Lauren Sarah Hayes. Alex Paxton. NYO Seminar. April 2021.

The Music of LAUREN SARAH

HAYES
HCMF: bodily/worldly processes, improvised ecosystems, sensual synthesis’.

There’s not much to it that you’d enjoy more if it were explained.

Xeon opening track from ALBUM - EMBRACE

https://laurensarahhayes.bandcamp.com/track/xeon

LAUREN: (children) I find that they're much more open to this type of music and I ask them if
they've ever heard sounds like this before and they say, "Yeah, we hear stuff like this in games all
the time, or in film soundtracks” there’s a lot of crossover with stuff that's in commercial pop
music I guess, so I guess there's a lot of similar production techniques being used, so maybe these
are things that they are picking up on

TECHNO
HCMF: Hayes has an idea of noise, and abstract sound, that is quite glorious. It exists with
euphoria in mind, with the responses our body makes to experiencing music. It has a lot in
common with clubbing: growing up, Hayes would hang out at Glasgow’s local goth nights, before
slowly moving into the harder stuff, discovering electronic music through DJs playing techno and
drum ‘n’ bass.

……clashes she heard in club tunes, speaking of sounds that were ‘bright and harsh’, full of
colourful dissonances.

HCMF: She loved the way this kind of dance music ‘spewed out’ its structure – between the
beats, and within the textures, producers were making a mess, bringing chaos to logic.

LAUREN: ’I would dance every weekend for years, and I completely remember the
connection dancing had to every individual sound – as if each one was connected to how I
was moving my body’

HCMF: Hayes’ music is profoundly influenced by this time in her life, enshrined with the jerky
movements made on the dance floor.

MANIPULATION ALBUM - BOUNCE.

https://laurensarahhayes.bandcamp.com/album/manipulation

IMPROVISATION
HCMF: She’s interested in ‘exploring how we understand the world, and each other’, placing
emphasis on the latter.

LAUREN: I see improvising as a way of being with people – a liberated space that we can
co-create
Lauren Sarah Hayes. Alex Paxton. NYO Seminar. April 2021.
HCMF: PS2 controller: when you watch her live, you can see her using the joysticks to direct the
travel of sound, or button-mashing towards an unforeseen collision. Freely-floating noise
guiding her like a beat would a DJ.

LAUREN: I feel very awkward about recording my music, because it’s a continual thing. It’s never
done. I don’t feel that it ever needs to be.’ 

SUNWARPED - DUNGEON DISTOROYAH

https://sunwarped.bandcamp.com/album/sunwarped-vol-1

SYNTHS.
ELECTRONIC SOUND CONSTRUCTION. BASICS.

1. the WAVE shape

Sine, Square, Triangle, Sawtooth

2. Shaping the note. called the ENVOLOPE

How the note opens. Attack,

the 2nd bit of the note. Decay,

the 3rd bit of the note. Sustain,

how the note finishes. Release

3. LFO

another (2nd) sound wave that gets mixed up with the first one….making like vibrato/ more
complex sounds/ bubble like textures…..and much more

LAUREN: (my) improvisation is the culmination of these lived encounters, where in each case I
have found more or less tolerance for ambiguity and risk taking, more or less exchange of ideas,
and more or less openness to curiosity and the welcoming of new possibilities.

While hybrid analogue/digital technology has been my means of exploring and sculpting sound, it
is in these shared collective experiences that new modes of being and creating have truly
been nourished.

DON’T GLITCH on MY CASCADE

https://laurensarahhayes.bandcamp.com/track/don-t-glitsh-on-my-cascade

BUILDING an ELECTRonIC INSTRUMENT

that is as nuanced and sensitive as acoustic instruments.

LAUREN: When performing digital music it is important to be able to acquire a comparable

level of sensitivity and control to what can be achieved with acoustic instruments.

LAUREN: It is hoped that this type of vibrotactile interface can be used with non-performers, who
will listen to music, whilst also experiencing it in the form of vibrations.

LAUREN: The skin’s sensing nerves are most densely collected in the lips and hands. since most
acoustic instruments are constructed to be played with the mouth or fingertips, this distribution of
sensors in the skin allows for the maximum amount of information exchange. During engagement
with the instrument, the performer receives feedback in the form of various resistant forces and
vibrations

Lauren Sarah Hayes. Alex Paxton. NYO Seminar. April 2021.

Moon via Spirit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzSRs_7S9cg

Towards an aesthetics of touch

EVELYN GLENNIE: The link between sound and touch is inherent: hearing is, essentially, “a
specialized form of touch”.

LAUREN: Her statement could be explained in physical terms by the fact that sound is the rapid
vibration of molecules in the air, which excite the membranes, hair and fluid inside of our ears,
allowing us to hear. Moreover, our perception of sound goes beyond just the penetration of the
auditory canal, and in fact is felt by our whole body, through vibrations within the organs and the
bones [8]

ADAM GOPNIK: Every other sense has an art to go with it: the eyes have art, the ears have music,
even the nose and the tongue have perfume and gastronomy. But we don’t train our hands to touch
as we train our eyes to look or our ears to listen.

