Hi and welcome to my presentation,

Reflect-Outbound, the composition of a piece, based on the rhythmic and melodic elements of the
music of the BaAka tribes.

The process for this composition has been an interesting one, and something that I have thought a
lot about over the last year. Today I would like to discuss a few key ideas that helped to shape and
guide the sound of the composition.

Firstly, today I will cover the rhythmic aspect of my thesis, and how I used the rhythms and cyclical
nature of the BaAka music as a complete foundation for my own composition, Reflect-Outbound.
Secondly, I will also discuss some more esoteric and philisophical views that I acquired and thought
about that I feel were crucial in shaping the sound of the music.

One of the main goals of my thesis was to unlock and find new ways to compose and write music.
Upon hearing this music –
plays clip....
I was already taken with many things. In no order these were, the beauty of the melodies, the
complex and dense rhythmic nature of so many voices singing separate parts, and the cyclical
nature of the music, which I found extremely hypnotic and powerful. I felt I was at a point in my
compositions where I was stuck, composing from a harmonic stand point, with longer forms,
multiple sections etc.. and I was looking for a new way to approach composition. When I heard this
music I felt that this would be an amazing source to draw and learn from.

Specifically today i want to focus on the rhythmical elements of the music, and so I would like to
mainly speak about this. Before I talk about my process for using the ideas, I think its important to
just highlight the broader things I noticed in the early stages of listening.

- Rhythmical Cycles – The music moves cyclically. A lot of the music is comprised of one cycle
(almost like a loop) but that is built up with lots of interweaving independent voices and percussion.
They also use variation within the lines that are being sung. To me the music has a strong sense of
propulsion, forward motion, and though it is based on a relatively short rhythmical foundation ( not
comprised of lots of sections) it has a way of flowing very organically and doesn't feel static. This
idea of a short structure captured me and I wanted to also use that as the base for Outbound. (2nd
part of the song)

- Rhythmical Layers – Now we can listen to this Liquindi Drumming performance to give context
to this idea of rhythmical layers. Here is a rough transcription of the general idea of what they are
performing, though they use some variation, and due to the recording some things could only be
approximate. Here we can see 3 separate layers of rhythm that interweave with each other. Two
things I would want to point out are how each layer is rhythmically independent of one another, and
also how they use different rhythmic values. For example, the top layer is nearly constant, and the
bottom layer plays a much less dense rhythm, and also sonically occupies the lower frequencies
generally.

Both of these ideas were the springboard for my exploration in Reflect-Outbound, and are the
complete foundation of nearly every sound and concept throughout the composition. Before I go
into those details, I would like to share the general concept of my thought process. It became
particularly clear once I began using Pure Data (Where I designed all synthesisers, loops, samplers).
But I wanted to use the process of abstraction as a a way to study the music, but then be able to
extract the concept from the music (like the rhythmical layers, cycles) and then push the boundaries
of those ideas, and see where they could be applied to within the composition.
The starting point for how I did this was to take the transcription of the liquindi drumming, and do a
version of it in pure data. Already i started with digitised drum sounds which immediately give us a
different pallete of sound and aesthetic.

Play 1 – 3 examples of this.

I then came up with variations of this, programming different sequences, using different sounds
and experimenting. The moment where I really began the process of stretching the ideas
conceptually then started when I applied synth sounds to the drum pattern, I replaced all the drum
sounds with synthesiser sounds, and altered their attack and decay, so that they overlapped with one
an other. Then I began to come up with variations of this, and started to program drum sounds in
around the rhythmical placement of the synth sounds. So we used the original Liquindi drumming
as the basis, but it becomes much less obvious on listening.

Play 1 example of this w/ drums and without.

So apart from changing the roles of the instruments, and how they work within the cycle, I was met
with a challenge of the music being more metronomic as now it was playing in a sequencer.

