# The Hole



## Crudblud

Well jumpin' jiminy jeepers, it's new stuff from yer old pal Cordbird... whoever that is!

mp3

FLAC

This is in fact a sound manipulation piece using mainly voice recordings as its source, I thought you might like to know that beforehand.

here abound streams


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## Guest

I've downloaded it, thanks. I'll give it a listen later today.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

What the **** is this ****
What the duck is this ship
I love it!


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## tdc

I'm looking forward to giving this piece a close listen and I will leave a detailed comment once I have.


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## tdc

I really enjoyed this piece from start to finish. I believe it is my favorite of your compositions that I have listened to thus far.

The piece to me sonically is about textures and I think you do a masterful job here. I hear elements of fluxus and elements of Xenakis in this work, yet it simultaneously sounds quite original and is quite cohesive. It has a somewhat explorative journey or "concept album" feel to it.

In a strange coincidence, just last night I listened to and watched _Delusion of the Fury_ by Harry Partch, and afterwards I was so intrigued by it that I watched a bio of said composer. *I learned Partch was fascinated by the musicality of the spoken voice* - a very prominent element that you used in "The Hole" - and used to great effect. As I said I ended up really enjoying the Partch piece and afterwards noticed I felt invigorated. *I literally observed and thought to myself just last night that when I come upon some kind of creative work that really inspires me - it seems to have a nourishing effect on me that is quite tangible* - this "nourishing effect" is also a concept that is touched on in your work when the narrator arrives at the bottom of the hole.

The title of the second movement "Monodrama" makes me think this work is about an introspective journey of self, conjuring the Jungian phrase "Who looks outside dreams, who looks within awakens". It comes across to me as being somewhat like an inner journey of consciousness. (I'm sure some of the observations here are my own subjective projections, and that I'm likely missing some of the conceptual details you intended).

I felt the work had excellent cohesiveness and unity. The use of the sound of the human voice really impressed me, particularly in movement 6. At some point I want to go back and listen to the piece again and I'm sure I will notice additional nuances.

If I have any criticisms it is perhaps that in movements 4 and 5 I notice a sense of things really slowing down (not a bad thing, in fact this "slowness" allows one to really explore these fascinating sonic textures in close detail), however it never picks back up in speed for the remainder of the piece. I admit to wondering how you could possibly wrap it up convincingly in that last movement until that final minute arrived - that droning type sound did in fact produce a satisfying finish to that movement - but to the whole work? Possibly. But the issues of speed and the quick resolution at the end, left me feeling that perhaps the work needs one more penultimate movement to provide contrast or perhaps a sequel. But what do I know?


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## Crudblud

tdc said:


> I really enjoyed this piece from start to finish. I believe it is my favorite of your compositions that I have listened to thus far.
> 
> The piece to me sonically is about textures and I think you do a masterful job here. I hear elements of fluxus and elements of Xenakis in this work, yet it simultaneously sounds quite original and is quite cohesive. It has a somewhat explorative journey or "concept album" feel to it.


Thank you, first of all, for listening and for taking the time to detail your thoughts here, I really appreciate it.

I think Fluxus is considerably more interested in a kind of "anti-composition", and I mean that in philosophical rather than real terms, where the performance is the work, and obviously this was a significant element of Cage's music. To me, it's a world away. I understand this is not the comparison you are making, and I also know that I am making this point only because I am the composer and am aware of some things that probably no one else ever could be, having lived through the entire construction and knowing its ins and outs. To compare the piece with Xenakis is possibly more apposite, although I feel his work is too much his own to really stand up to comparison with much else, let alone the probably-not-yet-journeyman efforts of one such as myself.



> In a strange coincidence, just last night I listened to and watched _Delusion of the Fury_ by Harry Partch, and afterwards I was so intrigued by it that I watched a bio of said composer. *I learned Partch was fascinated by the musicality of the spoken voice* - a very prominent element that you used in "The Hole" - and used to great effect. As I said I ended up really enjoying the Partch piece and afterwards noticed I felt invigorated. *I literally observed and thought to myself just last night that when I come upon some kind of creative work that really inspires me - it seems to have a nourishing effect on me that is quite tangible* - this "nourishing effect" is also a concept that is touched on in your work when the narrator arrives at the bottom of the hole.


