(2024)
Vizcaya is a multichannel drone composition for rooms, based on aleatoric processes. Originally, it was intended as an autonomous installation piece. Because of this, there is no recording of Vizcaya. Instead, it should only be played back live. Ideally, the listener should not listen to an exact repetition of the sounds heard, but the overall characteristic of the aleatoric sequence of sounds is important. An exact repetition of events only fortifies that specific structure, distracting from the actual core of the piece. Therefore, to present it on this website, an algorithmic two channel version was developed for the Web Audio API, which generates the piece in real-time. Thus, each time you press the playback button, keep in mind that your browser is generating the piece freshly and uniquely just for you, and it will never repeat, nor ever have an ending (the occasional silence is intended!):
Disclaimer: do note that, due to it being an algorithm played live, as opposed to simply playing back a recording, many factors like the type of browser you use, if you put it into the background, how powerful your device is, etc... may influence the appearance of artifacts (e.g. "clicks") or other unintended sounds. I do not have the capacity right now to test all browsers, their versions, operating systems, devices... this is just something I have to accept and is a downside to not presenting a simple recording.
The piece is inspired by a building I had stayed in for a while. Particularly at night, most likely due to something coming from the pipes, the building would produce a slowly pulsating drone. Awakening during the night, this underlying drone could be subtle, yet persistent enough to keep you awake. I would lay there, listening to any possible overtones and to the pattern that arose, as the drone faded in and out, with no clearly perceivable regularity to it. Walking around, the sound had a haptic quality to it, as it lingered inside the room. The vibration was seemingly produced by all four walls. Eventually I pulled out my computer and with a headphone in one ear, while listening to the drone with the other, I tried to match the frequency as I listened to the inter-aural beatings that were produced between the sine tones from my computer and the building. I noticed the frequency kept varying ever so slightly and I took note of what I perceived to be a minimum and a maximum frequency value.
Later, I began to hear additional sounds, some I believe to have been real, others I am not sure if I had started imagining them. When on the toilet, clear overtones with a serious roughness could be heard fading in and out in unison with the main drone. I also believe to have started hearing a lower subtle fundamental, which provided a much needed grounding to the otherwise floating sound in the room. A third tone a 3rd above the main drone came to me, but here I am sure I must have started imagining things, because it was so elusive and disappeared whenever I really tried to focus in on it. Admittedly, at a certain point I could not distinguish between what was coming from the building, sounding from my computer, present in my head anymore.
I started recording everything. Not with a microphone, mind you, but in code. I set sine tone generators to vary ever so slightly in frequency and experimented with the slow fading of each element, matching the behavior to that of what was happening in the room. I am not going to hide the fact that the true authorship of this piece should really be put into question. At this point it felt like the building was singing to me, directing me towards something that I was simply writing down and executing. Together with my tiredness induced imagination, we were collaborating in a sort of duet. To me, the ordeal became a rather unusual type of architectural composition: a compositional work as instructed by one inanimate building, intended to be projected into other rooms, all mediated through a human being like a vessel or tool. While a building, being inanimate, cannot legally hold any form of copyright, it still doesn't feel right to take all the credit for its inception.
I find the piece rather hypnotic, soothing and meditative, almost addictive. Often, I catch myself listening to it longer than intended. It is admittedly rather simple and, yet, the tiny variations in frequency and sequence of events help to keep it fresh. One strong element are the binaural beats that vary in strength, which add so much more interest than simply playing the naked frequencies over and over again. In the multichannel version, this is achieved by always choosing opposing speakers. As the audience moves through the installation, the frequencies shift from ear to ear due to both the binaural beats and the natural room modes. It should be stated that this piece uses no panning; only discrete loudspeaker assignment! The stereo version, for example, exhibits the frequencies moving from ear to ear only due to the slight, but constantly varied difference in frequencies present in both speakers.
The entire piece is made up of only 3 vaguely tuned notes. It is highly reduced in both it material and its overall compositional simplicity. It did not feel right to venture far from what was already given to me inside the room in that building. So I kept it as raw as possible and the installation can continue without virtually no chance of repeating itself. In retrospect, I liken this work to that of the grandfather of drone music, La Monte Young; in particular, his 1962 composition The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer. While the droneyness in either work is an obvious aspect, a young Young also supposedly drew inspiration from the the 60Hz hum of transformers at his fathers gas station. What is more, however, is that the frequency I had determined for the main tone matches with the first note played in Young's composition and they play together quite harmoniously. Another comparable work that comes to mind is Giacinto Scelsi's Quattro Pezzi su una nota sola. In particular the imprecision of the fluctuating frequencies and de-tuned stereo pairs in the room all allude to how Scelsi's pieces wobble around a single pitch. Finally, I also consider this piece a type of musique d'ameublement. Naturally, it already existed in the walls of a space in its original form. But the reduced approach, meditative atmosphere and drawn out sense of time lends itself very well as a piece of music that lingers in the air, like a piece of furniture.
One final technical detail should be made transparent: the composition has a "hidden mode". To understand when it happens, one must know that there are basically 3 major tone generators and 3 add-on generators that only work in unison with the major ones and play the occasional rough overtone. The three major generators produce the main and bass frequency, as well as the 3rd above the main. Once the main frequency has faded out 10 times, the piece may switch to another preset, in which the other two generators are tuned to the same frequency as the main one. However they do maintain their individual aleatoric pattern from the initial settings. This produces a soup of the main frequency, as all three main generators produce a single, ever so slightly de-tuned frequency. Particularly with the bass gone, the sound seems to now float entirely in the room. Once both of the other two generators have faded out twice, the algorithm may jump back to the initial preset at any point. This floating intermezzo provides a dearly needed rest and allows the piece to maintain its interest over a long stretch of time.