| :::: bell_curve text | |||||
The bells sounding in the tower are for anyone who happens to be downtown at twilight. In composing the bell sequences I wanted to refer to the function of the clock tower as a teller of time, and create the feeling that time has been suspended. There are five sections of 12 minutes each that loosely follow a minor blues progression— G minor, C minor, B flat major, E flat dominant seventh, and A flat major. The program is based on interlocking cycles of activity within each section that combine in unique ways each time the program is run. Speakers facing across a pool of water on the plaza play audio being generated by the second laptop, creating a more intimate space for people to enter. This audio piece is based on a spoken text, a story that was made up as it was being told. It turned out to be set in Lamont, the town north-east of Edmonton where I lived with my parents from Grade 4 to Grade 12. In the story I'm about 11 years old, riding my bike on a gravel road outside of town. As the program runs the spoken words are treated with tone filters and volume envelopes that reveal and conceal different phrases each time the story repeats. The voice is also digitally down-sampled, making groups of clicks and chirps that follow the rhythms of speech. The plain story is heard at the end of the piece, as twilight is ending. The other audio material consists of samples of a recording made outside City Hall as the 21 bells were sounded one by one. Harmonics within these bell sounds are accentuated with cycles of filtering as the program runs, making layers of bending feedback-like sounds that define key centers matching the five sections of the bell component. June, 2005 |
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