The Undersomething Special - GEM CD

In september GEM (österreichische Gesellschaft für Elektronische Musik) did include one of my pieces from 2001 on their new CD (released september 2017, afterwards the piece will also be downloadable here):

the undersomething special – radio/tapeversion 2:31 mix (commissioned by Kunstradio/performed 10.3.2001)

In former days the composers/sound engineers had to do bizarre, dangerous and funny things to get special takes of sounds underwater. With the approach of modern computer-technology to every household we can get the same results without leaving our armchairs or at least our studios. The keyword was convolution, a mathematical method for combinig the impulse response of one space or thing with a different sound. So if you convolve e.g. the impulse response of a gas-tank with your favorite song, sung maybe by your children, you can hear what it would sound like without moving anybody anywhere.

For the studio version I took a text of Hank Bull and convolved it with different homemade impulses. Unfortunately I did not have the original voice of H.B. at hand, so I used a computer voice to read the text. Now to the live version. First I need more material. So not to add unnecessary entities (Okham !) I only took found texts by Hank Bull, interviews and so on. Meanwhile also my knowledge about working with impulse files and room responses increased (thanks to Alois Sontacchi from the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics in Graz).I added a method using MLS (Multiple Length Sequences). This gave me even more sonic material; the MLS noise bursts from the room and the structure of its basis - pseudorandom rows of numbers (an interesting theme beyond the scope of this piece), getting closer to being inherent.  Due to technical aspects, some of the material will be prerecorded (I cannot afford the CPU power necessary to do everything in realtime.) The different kinds of sampled and real sounds, the getting of impulses, noise bursts , computer readings and real voices, sound gadgets and so forth are the sonic base of my performance. With all this material I established a situation in the studio, arranging everything on a big desk. Triggered at some point by hitting a string or pushing a button, the piece was runnig and running independently and unpredictably, but leaving open the possibility of interventions and direction by me. This is a to 2:31 condenced mix of the live radioperformance and preproduced material.

Recordings at Kunstradiostudio: Ingenieur Gehard Wieser. All other recordings by Seppo Gründler