An Act of Listening
My name is Tom Lyne and I am a bassist, sound designer and composer. In this podcast I will have conversations with friends and colleagues where we talk about some of my composition and sound design. We will be exploring what it means to commit an act of listening.
An Act of Listening
An Act of Listening EP1 - Underground
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This episode explores a work from Tom's Sonables II collection called 'Underground'. Guest musician and producer Martin Green asks the questions and the work in question explores the sounds and interpretations of an underground spring.
Hello there. My name is Tom Lyne, and this is an act of listening. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Tom Lyne. I'd like to welcome Martin Green to the studio today. He's a music producer, composer, musician extraordinaire.
SPEAKER_00Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here in your studio in beautiful Midlothian.
SPEAKER_01Today we're going to explore a piece of music from my surrounded by Midlothian project. An album called Sonnables 2, and this piece is known as Underground. So we're going to descend into the depths of the local Tynewater Valley. Brilliant.
SPEAKER_00So if we start with the title, it's called Underground.
SPEAKER_01Why is that? It's called Underground because uh it started with a recording of an underground stream uh spring that I found on one of my quests over by Vogri Country Park. I was in Tyne Valley and it was just at the side of a a trail. I heard a little bit of water and I looked down, and there's a puddle about half a meter across and the water was just burbling up from the ground underneath. So of course, first thing you do is sit down with your mics and and a video camera and and record that. So that provided the basis for the beginning of the song. It's a beautiful, it's a segment of a much longer recording of a a spring. I keep forgetting the word for spring. But what I found really interesting about it was the way that the drops and the burbals all kind of had tone quality to them.
SPEAKER_00So are you going out walking in the countryside with your equipment, actively seeking out things that make interesting sounds? Is that is that where you start?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. I sort of have a I put together a hit list of places that I would like to go, things I sort of hope to capture. I did a whole series sort of around Tyn Valley and the burn that's down there, and then there's also Vogarry Country Park and some nice forests and lots of wildlife.
SPEAKER_00So you're looking for things to actively make into pieces of music later on. Is that part of your thinking whilst you're recording these environmental sounds?
SPEAKER_01I don't always think along that lines. More it's about capturing good environmental sounds because I want to create um libraries of sound effects. Okay. And so that's the first motive for recording this stuff. It was things that I was using in bits of film or video. Um and I have uh since since I was a kid, I have a I've always loved recording things and playing around with cassette tapes and um four-track recorders and then onto computers when the time came. So um I just love recording things and collecting sounds. I've an extensive library of a lot of natural stuff. Because we live in a beautiful environment, this is a great place to go and capture sounds.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and so some of those work their way into kind of artistic projects like this, and some of them just become a repository of environmental sounds that um and so then why this one to base a piece of music on? Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um in this case, that little bit of burn that we heard burbling away, um it contains rhythm and tone and texture and all these sort of things. I'll play a little bit and just sort of let you uh sink into the the joy of a burn. It's not evident at first, but there's pitch.
SPEAKER_00So your composers here is is actually hearing notes in that.
SPEAKER_01Uh uh when you close your eyes and sort of really sink into it, I always use expressions like sink into it. You sort of have to, it's like meditation. You just sort of let that sample go through your head. But yeah, you start hearing all the different drops, and the the different size of the drop makes a different pitched. Whatever you want to call it. Um and it's kind of semi-random because there's a stream of water shooting out of the ground and it's sort of bubbling around in the water next to it. After a while you start noticing patterns in it, but they're not really very clear. But definitely there's all the different pitches and the the top end, the treble of it, and the the darker bottom end of it. And it's sort of like this tiny little symphony goes on in there.
SPEAKER_00Fascinating. So, how how do you how do you then move forward into turning that sound into a piece of music? Yeah, there's a bit of a leap.
