Building upon prior plans, I drew up a mock configuration to act as a guide in the performance of my piece.
It may seem plain, but I believe that this configuration is the most pragmatic solution suiting the nature of my piece. In the work, I am less trying to create a dynamic ethereal movement of sound on a blank speaker canvas, like many of the spatial sound works we have encountered, but more recreating and reflecting a real space.
Pursuing a quadrophonic multichannel format has meant that I have had to find creative solutions to problems that arise during arrangement, especially when I already have 4 distinct channels from the original ambisonic recordings, which are each critical in detailing the environment. I think this is also why my idea to do as much possible of this project analog, to tape, just isn’t practically feasible. I’ve run into significant phasing problems, having to re-amp each stem in mono to the temporally elastic medium of tape, so much so that recording and composing in Logic Pro makes the most sense with the time I have. Balancing the mix with numerous sonic The goal remains: The ultimate bounce will result in 4 stems, or channels of sound with clear directionality, a front, rear, left and right.
I also made one diagram of a more experimental configuration:
This version intends to capture the varying elevations of sound on the building site. The raised front speaker perhaps conveying sounds emanating from unseen works on the upper floors of the house, or from the ladder propped in the branches of a tree outside. The floor speaker, which I haven’t strictly denoted as only being a sub, could project sound from trench digging, and the weighty, low resonance of the transformer, often found on the floor.
I do not wholly intend to use this configuration, largely out of a practical consideration of the speaker configurations available to us, and the nature of the piece as it currently stands would create gaps in the aerial flow of the sound. Despite that, it is a dimension I could consider exploring further in the formation of a gallery installation for the following unit.
Instead of Logic Pro’s own method of decoding the ambisonic files, I experimented with Zoom’s proprietary Ambisonics Player software. This helped enable me to explore the spatial properties of the recordings I had made with more accuracy and delicacy, attuning each perspective to resemble the spaces they respectfully came from.