Yes, the musicality of speech is vital to the piece, though it comes not from Partch but from Robert Ashley, and most of all from _Automatic Writing_ (1979), which explores the deconstruction of sentences into phonemes. The treatment in _The Hole_ and in _Automatic Writing_ are obviously two different things, but the latter was definitely vital to many ideas I had for the former.

Yes, there can be a nourishment, and the speaker does experience this, and indeed the hole itself is a musical environment which is constructed almost entirely from the speech of the speaker. This ties into what you say next:



> The title of the second movement "Monodrama" makes me think this work is about an introspective journey of self, conjuring the Jungian phrase "Who looks outside dreams, who looks within awakens". It comes across to me as being somewhat like an inner journey of consciousness. (I'm sure some of the observations here are my own subjective projections, and that I'm likely missing some of the conceptual details you intended).


In a sense the internal is externalised through musical means, mostly transformations, and the speaker's self exists to some extent in this externalisation, but we mustn't forget that we are there also, we are explicitly, at some point before the beginning of the "action," questioning the speaker, and during the "action" recording the speaker's answer.

As to the actual "meaning" of the story, we all read things in different ways - I was speaking to someone just yesterday who seemed to view it as a descent into madness - and I think any work, whether it pretends to drama or not, can and will operate in the manner of an intellectual or spiritual mirror for those who wish to use it that way. I feel that the work deals narratively with essentially benevolent forces, but I'm not sure I would want to force a "correct" reading on anyone else by delineating all that here. Sorry for the cop-out, but what can I do?



> I felt the work had excellent cohesiveness and unity. The use of the sound of the human voice really impressed me, particularly in movement 6. At some point I want to go back and listen to the piece again and I'm sure I will notice additional nuances.


The 6th section is actually the simplest of all in terms of construction, as it has only two "moving parts." These are simply the first speech, and a rewrite of that speech, stretched out gradually (so that they begin at normal speed and end up at a sort of microscopic level) then cut in equal pieces and sequenced simultaneously, spread out across the stereo field. I came to realise that this has a sort of crescendo effect near the end of the section, as the strains of unidentifiable voices begin to criss-cross each other at ever increasing speeds, which is odd considering they are actually at their lowest possible speeds at that point.



> If I have any criticisms it is perhaps that in movements 4 and 5 I notice a sense of things really slowing down (not a bad thing, in fact this "slowness" allows one to really explore these fascinating sonic textures in close detail), however it never picks back up in speed for the remainder of the piece. I admit to wondering how you could possibly wrap it up convincingly in that last movement until that final minute arrived - that droning type sound did in fact produce a satisfying finish to that movement - but to the whole work? Possibly. But the issues of speed and the quick resolution at the end, left me feeling that perhaps the work needs one more penultimate movement to provide contrast or perhaps a sequel. But what do I know?


This slowness is symptomatic of the nourishment we spoke of earlier. If one does not need to eat, drink, sleep, etc. time itself becomes an unnecessary consideration, and so the speed at which one does things is considerably decreased because one has if not the time to do so then at least the illusion of having that time. This is something I have also noticed to occur with various forms of meditation - and of course listening to music can be a very meditative experience - that time, heart rate, breathing all seem to or actually do slow down, and whether this is illusory or not I think it bears much relevance to what we're talking about.

It comes as no surprise to me that someone should find the ending of one of my pieces to be somehow inconclusive, it has happened many in the past. Suffice it to say I do not agree, but then I do know the piece on a much more intimate level than someone who is just hearing it for the first time. There are some clues in the final section as to "where," musically speaking, the audience is as they reach the end, perhaps they are more obscure than I had intended, but they are there, and in fact this section was composed first, and was originally to stand alone, a much different work in its original context. The context in which it now finds itself, that of being a conclusion to something else to which it is materially unrelated (as I say in the note it is made with piano and violin renderings, not at all with speech recordings), is a conundrum, because it is concluding something from which it is implicitly and explicitly detached. I admit this and yet I think it is the right ending, on an intuitive level, that of gut feeling, and a lot of the time all the verbiage in the world can't conceal that very basic determining factor.