SPEAKER_01Um so I started playing around with this idea of uh I liked the the rhythm and the tones that were in there, and so through a process of compressing an EQ of a sample, um you you can then sort of highlight those bits, and then you can extract MIDI data from it.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so and and MIDI is a way of telling a computer which note to play for how long.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, as opposed to the audio side, which is the voice of recording or the actual recording of the burn, turning it into MIDI, it is just a numerical data representation of a series of pitches and velocities. And then I started playing with that, extracting more and more meaning from it. You know, with a sound like this, in the middle. So this is very esoteric, but in the middle of that sound is a lot of white noise, and like wind or like rain or a river. It has sort of this noise that's made up of a bazillion little drops or sounds, and they all mesh together to sort of make a gray sound. It's like the noise we used to have on televisions when you put a static on a television. Okay. It's just like a lot of points, there's nothing in the specific, and it's called white noise because it just makes everything else disappear. So you have to sort of carve out that bit of the.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so when you first translate an audio sample into MIDI data, you end up with something that's far too complex to hear anything in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I have an example here of a of a different thing that I'm working on just right at the moment, which it's a rainstorm.
SPEAKER_00Brilliant, I feel like being punched by that pro Stravinsky though. Brilliant. Oh, I'm so sorry.
SPEAKER_01So this is rain on a conservatory room. Okay. And you can almost hear the individual rain drops.
SPEAKER_00But I can also hear what you're saying. That there's there's almost every single note at once there.
SPEAKER_01That's exactly what white noise is, it's every single note at once. That's why they use it for testing PAs and checking room acoustics and things like that. Because it it gives you a sweep of the full range of harmonic content. Um, so then I you sort of have to carve the sound a little bit and start hiling the important thing. And then you get this. Which this is really. And it's quite random, and the rhythm is uncontrolled, and the pitches are are completely across the whole spectrum. So that's kind of where it starts from. Okay. It's not terribly musical at that point. However, it does it does have features, and there's different ways you can go about looking for those features. Um, and with the stream, going back to the stream piece, um, I returned to this recording over and over again. And just listen for the notes that really sort of stick out to me, and then line that up with the MIDI data that I'm sort of editing.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you're you're kind of going through and taking out, deleting those notes that you don't want. Okay.
SPEAKER_01That's really it's that's the process, is r eliminating the things that are unnecessary.
SPEAKER_00Okay. And then you feed that the MIDI data. To bring it back. In into a in this instance, into a string sample?
SPEAKER_01Uh it's on several channels of string samples. And uh in a very ad hoc orchestral kind of way, there's a violin one, violin two, some violas, and some cellos and bases.
SPEAKER_00Is the idea. Okay, so you're kind of streaming out that very complex data into a few manageable parts. Yes. You can almost hear it lining up. Interesting. And and without the stream or knowing anything about the compositional process, i I mean, it sounds very much to my ear like contemporary classical orchestral music, um, especially, you know, kind of post-World War II music where people were really interested in trying to move away from traditional forms of melody or having this very kind of centered home key. Yeah. And when I listened to this the first time, uh before I came to do this session, I had assumed you had sat there with a a pencil and a piece of manuscript and and written this out, which as a composer you're more than than capable of doing, but you've chosen not to do that.
SPEAKER_01No. Um it was more interesting to look for the the bits that stuck out, the the shiny bits, let's call it. Um the things that I'm always attracted to in music. Uh which admittedly have a particular tonality to them because that's what I'm tuned into. That's like any composer, you know. You listen to any of the people you've mentioned, and their music represents their thinking. So like this, me selecting notes or eliminating notes I don't want to, I'm left with notes that I like, which kind of start after a while you start recognizing your own tonality, style.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so a different composer might have taken that MIDI file and chosen different notes. Totally.
SPEAKER_01Okay. No two would have been the same. And if I did it again with the same thing, it would be different. Okay. Um, though I've heard this one enough times that I'd probably be pulled back in that same direction again just because the good old days.
