We’ve now settled that we’ll need at least two recording dates with Ensemble Offspring – one (probably two) in the studios at the Sydney Conservatorium and one onboard the vessels. The Gun Room percussion will be recorded in the Gun Room (funnily enough), and the engineering wheels for Crossing the Line in the steam room or somewhere similar on HMAS Vampire.

I’m keen to make the most of recording in that space, so I’m planning to use the sounds that we discovered in the workshops in some of the other works. The mock-up above is for a piece for the Navigator’s Room, which I’m calling Seventh Secrets. The narrative behind both the Navigator’s Room and the Officer’s Cabin feature secrecy, mystery, and the unknown. Since these spaces are right next to one another, I am planning for bleed and creating two ‘movements’ that will fit together should someone be standing in the corridor between the rooms.

The material in the bass and flute parts is like a “time-stretched” version of melodic snippets from the playlist. The bass flute and the bass clarinet have two four-note patterns each which they can repeat and move between at will. However, tempo is not up to them – they must hold each note for a complete breath.

The bass flute and bass clarinet parts are to be recorded and triggered against the live performance. This can be achieved in a number of ways, for example:

• pre-record the flute and bass clarinet lines, and trigger them like a traditional “tape” performance (for the recording for the installation, record several takes of these repeated lines, and assemble them in the studio)
• for the installation, the procedural player can bring lines in and out with random variables
• record the flute and bass clarinet lines live in performance, and play them back after a certain length of time
• triggering could be done live by the performer (e.g. pedal or computer switch) or by a producer/recording engineer/DJ.

This creates a slowly shifting harmonic field with four voices.

The percussionists punctuate this process with orchestral-like crashes, but in this case, they’ll be improvising on some of the bigger objects on the ship or submarine that make good sounds… as usual, in the mock-up above I’ve just used some samples to approximate what I think it will sound like.