LAUREN: Under what conditions could it be appropriate to introduce interpersonal touch? When
the range of potential physical sensations within human-machine engagement runs from pleasurable
to painful, how can this be critically and safely implemented? How can notions of privacy be
appropriately preserved?

LAUREN: exploration into touch “are often more informative about the culture of science than
about the scientific basis of culture” This is in part because our experience of touch is so highly
dependent upon the context in which it occur

SKIN MUSIC
https://vimeo.com/77170690

LAUREN: So I would have the piece composed as sound but also as sensation, so there were
various motors placed inside this chaise longue that an audience member would lie back on and
they feel vibrations moving up their spine into their head. I'd also work with tactile transducers,
which are just like bass shakers basically, so you can send a really low frequency sound directly into
someone's spine or feet. So composing that with the sounds was really interesting.

MANIPULATION ALBUM:is a collection of unedited one-take improvisations performed on

unpredictable ecological hybrid analogue/digital/human systems. instability arises from the
fragilities of touch-based engagement and mutually affecting relationships within the technology.
performed 2008 – 2016

Techno scribble. listen from beginning and/or 7.40

https://laurensarahhayes.bandcamp.com/track/technoscribble

Inclusivity and technology in School Education

LAUREN: I try to facilitate a space where everyone is comfortable bringing their own skills,
cultural background, identity and aesthetic approaches’

SLOBODA “no classroom teacher could hope to adequately address issues relating to techno
with their students without specific understanding of, and exposure to, that sub-genre and its role
Lauren Sarah Hayes. Alex Paxton. NYO Seminar. April 2021.
for its habitual users. The same point can be made for almost any other sub-genre” (Sloboda
2001, p. 249).

DANIEL WALZER:millennials equipped with open-access, affordable software and an Internet

connection “delve into an individualized creative process with their preferred tools at arm’s
reach” (Walzer 2015, p. 34).

LAUREN: My work as an improviser been necessarily and profoundly influenced by

playing music together with people in various scenarios ranging from the conservatoire
to the primary school classroom; the family home to the day care centre; the stage to the
lecture theatre; the hospital to the party; and the national park to the mine shaft.

ITS RAINING PULSARS

https://pwgen20.bandcamp.com/track/it-s-raining-pulsars

OTHER PIECES

15 SECONDS
- Hamilton memorial piece
https://vimeo.com/141599626

LAUREN: I think I'm more of what I call a sound sculptor, in that I try and shape the music with
the physical tools that I have, so I don't see composition or performance as a cerebral process for
me, it's definitely about throwing all the things together and sitting and improvising, experimenting
and yeah, sculpting the sound.

BRIDAVIEL
3.33 - The first recording under Bridalveil Fall in Yosemite. White noise, matched with white noise,
and people trying to clamber over the slippery rocks.
https://soundcloud.com/sounding-out-spaces/bridalveil

LAUREN: Improvising the juxtaposition between the vast

expanse of the Grand Canyon with the smallest possible
modular synth I could carry down with me.

SCORCHED EARTH,
guerrilla improv

https://soundcloud.com/sounding-out-spaces/bombay

Lauren Sarah Hayes. Alex Paxton. NYO Seminar. April 2021.

RESISTANCE and prejudice

LAUREN: Numerous institutions and people have told me that I can’t do what I do.

LISTEN TO LADIES: I asked Lauren to speak about her experience of the gender imbalance in her
field.

LAUREN: I don't think I thought about it before being involved in it. And I think the first thing that
struck me was that I was the only female on the course. And maybe I didn't think too much of that
until I started going to conferences and seeing, ok this pattern is repeating itself everywhere that
I go.

LISTEN TO LADIES: And then when she became a teacher (professor at UNi.), she grew even
more aware, especially of the power of inclusivity in the material she was teaching. For example, in
a history of electronic music course, there is a clear choice to show the class only male composers,
OR to include the many other voices that have made an impact in the field.

LAUREN: Like the women from the Radiophonic Workshop, Daphne Oram, Delia Derbyshire,
I feel that it's more my responsibility now to teach that in a different way

LISTEN TO LADIES: I asked her if she had any advice for aspiring composers, especially those
wanting to work with electronics.

LAUREN: Advice I would say is that if you have an idea, just don't be put off by anything and
anyone that tries to undermine what you are doing. I think one of the main things I experienced
is really when men try to intimidate you by fantasizing technology and you know, trying to
speak in really technical terms, which didn't phase me, because I understood what they were
talking about, but I knew when they were trying to do it. And I think that just being kind of
confident that your idea is worth exploring and finding other women who have this interest. There
seems to be lots more groups for women to get together and try to explore things in sound.

RADICAL
LAUREN: I don’t really understand the idea of self-expression in music – I’ve never been
interested in that.

HCMF: Informed by the radical music she found herself dancing to week in week out, her music
thrives in opposition, calling for new ways of exploring sound together.

LAUREN: I love going into situations where my work doesn’t quite fit and seeing what I can
make of the situation. What can I learn and teach maybe. You have to be bold, and stubborn,
and at the same time generous, and open’.

FEMME ENDINGS form EMBRACE.

https://laurensarahhayes.bandcamp.com/album/embrace