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I am the membrane
he caresses me
his hands are on me
skin against skin
it’s a pleasant feeling
like a massage
an object is attached to me, it makes me sing
I had a life before this
I was part of a living creature
I am the memory of this creature
I still sing, I scream, I howl, I resonate
I can tell stories, I can share stories
we are in it together
him, drum, me
it is an entanglement,
friction temperature
we are elastic, permeable
we decide what to sing
My experience of sound at the Mausoleum, with its lush and exceptional reverberation, was overwhelming. Working with sounds that were constantly melting into one another awakened my desire to test the layered sonic material in a room that featured precisely the opposite environment: one with no sound reflection at all, or an anechoic chamber. The Mausoleum is an active, responsive space that makes an audible mark on the music. What effect, then, would an anechoic chamber have on the music? I was eager to know, and I decided to investigate where in Oslo I could find an anechoic chamber. Tor Halmrast, a composer and professor of acoustical science, told me about an old anechoic chamber in the basement of the Physics building at the University of Oslo (UiO), just a five-minute walk from the Norwegian Academy of Music. I contacted Arnt Inge Vistnes, a UiO physics professor, who was more than happy to let me record in the room for free.
"Cicchitaredu" and "Le Finestre I-VI" recorded by Stig Gunnar Ringen at the anechoic chamber at the UiO, Physics building in March-April 2022.
"Davoli" recorded by Anders Tveit at NMH in May 2022.
Mixed and mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi in Monza, Italy, autumn 2022.
Artwork by Ives Maes.
Supported in part by the Norwegian Academy of Music, The Audio and Visual Fund and Arts and Culture Norway.
All rights reserved (TONO/NCB).
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The room had been used for acoustics research until about 1975, and had remained more or less untouched since then. As a result, it was quite dirty, the air was bad due to a lack of ventilation, and the sound attenuation was not at all as effective as that of modern anechoic rooms. The Department of Acoustics was discontinued some years prior and moved to Trondheim, but the room in Oslo had never been dismantled, as the physics department occasionally still needed a soundproof space.
I called my usual sound engineer Stig Gunnar Ringen, who was very excited about the idea of recording in the anechoic chamber. I thought about John Cage and his experience in an anechoic chamber at the Harvard University. He described hearing both high and low frequencies in the anechoic chamber, and asked an engineer why this could be, since the room was supposed to be totally silent. The engineer replied that the high frequency was the sound of his nervous system and the low frequency was the sound of his blood circulation. In the years since, however, some from the medical profession have proposed that it was more likely that Cage was experiencing tinnitus.
I have tinnitus, and hear frequencies of around 50 Hz in my right ear. These frequencies appear to be more present when I find myself in silent environments, and also when I am tired. I have had this disturbance since I discovered high levels of electromagnetic radiation outside my studio in Madrid in 2013, which I discuss later in this text. When entering in the anechoic chamber in Oslo for the first recording session, I could confirm that my tinnitus was still very present. I decided to create a piece with the vibrating material—a metaphorical narrative in music—to auralize how I perceive and hear my tinnitus. As soon as I start playing, the tinnitus disappears. It is like a window that opens and closes. Acoustic sound prevails over the internal frequency of the tinnitus. This is probably one of the reasons why there are few silences in my music. Producing musical actions and layering sound allow me to avoid the tinnitus creeping back into my inner ear.
The anechoic chamber is a place in which all sound waves and electromagnetic waves are absorbed. To perceive the sound of a drum in an anechoic chamber, one must be in close proximity to the instrument. The perception of the sound changes significantly by small shifts in the perceiver’s position (where the perceiver can be either microphones or human/non-human ears). The only objects that reflect the sound are the body of the performer and the instrument itself.
Stig Gunnar and I experienced this phenomenon when sound checking the first session. The microphones did not pick up the sound of the strainers on the snare drum because they were placed at a different angle and height in relation to the instrument than my ears. And so we changed the microphones’ position to match the angle and height of my ears to the instrument.
The pieces "Le Finestre I-VI" and “Davoli" overlap one another on the album. The musical form has a repetitive structure. In between the small interludes of “Le Finestre I-VI,” the sound of “Davoli" appears softly in the background before finally occupying center stage in the last track with the lush frequency spectrum in the orchestrated harmonies of my tinnitus. The short pieces are played on the snare drum only with a vibrating speaker.
“Le Finestre I-VI” draws its material from a section in the concert The Vibrating Drum IV [IZ1]. It consists of one sine-wave chord vibrating on the snare drum. The rhythm pattern is performed by adding a hand, a brush, the strainer, or turning the volume knob of the small amplifier off and on. The additional preparations on the vibrating skin change the harmonic spectrum and create the rhythm pattern.
In “Davoli,” I am constantly moving the bass shaker in circles around the skin on the Gran Cassa, with a static sine-wave chord vibrating through the skin. The bass shaker’s circular movement emits a hissing noise, like distant waves on the beach, and the static sine-wave chord resonates with a multitude of subdued harmonics in the far background.
