Bukowski Project

The inspiration of this piece came when I saw the following interview of Charles Bukowski
in YouTube (Charles Bukowski : "No me gusta la gente...").

My idea was to create a piece using only the material of this interview, transforming it with
the use of editing, sound effects (like filters, delays, vocoders, resonators...) and also using
this materials as samples for MIDI instruments (mainly granulator).
I was not really interested on emphasizing the meaning of the text with the use of the
electronic. Nevertheless, the form of the piece is conditioned by the form of Bukowski’s
speech.
I have divided the speech in 4 parts (following my own criteria):
-1st: From 0:05 to 0:42. This part has an introductory nature. Bukowski introduces his vision
of the world and the people. In this part, Bukowski talks about himself.

2nd: From 0:43 to 1:36. In this part, Bukowski explains his hate about people.

3rd: From 1:37 to 2:14. This part talks about money (as the only thing that people wants), and
it’s the only part in wich we have laughs, as a different kind of material.
4th: From 2:15 to 2:24. This piece works as an ending. Again, as at the begining, Bukowski
talks about himself rather than about the people in general (as he does in sections 2 and 3).

I have also made a 4 parts division as the original for my piece:

1st: From 0:00 to 1:16. This part consists in a process of increasing chaos. The original audio
track of the first section of the interview is transformed into a complex noise by the use of a
vocoder (automatizing dryness and the level of the Amplitude modulation noise).

The tracks has also a Delay, increasing in dryness, saturation and delay gain in each track.

The tracks are superimposed making the gap between the beginings smaller until we have a
kind of artificial delay.
Each begining is accompanied by the only non-vocal sound in the interview: a lighter being
lighted, wich is filtered with a HP filter, whose frequency is going up along the section.

As this lighter attacks get closer, the resultant sound derives in a granulator, wich uses the
lighter as the sample.
Also the voices, with the vocoder derivates in a complex sound, wich is replaced with a
granulator in the next section.

2nd: From 1:16 to 2:15. This part works almost only with granulators modulated by LFO.

First, we have a granulator, wich changes the size of the grain, and also the frequency of the
filter.

Around the half of the section, the filter type change from LP to HP, changing the sound of
the noise. When te noise is filtered with the HP filter, a new noise is introduced, with a huge
amount of FM (controlled with an LFO).
After a couple of seconds, the previous noise returns, getting filtered by a LP with a
frequency of 64 Hz, becoming almost unhearable. The HP filtered noise frequency goes up
until 20k Hz, becoming also unhearable, moment when the voice of Bukowski returns,
processed by the vocoder.

While Bukowski’s voice sound, the frequencies of the two filters (LP for low noise, HP for
high noise) get higher (for low noise) and lower (for high noise), opening the spectrum of the
noise, accompaning the tension of Bukowski’s speech, until the noise takes up all the
harmonic space.

This noise stops and then, we hear the sentence “All they want is money” from Bukowski,
with the audio not edited nor processed.
After this relaxed moment, the noise starts again, stronger than before, being almost a white
noise.

3rd: The first idea of this section was to make a subtractive synthesis from the noise
generated in the previous section. I tried to do it with a huge amount of BP filters, but at the
end, I decided that the best option was to use resonators. I made an approximated resynthesis
of the different laughs of Bukowski, adjusting the frequencies of the resonators to the
frequencies of the spectrum of the original laugh. I called it “approximated” because the
resonators from Ableton does not allow you to work with non-tempered pitches.

Along with the resynthesis, some extracts of the original laugh sound, with BP filters with
different frequencies, coming from the spectrum of the original laugh.

Between the different resynthesized laughs, a granular texture made of the speech of the third
section of the interview treated with different granulators appears. Each granulator has
different part of the text, different shapes, different spikes, different filters... to achieve a
complex sound. The different granulators begining exponentially, as in the first section
happened to the audio tracks.
After thre different resynthesis, a huge noise take place, made of all the granulators that had
appeared along the piece, making the most chaotic part of the piece. Within this noise, an
idea of the reverse of the begining is integrated (Going from noise to the original audio track)
with the audio from the first part of the piece. Thus, this ending has a conclusive character,
very near to the begining, similar to an idea of a inverse re-exposure.