SPEAKER_00And it's part of the the appeal for you of this process that you are pushed away from repeating yourself as a composer because you've given yourself over to chance to a certain extent. I think introducing chance and randomness in the like I I I do love uh Stockhausen and um I can't think of all the names because I'm terrible with names, but you know, all these sort of but there's a sort of Schoenberg, you know, that there's some there's something, and and it's not my area of expertise, but you know, something that reminds me of Ligety and Schoenberg and um Yeah. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01They they introduce these processes and they they also have thinking that challenges sort of convention. Um so they're looking for other ways of of achieving some sort of artistic composition and construction and experimenting with processes. Um and I guess I am experimenting with processes, but I'm not like directly I will do this process and we'll transl uh we will transpose the meaning of a JPEG of a picture of the ocean, and that'll be the whole symphony. Uh you know, it doesn't work that way.
SPEAKER_00Um and I think for a lot of those composers that was probably true as as well. I think you know, s surrealism is a way of giving you new jumping-off points, I think, for a lot of composers rather than sticking rigidly to the rules. You know, the the desire is still to make a coherent emotional whole. Yep. Um certainly is for you. Um and uh why strings, you know, presumably you could use that medidata to to control anything. Drums, synths, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I particularly like string. I I sort of grew up in uh playing classical music as a violin player and did youth orchestras and string quartets and um have even written a bit for a string quartet. So I like it. I'm feel quite comfortable using those sounds. I kind of know how to use them I get to get them to do this the things I want. In an orchestration or arranging sensibility, I have regions that I think of. So there's you know, the strings represent what could also be done with certain types of synth pads or um normal instruments or regular instruments, traditional instruments. Um likewise things in the bass region or things in the low region or things in the very top end. Um it's almost like painting with colors in a way. You you use swathes of tonality to cut to fill this area, and that's fulfilling a function of rhythm and harmony, or this bit over here is fulfilling the the function of more rhythm, but this time melody. Okay. Um, and so my constructions within the the computer are a little bit like that. So in my mind, the strings worked really well, the orchestral thing it gave me the range because there was nice bowed double basses in there that have a lot of impact, and violins as well. I could have just as easily used synths and you know old Korg string patches would achieve the similar sort of a thing. Yeah, but in this case, uh for most of this project, because this is an album called Sonnables 2, and I I did come back to using conventions of of strings just to sort of try and create cohesion. Okay. Um, even though I'm sort of doing all this bonker stuff and random stuff and bringing real world real world sounds in and playing with them and teasing them and mangling them into different things, I still have a sensibility of trying to bring it together into a whole that makes sense. Okay. Which that's that's artistic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And and something that goes through all your compositions is is storytelling. It feels like you're always leading us on a journey. And this one starts in quite an identifiable place. You know, the the way that you use the the sound of the brook at the beginning, we know where we are. Only for a second, you know, before we we move in somewhere else. The the next thing that I hear, uh, I thought might be a human voice. We hear a kind of pad sound coming in over that. Is that a human voice?
SPEAKER_01It's um birds. That have been stretched and mangled as you do with samples and then pitched. So we get this. There's three voices. There's one, that's two, and then that's three. If we listen to one on its own, you can sort of almost hear the individual birds. Dude, or at least to me it's obvious. I know probably not.
SPEAKER_00And they make a very coherent major chord to my ear. Um have you have you pitched them to particular notes so that they do that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. We have uh in this case we have it building into a nice little major chord, really. It's not obviously a major chord, but there's a root and the fifth and the third going on. Um within those, each of those tones, there are quite a lot of overtones and harmonics that are sort of blended in. And by mangling samples, uh, you wind up with artifacts, just random bits of distortion or or whatnot that sort of contribute to the quality of the sound. And to me, it's a note, it's a chord, and it also has motion to it. So yeah, it's a very rich and and uh and ever-evolving sound. Yeah, and you know, there's a bit of reverb on everything as well, which always makes everything sound better. But that that chord it's just with the stream in the background and then sort of the strings being a little bit uh bonkers. With in the sense that they're not playing a traditional melody. When this note comes in, it sort of serves to sort of tie things down a little bit. It sort of goes, here's a place. Everything is sort of revolving around this place. But there's still lots of things going on around it, but we suddenly have somewhere to anchor our ear and to settle in.
SPEAKER_00And if you've created that major chord, how do you decide? You know, if you've got quite uh chromatic music without an obvious home key, then you've got the sound of a stream. How how do you decide what key to put your major chord in?
