Suvenires
Stereo 4:08
The Money Project for ICMC2002 called for pieces to be based on a short recording of people advertising souvenirs at an outdoor market in Havana, Cuba.[1]
The voices, tired from repetition and the daily tourist circus, had an amazing quality and were reflecting a proud sadness, generating strength and still sounding beautiful and foolish. I decided to present large parts from the recording in recognisable forms and elaborate on their inherent musicality.
Using Csound and Metasynth I re-synthesised the voice in many different ways and then time-stretched and transposed some of the results to make drones and melodic gestures. I used frequency shifting to create extra bass and treble. With granular synthesis and delays I made clouds out of a clave sound and variably transposed them, in order to interact with other events that were happening in the recording of the market. I enhanced various other elements with instantaneous long reverb, filtering, envelope substitution, compression and looping.
Micro-editing and mixing all these materials I structured the piece in three parts that translate my impressions of the vendors and the daily market, in an unfolding pattern of variation and abstraction.
I have often used the vocal sound-stream both as source material and as a model for structural and dynamic control. The following three pieces were made exclusively with speaking voices.
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