missed. 5.00 pm (the graveyard shift). I delivered the Professional Practice lecture on ‘Social Media & ProfessionalPromotion’. A good turnout. On this occasion, the audience knew more than I did.

7.30 pm. I caught up with emails, added bits and pieces to the School’s Facebook page, and returned to ‘Image & Superscription’ rumination. In the background, I played the two time-stretched sound files together repeatedly. It’s important to develop a familiarity with the material — to hear the sonic ‘imagery’ within it. The virtues of the piece yield themselves slowly. (That’s a good sign. I’m always suspicious of immediacy.) As it stands, the Welsh engraving sounds, at times, like someone plucking at the strings of an out-of-tune upright piano. The piece gets quite ‘heavy’ towards its end, suggesting a sense of climax.

10.00 pm. Practise session 2.

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