These are two of the ways in which I decided to try and alter this. I do feel with my current
approach this is a feature of the music, and in a way provides us within an interesting point of
intersection between metronomic time, and something more organic. Within trying to work within
that space, I wanted to add in variation and more improvised elements into the drum patterns. I
came up with a simple generative system in which it is able to choose randomly when to play
certain percussions. This leads to a more flowing drum pattern and loses some of the static robotic
feeling from before. The second way in which I did this was to start to give different sounds and
instruments their own personal cycle, that interact with our foundation in different ways. The way
in which I categorized this are as follows:

I broke rhythm down into the following categories:

1) Rhythms that move at the same tempo, starting and ending at the same point.

2) Rhythms that move at the same tempo, starting and ending at different points.

3) Rhythms that move at different tempos, starting and ending at different points.

4) Rhythms that move completely out of time (rubato), starting and ending at different points.

5) Rhythms that move at different tempos, starting and ending at the same point.

Although a side note, this idea also came from doing a performance with Talk about performance –

Ambient Trio with machines – spinning wheel, loom etc. Realisation of mechanical time layered

over the time of the band. Also inspiring. At this point I also began spending time listening to

nature, and listening to all these separate sounds collect together, generally independent of one an
other in terms of the cycle of their melodies/rhythms/pulses/start and ending. Yet collectively it

works. Aesthetically this was also something I wanted to have in my music.

By having for example the vibraphone with short rhythmic motifs that it can play at any tempo, or a

synthesiser sound that acts independently of the rhythmic grid and produces a note from a 3 note

pattern every 10 seconds and loops this, we start to elongate what the cycle actually is, and we come

up with a way of creating something that is a cross between this mechanical and flowing nature.

Each instrument, and sound is created with this purpose, and even our foundational cycle though

still felt very strongly, is not the beginning and the end like a loop, it is a part of a much larger cycle

that constantly varies and changes while being rooted in commonality and repetition.

Now I would like to talk about how from the rhythmical cycle, I wanted to specifically focus on the

idea of rhythmical layers. For this I will refer to the first part of the composition, Reflect.

Without going into technical and less interesting detail about how I designed the sounds, I would

like to talk about how I designed the sounds based on the rhythmical layers that we have seen in

liquindi drumming.

Simply, I looked at each pad of sound that I designed as one rhythmical layer. I then came up with a

sequence that loops, and a rhythm based on the ideas we discussed already. So the next step in my

process was to then take this rhythm, where the whole sequence initally may take 6 secs, and sped it

up so that the sequence becomes much faster, anywhere from the sequence now being .72 seconds,

to .12 seconds, or in some cases 2 secs. I then create a bed of sound based on this, and then I begin

to layer the pads on top of each other, now able to construct and improvise my own rhythmical

cycles. Each sound also becomes closer to that of a singular unit, and so therefore it can also be

conceived of closer to individual beats that become a layer in a much larger and slower pulse, but

are then made up of a different layer, all coming from Liquindi Drumming. As well as this, I

constructed all the sounds from pure sin waves at different frequencies(here I was inspired by the
concept of spectral music.) This is worth mentioning, as one element that I also noticed in my

attempts to transcribe this music, especially with the vocals, was how the sound blends together

and the voices blend into one another, making them harder to distinguish. This was something I

decided to do in my sound design, where everything is 90 percent unfiltered sine tones. We then

observe sonically how the sounds blend into one another, can mask certain notes, or can start to

create different rhythmical pulses, all depending on frequency and volume.

Play example of layers.

Thought not included in the thesis, I feel it is briefly important to mention some aesthetic influences

that I had in terms of sound design. I spent a lot of time listening to the work of artists like Burial,

Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Steve Lehman, Iarla o Lionaird and Donnacha Dennehey, and

ideas from artists like Brian Eno. These artists were important in crafting the aesthetic of the sound

and helped inform that side of the compositional process. I also feel I was able to incorporate these

influences fairly freely, by this by using the computer as a major compositional tool, and also

because of the whole idea of abstraction I was able to search for new aesthetics and sounds when I

approached writing this music.

To conclude the presentation, I hope I have been able to offer insight into the compositional process

of this piece, and also how through the thought process of abstraction we can really liberate

ourselves within the study of music, and allow ourselves to stretch the possibilities conceptually of

different musical features, and to incorporate these features in many different ways we away from

replicating the sound itself and find new avenues that open up our understanding of our approach to

composition.