SPEAKER_01I think if you go back to the very beginning, and again, this is a bit of a stretch, but um I would say that the key kind of comes from the tonality of the stream.
SPEAKER_00I know it is a bit of a stretch, but I can kind of hear it. Okay. And do you just play around with a few chords until you find the one that feels like it fits? I think so. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Those the notes that we got with the birds, that is also something that just evolves from the samples themselves as you start manipulating from them. Because they they develop their own harmonics and their own sort of distortion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um and yes, you can play around and you can pitch it a little bit, but for the most part, though, it exists as a a physical function of the sample being manipulated.
SPEAKER_00Okay. But it it certainly you know, if you were to create, well, I don't think you could create that sound that you've got out of a synth patch. There are so many other things in those bird samples that are irregular and unusual.
SPEAKER_01Reverb and distortion and delay. So the function of those effects uh is applied to normal instruments like a guitar or something like that, to create a little bit of fuzz or a little bit of diffusion of sound that helps glue everything together. Um and I kind of like doing it a bit more manually with found sounds and and samples.
SPEAKER_00Right, but that's interesting. But they they form a similar function for you as a sonic glue to have these artifacts, to have the the little fizzes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay. You know, if you're reading um that book on mastering Bob Katz. Yeah, you know, he talks about that stuff and he talks about how it just is just like softening the edges of some of that harsh digitalness. And um and so I'm using harsh digitalness to sort of soften the edge of the harsh digital digitalness. Uh a bit of auto panning, you know. I've got all the auto I do use a lot of automation in the mixing. Right. Um, and then placement starts becoming quite important to me. Okay. Like spatial placement. Spatial placement. Like uh the original samples that I used were ambisonic files. Oh, okay. So then So there was like a you know, a multi-channel placement. Obviously, you set the microphone in front of a spring and you record it, so there's not really like a lot of motion or depth to that other than there. So it's been mixed down to a binaural sample for this case, and then as I start mixing strings and these these other noises, they they do occupy a variety of spaces within the stereo thing. So if you're listening to this, do it on headphones.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so that there is a binaural element to um yeah. Um and you definitely like to take us on a journey. Sure. So we've started off as in a stream. We've heard this kind of uh otherworldly choir of of birds, and then some strings.
SPEAKER_01Um but it leads us towards um beginning, a middle, and an end, and variations of that, and sometimes playing around with that whole form. It's an introduction to the stream, is what I'm doing. Okay. I'm I'm saying this is a this is the most amazing little bubbling spring I've ever seen in Midlothian, and here it is. Uh and then there's a story that goes with it, which is it goes on. Um have I sold this? Here we go, we're heading.
SPEAKER_00Great. And if if we could just pause there for a second. So there the birds have taken us right into an unknown land. There's a there's a very a very noticeable transition from those birds. Um I feel like you know they've thrust me through a portal in into um, I suppose what you know in in beginning, middle, end uh uh terms is the middle.
SPEAKER_01We're swooped into the middle. It's potentially the similar to um as the sun slowly emerges from behind a big cloud or the the big sort of swoosh into something else, uh it's making you think that something's gonna happen and then something happens.
SPEAKER_00And it it's a very particular effect that you a lot of your music is very filmic, and actually that there is a film that that accompanies this piece, which I urge you to go and look at on YouTube. But can we can we hear the the birds transition um one more time? And actually now I know they're birds, it's it's kind of clear. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um and I think there's a bit of ring modulating going on in there as well. Okay. Um there's definitely on one of the keyboards there's there's a ring modulator, so um it has that sense of distortion and and also electrical interference. Okay. Because that that is one of my favorite sounds as well. It's not on this track in particular, but I have quite a lot that I use um radio interference signals. Right. Um again, it's it's just a different sound that's part of, to me, normal orchestrating vocabulary, and it serves a function and it creates sort of a stress and a sci-fi feel, let's say.
