Ambisonic Works

My composition process consists of two primary activities; field recording and studio-based composition. Almost all works involve an extensive period of field recording, which is the antecedent of studio-based composition.

Ambisonic technology is crucial to my creative practice, both in the field and studio. It underpins the technical and aesthetic developments that advance each work toward its completion.

This page contains excerpts of recently composed works, decoded to either stereo or binaural formats. Encoded multichannel (B-format) files are available upon request.

 

The Shear Zone

  • Format: 5th order Ambisonics

  • Duration: 10:10

I find the sounds of ice and snow particularly intriguing, in part because their spectral qualities are strikingly foreign and exotic to someone from Australia, where less than one- tenth of the landmass receives significant annual snowfall. To compose a piece using the sounds of ice has long been a personal goal, mainly because several works that utilise sounds from inclement and rugged environments influenced my development as a composer profoundly.

The Shear Zone differs in several important ways from the other compositions presented here. It excludes the personal activity of field recording, which functions as the antecedent of studio-based composition. Ideally, the composition process would always involve field recording expeditions, and one that captures gelid sounds would be particularly ideal. The travel restrictions and quarantine requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic demanded the omission of this otherwise key step of the creative process. Consequently, the work developed from sounds sourced from third-party sound libraries. This restriction significantly influenced the creative development of the work and lead to the formulation of the primary aesthetic goal of the piece, which was to create a technologically mediated experience of a winter landscape.

Although the aesthetic of ensuing composition is unarguably reductive and abstract, the sound materials themselves, although heavily processed, do not stray far into the realm of third and remote order surrogates. While I have never experienced the sounds of ice and glaciers in-situ, maintaining the connection to the frigid sources is of the utmost importance to the comprehension of the piece. Consequently, and paradoxically, while this is a highly reductive work, it also firmly adheres to the tenets of soundscape composition by remaining tied to the environmental associations of the sound sources.

 

All is not what it seems

  • Format: 1st order Ambisonics

  • Duration: 9:00

All is not what it seems draws from recordings of the natural and the mundane to create an oneiric form that melds the real and the unreal into an amorphous image. Its foci shift between reality and fantasy by juxtaposing the recognisable with the impossible. The entanglement of absurd scenarios masquerade and present themselves as plausible snapshots of a familiar, yet strange version of reality.

 

Heliotropic

  • Format: 1st order Ambisonics

  • Duration: 10:00

Heliotropic draws exclusively from field recordings made in the Brazilian Amazon and seeks to create new and imaginary sonic environments that reflect the sense of hostility that belies the serene appearance and romantic conceptions of many natural landscapes. The archetypal concept of a jungle often conjures images of dangerous animals, as well as humans in search of survival. During the recording process, the profoundly hostile and competitive nature of these environments was striking. These chaparral ecosystems gave the impression of flora and fauna locked in a bitter rivalry, and given the opportunity, even the plants would strangle one another to reach sunlight. The title of the work refers to the motion of plants in response to the direction of the sun. More generally, the dark and foreboding character of the work creates the need to move toward the light and away from danger.