NAME
The name comes from the suggestion that the physical form of the instrument gives, namely long bamboo-flutes that look like stalagmites in caves. Also the original source material that activates these flutes look like spikes.
DESCRIPTION & USAGE OF THE BASSBOX FOR THE PIECE
The BassBox is an electric airpump that blows exact streams of wind into bamboo-flutes and through this, interesting rhythmic patterns occur. These low frequencies come from powerfull bass loudspeakers, thus functioning as virtual fundamentals for the flutes. The input to the BassBox can be either created by the specially built Pulsor analog trigger synthesizer, or by low frequency soundfiles. For this particular composition different flutes on the BassBoxes, through extreme close-miking, were recorded for the capturing of the varying spectra and timbres.
SOUND SOURCE GENERATION & SIGNAL PROCESSING ASPECTS
The basic materials used for both the sound generation and processing of it, were
tightly structured pulse-trains within window-frames having different lengths, according to the Fibonacci-series.
By repeating this same process at higher levels, eventually a stucture occurred that was used as the basis for the whole composition itself, but also new materials were derived from this and added to it. These were used for the sound treatment mainly different FFT-processes and cross-convolution. withthe programs 'Ceres3','MetaSynth', SoundHack', 'SonicWorx Artist' and 'Csound' running on Silicon Graphics and Apple Computers
.ASPECTS OF THE COMPOSITION
GENERAL FLOW OF RHYTHMIC MOVEMENT
Part 1 starts with a rather fast acceleration to come to an almost standstill at the end of it, where as
Part 2 picks it up and develops it into a long and persistent beat, to finally reach Part 3 and start meandering
with enough spaces in it, to collapse at the end.
GENERAL FLOW OF SPECTRAL MOVEMENT
The essential element is the density of sound itself, the change from tone to noise.
Part 1 is generallly 'tone-like' with micro-fluctuations and larger ones as counter voice.
click on the sonogram to listen
Part 2 has a much greater movement in this respect, that it becomes increasingly more noisier and disappears finally in it.
click on the sonogram to listen
Part 3 has both elements, but almost in a polyphonic sense, both with the micro-fluctuations in the beginning and
the noise in the end.
click on the sonogram to listen Arie van Schutterhoef-2007 arsche[at]xs4all.nl