HARRY BONE

CREATIVE STATEMENT

Noun. astrosphere (plural astrospheres): A cavity filled with hot gas blown into the interstellar medium by stellar winds.

In piece 001, I focused on minimalistic qualities that at the beginning, have a tonal structure centred around Eb(2) or 78.9Hz / 25.4 cents and only changes at 4:51, where I switch on an indeterminate demand between A harmonic and D harmonic minor, whilst purposefully choosing to limit #/b notes. The reason I chose a minimalistic approach, is that whilst the astrosphere is in itself likely chaotic and variable, we from our perception often see space as uncertain, eerie, mysterious and so on; I used typically descriptive words of space that I could think of and used them as a source of direction.

The core sounds that glue to piece together are the tuned and untuned percussion instruments, mainly the vibraphone/marimba, triangle and udu drum. I used only my Sontronics condenser microphones and contact mic to record live sounds and I used Ableton Live to process and pick out the sounds I wanted, experimentation was a big part of moving towards the sounds I could hear. The main instruments I used in these pieces were the Vibraphone, Marimba, Udu drum, triangle, cymbal and various miscellaneous objects including an area to create sounds with water, rubbing the condenser mic with my thumb, flipping a book to acquire flapping noises and so on.

In Ableton Live, I used the original sounds with the intention of manipulating them as far as sonically possible. The idea behind this was based on the constant shaping and morphing that occurs within the astrosphere where it is often chaotic; however, I wanted to represent the murkiness of deep space with these unfamiliar sounds. When I began creating the piece, I had various images of true and representative images of the astrosphere, a catalyst to source sound ideas. Techniques included reversing clips, panning, reverb, spatialisation and plugins that were mapped in Live to move their parameters to create a controlled environment. Grain delay, Phaser, Bit reduction, Convolution Reverb and Panning were some of the plugins I used.

BIOGRAPHY

Harry Bone is a percussionist and musician from Bath who enjoys creating sound art to explore the various sonic forms sound comes in. Harry completed his MA research project into Noise Pollution last year and is now beginning to build his career in the creative arts sector.