Having had the idea about using the amazing players of Ensemble Offspring in this project, I decided to go back to some of my drafts and experiment with them today. I have the idea that percussionist Claire Edwardes, Bree Van Reyk and I might explore the vessels and find out what kinds of sounds were made by engineers when they were working there. These sounds could then be the impetus for the more “industrial” sections of the work: percussive sections made with industrial sounds…

Even if you’re a regular reader of this blog, I’d be particularly impressed if you recognised that rhythm from an earlier post here. It’s the word VAMPIRE in morse code – but this time, instead of the usual beeps that you hear morse code in, I’ve used samples of various metallic sounds such as car wheel hubs (since I haven’t actually recorded any sounds on the vessel yet) intuitively to “orchestrate it”. The code repeats, but because it takes 13 pulses to repeat, your mind can’t attach itself to a send of “downbeat”, so it’s disorienting and unsettling.

What you then hear is the same rhythm repeated on a second set of metallic samples, beginning in canon (like a children’s round, but way more complicated in this case!) a few beats behind – imaging Claire starting and then Bree starting the same thing but with different sounds and in a different place – and then each player plays their own internal canon (the same material, offset in two parts, at the same time).

Have a listen again, and see if you can hear it. Oh, I made it a little more musical by adding a certain “randomness” to the velocities (loudness) of each strike, just as you would if real humans were playing them, too. This mock-up was made in Ableton Live, rather than Sibelius – I use Sibelius when I’m scoring and Live or Pro Tools when I’m working with audio… for those interested in the geeky stuff.