SPEAKER_00Um and it it feels like I'm being very confidently led at this point by a composer who's saying, right, this is where you were, I'm taking you somewhere else, and then the somewhere else is a whole new world. We we're hearing keyboard chords, very deliberate chords, pre-decided. I mean, obviously the whole thing is composed, but but you have quite an unusual and chance-influenced way of composing the the first bit of this piece, and then I feel like okay, this is this is a a bedrock. This is this is this is a very clear decision about harmony and and rhythm.
SPEAKER_01Um we come through a a journey, it's a journey, I suppose, and we're we're at this spring watching the water. Um, but the transition is is a little bit like sort of moving into the secret world or something. You sort of pass through uh uh overhanging trees and you come out on the other side and maybe there's a lake or something, or you know, it it that's kind of the direction it's going. Because it it on the way there it can get quite sinister and it gets quite loud and it um uh it could go any direction, so it's nice that it sort of flops out into sort of this big chordal tonal area that's robust and it's supportive and it's holding you up and it has lots of nice tones. So it feels quite safe, yes. And uh can we just hear the the keys on the right? Surely. We're going up here. It also has a little bit of bass attached to it, so we come up and swoosh. And then it comes and back to this.
SPEAKER_00And so for you, isn't was there a distinct decision moving from taking an audio sample, getting the the notes and pitch values in in digital form and assigning them to strings, which is not a totally random process because you then go through and curate it, but it isn't a process where you've decided where every note falls in advance. Right. And then we reach the section where it feels to me like you have decided where every note falls in advance. It was is this something that you you deliberately wanted both?
SPEAKER_01Um, I kind of run on instinct a little bit and feel certain things are required to make it work. Um the answer to that question is there's probably quite a few things I could have done that would achieve that. Um but because of the tonality of the of the babbling of the spring and the string thing that we've created, this sort of made the most logical sense to me. It sort of felt like uh I do like to let my instinct sort of guide me when I'm choosing chords and things like that. And I sort of felt very strong that it brought me to this place. And because everything else is so rhythmic and angular and moving in an erratic fashion, when I played those chords like that, there was just sort of this great grounding warmth and and sort of settlement to the to the piece. Um and I think it's kind of a really important thing to do for your listeners to if you're going to challenge them, you also have to reward them or you have to give them things that make them feel good. Um, not that I know what that really means or what it in the in the in the patchwork quilt style of putting things together, I'm not just gonna give you like crazy stream for five minutes and hope for the best. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00Um so part of it is about uh perhaps something a bit more tangible to cling on to for the listener, but it also sounds like some of it is to do with contrast. Um you we've we've had something which is unpredictable and a little bit uneasy, and and so the contrast of that is to to give us somewhere where we can feel comfortable for a moment. Um and although the harmony is quite complex, or to you know to my ear it's quite complex, it definitely has a total centre all of a sudden, and there is something relaxing about that. Um and there's bass as well. We we I think we just heard the keys there.
SPEAKER_01Um I think there might also be some oh double bass. Hang on, let's go ahead just a second. So the the blips, those are still playing the stream.
SPEAKER_00Okay, and so that's those notes are determined by the mini data that came out of the stream. Yeah. You're very well known as a bass player, you're you're very proficient as a bass player. Why didn't you play the bass?
SPEAKER_01I don't think it needed it. Yeah, well I could uh you know in some cases I do go back and I um because it is a while ago, I may well have gone through it a few times with the bass and it just didn't quite click. Okay, yeah. Um and so is that a sonic choice?
SPEAKER_00Something that's a sonic huge and warm that that you can underpin with.
