Forme de chanson (Song Form)

2 channel audio

2008, 7 minutes

Forme de chanson is somewhat provocatively named, as the use of the word "chanson" in any context relating to a formal musical education in France is pretty much out of the question.

It is my first completed electroacoustic piece. I had several constraints in making it - including, of course, inexperience - but more specifically, the injunction to use only 1 stereo track. By the end, the piece had gained an extra mono track, but it remains written on not many tracks.

There are two primary sound sources. The first is percussive noises that I recorded. The second is a voice in French that I found on the DAT I was given at the beginning of the year, turned backwards to eliminate any possibility that it means anything. (Many thanks to my teacher, Jean-Yves Bernhard, for not objecting too badly to the appropriation of his voice!)

Formally, the piece is - surprise! - in classical song form, so the big themes break down AA'BA'', and on a lower level, aba'b'cda''b''. The other main formal element is the idea of decay. At the beginning, the sounds have undergone little manipulation, but progressively, using various GRM Tools effects, I break them down into increasingly undifferentiable sounds. The unique sounds have deteriorated into a mass of resonance.

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