Today I explored the possibilities of spatialising a sonic work. I know I want to work with my concept of the sonics of encroachment, and I’m debating how to flesh this out. The concept in inherently spatialised, because it deals with the notion of personal boundary and immediate area – sounds are significant solely because of the their relative position to the object of the recording. I wanted to explore a grander, more technical notion of spatialisation, so I set up an exercise of poesis on GRM Spaces. I brought eight wav. files – simple, basic home recordings of sung tones – and loaded them in to the DAW. I created an expansive, richly voiced G major chord with my voice, with eight different notes and various embellishments on each to differentiate and emphasise them. I automated a few routes with GRM Spaces. Some of the patterns seemed stimulating, and when I closed my eyes and focused on the sounds I found them to be very kinetic and dynamic. Other patterns I created seemed arbitrary. The slower moving ones seemed to slightly derail the compositional development of the piece. They sounded forced. I am really reflecting on whether I want to use GRM spaces going forward. I want to make sure that I’m not spatialising in octophonic merely because I have the technology at my disposal. I feel the equipment required to listen is scarce and inaccessible for the vast majority of people. As I continue to work I will evaluate the compositional merits of my piece and my field recordings to decide whether it aesthetically needs spatialisation.
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