the cacophony of light - bits (2005)

stateless - 2005

from the original col website wrote: i could be deep and mysterious about the wake. i could equally be shallow and commercial. i choose to be neither, but probably end up being both. wake is a cd of experimental music constructed and programmed by the cacophony of light.   how experimental?   well, it's not terribly arty, or musically particularly clever. it contains things like rhythm and melody, but not restricted to recognisable structures or produced with any regard to tune or tuning. some notes were simply put where i felt they needed to be, some were taken from nature and others derived by mathematical processes. there are elements of classical, minimalist, metal, jazz, ambient, 80's electro-pop, gothic/ethereal, prog-rock and even a bit of anthemic black metal thrown in for good measure. my intention, if there ever was one, was to make experimental music that sounds normal and not as dissonant as you would imagine anything with the epithet experimental to be...   if you prefer music not to be slotted into a convenient genres and are not phased by tracks of atonality and naivety mixed with random blips, squeaks and noises, then give it a listen. it is available at (genuine) cost price. it will neither make me rich nor famous, but that was never the intention. in all honesty, all i want is for people to hear the wake. if they do and like it, then all the better.   why 'wake', do i have a morbid fascination with death? partly. however, 'wake' has three meanings in the english language and only one of them is to do with death. wake is not funereal music. i do not intent to dwell on any deep meaning that may be locked within the music, since it is neither deep nor meaningful in reality. however i do feel the need to jot down some notes on the recordings that may be of interest... ·      the somnabulistic soliloquy dialogue on 'somniloquy' (track-009) is taken from the silence of darqness e-novel, darqlands. the particular passage in question is a dream-conversation between one of the seven main characters (philip mallow) and the wind that occurs outside the story-line. i actually sing on this track, and for that i can only appologise. ·      these recordings also feature two guest musicians, namely my daughter alex on flute ('arise', track-002) and david stanton of season's end on guitar ('aftermath', track-001 and 'backwash', track-005). i am very grateful for their time and contributions. ·      vigil (track-007) represents the passage of time through a single human life-span. i am a little concerned that this idea is so simple and obvious that it cannot possibly be original, however, until told otherwise, i know of no other piece of music that uses it. utilising a predictable 60-bpm, the three clocks represent the relentless passing of time, with the 'cello marking this passing from the perception of a human life (time passes more quickly the older you get). the chimes mark significant moments in that life-time as either consonant or dissonant chords that finally end in death on the stroke of 13 o'clock... ·      the theremin and the long-thin-wire are featured on the title track, 'wake' (track-012). this was recorded in the open-air, (well, the long-thin-wire is over 15 meters long), over three sessions one sunday afternoon in january, 2002. also appearing alongside several passing lorries, the church clock and an overflying light-aircraft there is a special (unexpected) guest appearance of several species of wild birds. these feathered creatures were drawn to the sound of the theremin and deemed it necessary to join in. at one point the genus corvidae (probably rooks, i do not know, i am not an expert on bird-song) became so raucous that recording had to be stopped until after sun-down when they had all gone to bed. ·      the cover art work was produced using photoshop, paintshop-pro and povray 3-d rendering software. the face is not me, but does look quite similar.

When two tones are played together they combine to produce two new notes, these can be expressed by a standard trigonometric identity that we all learnt in school (but have since long forgotten) sin(A) + sin (B) = 2(sin((A+B)/2) x cos((A-B)/2)) Which means that the new notes are effectively (A+B)/2 - or the average of the two original notes and (A-B)/2, which is half the difference between them. The average is something we can generally hear, since it will be a note half way between the two - the difference is much lower in pitch, often below the range of human hearing, and is called the beat. Both these new notes affect the sound we hear. This is the principle behind tuning an instrument against a test tone: in the above equation A is the required pitch and B is the current tuning, the idea is to make B equal to A and in doing that (A+B)/2 also becomes (A+A)/2, which is equal to A, and the beat-note (A-B)/2 disappears. However when the two fundamental notes A and B are real notes the average and beat notes need to be related to these fundamental notes in someway for them to be harmonic. For example, if we play C and E (i.e. first 2 notes of the Cmaj chord) then the sound will be a combination of C and E … (C+E)/2 and (C-E)/2. E expressed as a fraction of C is 5/4th (i.e. is the 5th harmonic[1]), so the resulting average note will be (1+5/4)/2 which equals (9/4)/2, which finally reduces to 9/8th of C, (which incidentally is a D, but that's not important) and the difference note will be 1/8th of C (which is a C three octaves down).   The key thing about all these notes is that the divisor of their fractions is a power of 2. Powers of 2 in music represent Octaves, which means that all of the notes are harmonics of C and therefore the new (average) note will be a 9th harmonic of C. Playing G (which is 3/2nd of C and the 3rd note of Cmaj) with the C, gives us two new notes that are 7/4th and 1/4th of C, which are also harmonics of C. Similarly, adding E and G gives and average note of 11/8th of C and 1/8th of C for the beat. So, all three notes in the Cmaj chord are harmonic in the key of C because all the average and beat notes produced are harmonics of C. Now on the other hand, if we repeat this with C and F (which is 4/3rd of C) we get 7/6th of C and 1/6th of C, which are not harmonic in the key of C (because 6 is not a power of 2). However, if you flip this around, they do become harmonic in the key of F, such that C is a 3rd harmonic of F (i.e. C is 3/2nd of F) and the new average note will be 5/4th of F or a 5th harmonic of F. Therefore to construct a major triad from a scale, you just pick the root note and the 3rd and 5th harmonic of that note. [1] E = 5/4th of C means that the frequency of the note 'E' is 1.25 times the frequency of 'C' - it is a 5th harmonic of C because if you multiply it by 4 (which transposes it up 2 octaves) it becomes exactly 5 times 'C', which is the fifth harmonic

1. fourteen:forty-nine
2. ten:seventeen
3. twenty-one:oh-four
4. six:thirty
   total playing time ~ fifty-two:forty

• fourteen:forty-nine was the happy tune - it's not so happy now - I wiped the smiley off its face
• ten:seventeen is a ballad and is dedicated to my wife, Deborah as that is her birthday.
• twenty-one:oh-four is an undance marathon, with feeding-stops along the way.
• six:thirty is two versions of the same tune played simultaneously... the left channel is in 6/8 time, the right in 4/4 - which is more or less how my feet go went I attempt to dance.
• the track names are the track times but I assume you've all worked that out by now.

download: http://www.mediafire.com/?3a01c9909j6u89o (includes all artwork for 12-page booklet)