The sound is simple to produce, yet offers a complex experience—and yet it is soothing. Perhaps I gave up trying to tame the tinnitus when I heard the sound of “Davoli,” or I finally decided to embrace it and befriend it, just like with my transducer’s behavior with the drums. Tinnitus is a part of me, and this is my way of incorporating it into my artistic work.
The suite “Le Finestre I-VI” was recorded in the anechoic chamber in Oslo, while “Davoli” was recorded at the Norwegian Academy of Music by Anders Tveit. I later assembled and edited the form using Logic.
how rewarding to leave the world outside
to meet myself alone
suffocating
but amidst treasures
“Cicchitaredu,” around 23 minutes long, comprises vibrating layers of rhythmic pulses, sine wave melodies, glissandos, and harmonies. There are chunks of distorted melodic interruptions in percussion and occasional vocal lines spread out in the course of the piece. All the sounds are amplified through the membranes of the snare drum and the kettledrum.
There are even a few percussion hits on bells and kettledrum. In the mid- section, I add a layer of metal brushes to the pulses. The ground material for “Cicchitaredu" stems from the concert The Vibrating Drum V [IZ2], where the pulses are programmed patterns of a tank drum sample and a kantele sample with eight pitches each. These patterns are programmed in circular repetitions—that is, every time they repeat, there is a slight change in the pattern.
I wanted to explore perpetual rhythmic pulses as a sonic layer rather than rhythmic structures. I hear the pulses as a rhythmic pattern, but I am equally concerned about using them as a static object that can function doubly as a melodic and a harmonic layer. The pulses are present throughout the work, except for the end. I also manually change the course of the repetitions while playing. The rhythmic material resembles the work I have done for years with the trio Huntsville, with Ivar Grydeland and Tonny Kluften. Before discovering the vibrating speakers, I stole an idea from Ivar and connected a tabla machine through an amplifier, with a snare drum vibrating in front of the speaker, resulting in a rich, distorted rhythmic pulsation, which I accompanied with similar brush playing.
On “Cicchitaredu," I don’t need an external amplifier, since the vibrating speakers do the job by amplifying the electronic signals through the skin of the drum. It feels so right to have everything come from one acoustic sound source just below my ears. The music is repetitive, but on the other hand, it is not. I intended for it to be ambiguous. I like to operate between the perception of what is electronic and what is acoustic, and between what is played and what is programmed. The skin becomes a filter, a conduit of various sounds. It is from this ambiguity that I absorb energy and inspiration to shape the development of the piece.
The lowest pitch in the tank drum rhythm resembles that of a double bass. I play the bass, the melodies, the glissandos, and the harmonies. I can concentrate on placing the actions in the right places at the right time, and structuring the large canvas of sound in time. The final form of the piece is a combination of the live recording and added embellishments structured in post-production.
longing for
signs of songs
traces of melody
a glimpse of harmony
a touch of silence
it is maybe too much to ask?
…And then there is the stop, and the silence. It was the most dignified silence I could find. It left me with a sensation of claustrophobia, suffocation, and solitude. I remember that I got sick after spending hours recording in this unhealthy place. I needed the silence to contemplate the isolation and the solitariness of the place. The music is choked, and I feel almost like the anechoic chamber is screaming at me, demanding a presence in the music. The impact of the silence is brutal, but perhaps necessary. In the silence, I can still hear the echo of the pulse in my mind. In my dialogues with Jim Denley [IZ3], he says the stop in “Cicchitaredu" is so arresting and memorable, that it seems too simplistic to call it a space. It is a place, in fact, that manifests itself through the silence. A place of haunted absorbed frequencies.
I get close to the instruments in this recording. The anechoic chamber doesn’t lie. This is how my drums sound for real, and I like it. They stand, naked, ready to make sound to keep warm. The complexity in the spectrum of sound is on the edge of what the transducer can take. I am pushing them, and sometimes you can hear them snarl, accompanied by multiple growls from the skin of the kettledrum.
When I listen back to Strumento di etimo incerto, it feels like the sound is glued to the speakers’ diaphragm. The dryness is raw. There is no compromise. The sounds are almost identical to the way I heard them when playing in the room, which is very different from my experience of recording Musica liquida, where I got lost in the reverb and could not hear the sources of the sounds. The chamber allows for denser material to unfold. I hear every detail, even the envelope of the programmed tank drum.
I sing with the swimming frequencies at the end of the piece. The voice is clearly audible, though distorted through the transducer. In the end, the effect is all about melodies and harmonies.
my transducers sound themselves
as they transmit
they are not completely silent
they heat up
they deteriorate
they do their part in the sounding of sound
I have been musicking in two acoustic extremes; in the Mausoleum and in the anechoic chamber. The fundamental conclusion is that I listen. I adapt. My awareness of the co-creative potential of objects and space/place is changing. It is transforming the music.
[IZ1]In the video The Vibrating Drum IV from approximately 27.00
[IZ2]In the video The Vibrating Drum V from approximately 17.10