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## Crudblud

I hate to be _that_ guy, but does anyone else have any thoughts on this piece? Normally I wouldn't bother people about it, but the production cycle on this piece is probably the longest I've ever encountered, the work was very intense at every step, and I do think it is my best work to date. I'm very proud of this piece. Of course, I understand 40 minutes + however long it takes to post your thoughts is a lot of time out of your day to spend on little old me, so I hope I don't come across like I'm trying to force the issue, I just think this is worth a little extra campaigning on my part.


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## Guest

Just a quick message to Crud to say that I still haven't had the time to give a serious listen to his latest offering. I'll get there one day soon ...


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## Guest

Dear Crud,
Thanks for the gentle prompt. I assure you I still have the folder "Crudblud's Piece The Hole" on my desktop. It is surrounded by a handful of desktop downloads of other music that sit there, eyeing me accusingly...


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## Crudblud

TalkingHead said:


> Dear Crud,
> Thanks for the gentle prompt. I assure you I still have the folder "Crudblud's Piece The Hole" on my desktop. It is surrounded by a handful of desktop downloads of other music that sit there, eyeing me accusingly...


Sorry, I was just poking around with stuff and came across this thread. Thought it would be funny to bring it back up after all this time!


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## Guest

Just a quick thought that came to my mind when I first listened to the opening minute or two (before getting sidetracked by something or other - probably my recalcitrant daughter demanding her dinner or some other mundane demand on my attention): Trevor Wishart. I'll let you stew with that for the meantime until I get back to you!


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## Guest

I finally found the time to give this work a listen (via computer headphones). I'm going to make several posts on each section of "The Hole" plus more general comments as I go along. Please bear with me...


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## Guest

My first comment would be about how the work is heard: in my case it was via simple stereo headphones and I wonder if "The Hole" was intended for multi-channel, multi-speaker diffusion which would certainly impact on its reception.


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## Guest

*"Down"*
Good opening, I liked that prolonged triad which reminded me of La Monte Young, making us focus on a seemingly static element that "morphs" as our ears wander between the constituent parts as it progresses. My feeling here is that there is more textural interplay than morphological transformations.


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## Guest

*"Monodrama"*
In this section I heard strong echoes of *Reich's* "Come Out" (



). What I found perplexing is that the "background" sounds one hears is subjugated to the "monodrama" - the recorded dialogue sounded very much like a B-movie voice-over and I felt split between following the "text" and the accompanying sonic material. I felt a bit disoriented and started to lose focus.
Overall, if I were pressed to "categorize" the sound, I would say it was more early GRM/Cologne (i.e. "electronic") rather than "IRCAM/electroacoustic". 
Another point would be how this section would be received by non-native speakers, assuming that the spoken text is important.
Other off-the-cuff comments are: reminiscent of Parmegiani's early work and "acid trip".


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## Guest

*"And I Wondered How"
*I found this to be the least interesting of the movements, with too many "Vox" effects that quickly became tiresome: rather clichéd use of "swoops" and "miaow" effects that struck me as far too camp.


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## Guest

*"Deconstruction"*
My first reaction on hearing this section was to exclaim "Trevor Wishart!" Or rather: early, voltmetre-manipulation-Trevor-Wishart-when-he-was-a-student. What I liked was the sustained pitch content juxtaposed against noise-based material which reminded me of *Cage's*_ Fontana Mix_ or _Williams Mix_.


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## Guest

*"Artefacts"*
Here there were clear references to the earlier "And I Wondered How" section mentioned above. I found the obvious slowing down and manipulations of the voice "utterances" to be not terribly interesting.


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## Guest

*"Simulacrum"
*This was a far more interesting section, in that the "voice" material played with our expectations of words as "signifiers" (à la Sausurre). That said, I felt this is something that *Berio* and others covered 30+ years ago, so Crud here is a little bit behind the times. A good student "étude", even so.


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## Guest

*"End"*
Is it a satisfactory end to the work? That was the first question that came to mind. Clearly, the pitch-based material is a determining factor (that sustained B) which I think is present in the opening "Down" movement. After all that "noise", after all those percussive effects and strange voices, it comes down to pitch?


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## Guest

I would just like to say that what I have posted above is a first impression. I'm pretty sure if I were to listen to Crud's "The Hole" a few more times I would very probably find many more qualities and come to have a deeper understanding.
Maybe others can give it a listen - there is no doubt about its overall merit.


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