SPEAKER_01Yes, in this case that definitely was the case. Uh it just felt like also to counterbalance the stream, because the stream is very present, it's quite loud in the mix, and it's uh it's constant through, and then there's another stream that's mangled up a bit that that is creating sort of a little bit of chaos within that. So having that's the one thing that I really love about synth bass and sampled bass is you can take a note and it can be quite low and it's solid and it's reassuring and it stays. You know, with a double bass, I can play you a low note and it can sound gorgeous, but it's got the attack and it's got the decay. Um, I could get the bow out and play it with the bow, um, and that would sort of create the same sort of effect. Um, but then you know, my technique with a bow is pretty questionable at best. So um sometimes you gotta just decide to go with what's yeah, what's right. Yeah, um, electric bass is very good at s hitting a big note and sustaining, but it also decays. Yeah. So and then you wind up having to play the notes again or or get an ebo, you know, those little magnetic things. Um so no, it's I like the sound, I'm quite happy with the way it works. Uh I'll move on and do the next thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um and the next thing that that happens here is a combination of these two worlds. The strings come back in whilst we still have this jazz-influenced harmony in the keys part, and there I'm transported to a completely different world again. There I I feel uh Gil Evans or uh Lale Schiffrin or Bernard Herman's Taxi Driver Score, these these things that combine uh really well-informed and and brilliant orchestral arrangement with a jazz sensibility. Um and that takes me a very long way from this stream in Midlothian where I was, what, two and a half minutes ago.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Um, but also uh they're related, they have they have meaning together. Uh they they're sort of they certainly exist side by side in my brain. That's what this is all about. This is a little voyage into the the chaos inside of my head. I feel very comfortable in the chaos inside of your head, so I'm so that's good. It's a bit worrying. I love putting things together and seeing if they fit, seeing if they work together. Uh I love the relationship of something like a burn or stream informing the choices of an orchestra. There's something beautiful about that. And there's also something beautiful about playing instruments outside, then crafting it so that it goes together beautifully, like bringing things together and trying them and trying to attempt to make and how did you make this blend together?
SPEAKER_00Because you've you've got a keyboard part with a very clear tonal center, you've got a string part without a tonal center. What what do you need to do to make it coherent?
SPEAKER_01So the atonal string part is completely the spring. It's uh all of the notes are derived from the spring, and the spring plays throughout underneath, so that it's like the supporting actor. The chords and the keyboards, they're sort of derived a little bit by, in my mind, what seems to be a relative tonality, and it carries the chorus, you know, certain things need to happen in the song to make the story complete, and so we're into the middle, and it just gives us the chords that move us forward. To me, that's the one of the crafts I really love doing is figure out how to make the songs move forward and continually asking questions.
SPEAKER_00And how much did you have to tweak that that stream data that you turned into string notes to fit with the keyboard part?
SPEAKER_01Ultimately, I didn't try and make them fit. They sort of evolved separately, and the string the string data did take a long time just to create something that sonically that works. Yeah. Um, and then was I was able to orchestrate it across four different sections. And then as we go towards the end of the song, then I started. You realize that sometimes random notes aren't necessarily the best choice. I started making choices about certain notes, thinking it'd be really nice if that was actually an F sharp to aim us back to the to the home key, just as a little blink of sanity in in the midst of all this chaos. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it can be really uh um impactful when you do that. Um just a couple of notes in the right direction just make the whole thing resolve in a nice way. And it certainly doesn't lose its character. Uh we we feel it as a yeah, exactly. From the middle bit, then we the strings come back in, we get a little bit of all of it together, like you having the strings and the keys and the burn and the sample notes as well, they they all get to play together then. So you get the whole ensemble. And then I'm just sort of removing little bits and pieces as we go towards the end. Uh, there's like a little question-answer sort of thing that goes on at the end.
SPEAKER_00Um towards the end, there's a kind of otherworldly version of the brook. Um could we hear that in isolation almost sounds like it's in a tin can.
SPEAKER_01And then it sounds like voices almost.
SPEAKER_00And you'll layering that with the the natural sound of the brook as well. Yeah, if I bring the other one in as well, then you get the two together.
SPEAKER_01I do fade out the normal spring, but you can sort of hear how they're related, but yeah. This is like uh a tender version of a soprano, the soprano burn, the soprano spring, and then the tenor spring some altos there, and then we're back in with the the lead, the lead spring. And again, all those points of articulation are being mirrored with the the strings throughout this.
SPEAKER_00So it really has been built out of your experience of sitting by that spring for an hour. Um beautiful. Well, thank you, Tom. Um I'd love to hear it again now I know a little bit more.