Composition

• original stereo version - May, 2108; ambisonic mix - November, 2018

This piece is inspired by Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams, a novel that explores what Lightman imagines Einstein may have dreamed of while working on his theory of relativity. “Each dream (short chapter) involves a [different] conception of time” - some are closely linked with reality, while others are completely fantastical. “The book demonstrates the relationship each human being has to time, and thus spiritually affirms Einstein's theory of relativity” (wikipedia).

I wanted to compose a piece that reflects how greatly our perception of time can vary. Perhaps one of the most common and accessible examples of this concept occurs when hitting snooze on the alarm clock in the morning (for me at least). Depending on how tired I am, those ten minutes can feel like thirty seconds, or if I'm lucky, thirty minutes.

Further inspiration for this piece was drawn from Curtis Roads’s Microsound, specifically, his discussion of the interplay between and effects of different time scales. In this case, I focused primarily on the Macro, Meso, Sound Object, Micro, Sample, and Subsample time scales - although the latter two were encountered a bit more indirectly in the case of reverb and sample rate-based limitations, respectively. I also drew heavily from Roads’s analysis of granular synthesis and various forms of particle synthesis for direction and inspiration regarding how to manipulate the source material.

Source material:

The ticking of a clock can be thought of as the (physical) embodiment of time, so for this piece I decided to source all of the sounds from a recording of the timer from my toaster oven. I really like the sound of it and I find that it has a nice structure for use in composition: wind-up (beginning), wind-down/tic-toc (middle), and bell (end). Furthermore, the sound has an inherent granular nature to it, as the wind up and wind down are literally made up of the same sonic grains, just played at different densities/speeds.

Processing:

In order to realize my vision, I chose to focus primarily on processing sound with granular synthesis and delay lines using Cecilia5, as they are both methods that truly enable one to explore the perception of sound at (and between) different scales of time, specifically, I set out to manipulate:

• Single sonic events

• Pitch

• Rhythm

• Sounds as an evolving process

• Spatial perception of sound

Preprocessing, mixing, and additional processing (pitch bending, time stretching, and doppler shifting) was performed using Adobe Audition.

Composition method/Results:

The form of this piece is meant to mirror the book. There are 12 dreams/sound processes/chapters that occur throughout, sometimes overlapping with each other or other times independently. Aside from the introduction, which presents the source material without significant alteration, each dream focuses on manipulation of properties and/or features of one or more of the time scales described by Roads.

Dreams:

• Introduction: Source material presented (wind-up, wind-down/tic-toc, bell) [0:00]

• Bell granulation/disintegration [0:12]

• Variable speed granulated tic-toc [0:30]

• Wind-up ritardando transition [1:08]

• Rhythms (delay lines and pitch shifting) [1:14]

• Grain playback position randomization and disintegration [1:46]

• Tic-toc doppler shift [2:08]

• Wind-up accelerando transition [2:18]

• Scattered grain playback and transposition* [2:22]

• Amplitude modulation bell transition [3:00]

• Sparse/dense long grain playback with transposition [3:26]

• Coda: Tic-toc (reverse → forward) with reverb and bell [4:00]

* Particularly interesting discovery: extremely high transformations in grain pitch can create tone-like, glistening sounds