SOUND RESEARCH: CRISTOBAL TAPIA DE VEER (UTOPIA)
I recently watched the 2013 drama Utopia. A show about conspiracy, engineered reality and humanity turned mechanical. The whole show has a very uncomfortable undertone, like nothing is what it seems, that everything that happens is part of some kind of plan. Some characters are convinced from an early age that they can do whatever they want because they are but a tiny blip in history, they become mechanical in their actions, with no thought of morality.
This theme of engineered reality and this feeling of constant discomfort is potently expressed in the soundtrack created by Cristobal Tapia De Veer. He achieves this through manipulating samples of organic sounds such as birds or human breathing.
In the pursuit of texture, Cristobal avoids samples that he describes as too clean, pure or sterile. Instead he looks for samples from vinyls, then ‘disrespects’ or ‘tortures’ them with compression, bit crushers etc. He describes it as making them ‘textural, grainy, dirty, flawed, alive.’ He then slows down the sample, this makes the ultra fast moving waves perceivable, as rhythm. Cristobal samples a very small part of the audio file and loops it, giving it infinite sustain. He describes hidden rhythms ‘in the DNA’ of a sound. Using these dirty, rhythmic, alive sounds, Cristobal creates haunting scores that feel unsettling, alive but not quite organic. A frankensteins monster or a score.
Cristobal Tapia De Veer created a soundtrack that perfectly complimented the show, in context and tone. I hope to bring this kind of ingenuity to my practice, considering how you can reflect the story and tone of a piece of media in the tools and auditory material you use. Manipulating samples to mould them into something new, finding texture in sound through disrespecting and torturing it.
Using Cristobal’s techniques listed above, I created a piece of music in the style of Utopia.
I started with a sample of a male owl from the BBC sound library, I chose an owl because their call tends to hold a note. I then increased the gain, decreased the bit resolution, and selected a small part of the audio file. I played a melody on the lower notes on the keyboard, this gave the notes a gritty texture, the note slightly wavered giving it a natural but eerie sound.
I then took a sample of myself singing a note with an ă pronunciation, I repeated the process I did for the owl sample but played it only slightly under the original pitch. I liked how it sounded almost right/natural but not quite. I played the main melody with this instrument. The main melody was supported by a sample of myself singing a higher note with an ŏ pronunciation, chorus and reverb was then added to this sample and it was placed low in the mix.
I then recorded myself breathing out, I reversed the sample then vocoded it. This resulted in a rhythmic, almost human sound. I also recorded a sample of my neighbours builders hammering something, I think it sounds like a clock that doesn’t keep time which adds to the uneasy tone I’m aiming for. For the introduction I layered three samples of birds chirping, I then vocoded it and only played the vocoded part. On top of this I added a very quiet melody using the instrument made from my voice. I used two reversed samples of myself saying something to transition into the main melodies. I recorded an egg shaker, doubled the speed of the recording and added a tremolo to it, this made a very dry percussive sound that had movement, almost like an insect moving its wings. I used a recording of myself very lightly coughing to contrast the unnatural vocoded inward breath, this is intended throw the listener into a rhythm that is very suddenly interrupted by the chorus coming in a beat early. In the chorus, I used a sample of native American people shouting and screaming, it had a slight rhythmic quality and was melodically chaotic.
If I were to do this again I would increase the tempo to make the piece more intense, also I would more clearly plan out the layers of the piece, background foreground etc…
My piece: