Sountrack by Phil Archer

***I will be updating this post as the work develops***

Phil Archer is anther person who I have managed to coerce into working with me on the triptych. I know Phil as he works in the Animation department at NUCA but I didn't think about asking for his help until someone at the Playhouse suggested it. Phil does very interesting things with electronics and programming so it is quite different from the improvised or traditional music that many of the other musicians that I have spoken to are involved in.

I do have an avid interest in electronic music but it is not something that I have ever really got involved in other than dabbling in DJing for about a year during my late teens. Some of my friends would use samplers and software like Cubase to make their own tracks. I love listening to the likes of Aphex Twin and Squarepusher but I always had more of an affinity with the individual noises rather than the musical composition itself. That might be why I enjoy creating foley sounds, I can be quite good at noise-making when I want to be!

Phil has been working on some software that uses the forms and movement from the triptych to shape the sound. Phil explained it better in his e-mail:

What I did was to make a little program that analysed the three starting shapes - red circle on the left, tree in the middle, and roots on the right - as they move and change throughout the film. This data (co-ordinates of the shape, size, density, etc.) was then used to control parameters of three physically modelled software instruments. This type of software instrument uses mathematical models to try and generate the sound that a real instrument would make rather than just using pre-recorded samples.

Here is Phil's first attempt at the sound:



I have the opportunity of working with Phil on this soundtrack in a way that isn't possible with the other musicians as we are able to meet up regularly so I can have more input into what happens. I enjoyed the general feel of the sound as I feel that it embodies the sense of being lost and alone in a vast environment. One criticism would be that although the triptych starts off as something that is quite bleak and hostile it does become more positive towards the end. As the software merely follows the shapes it cannot create empathy for the character and has not picked up on my intended change in tone toward the end of the animation.

We now have to take a hard look at what works and what doesn't. I feel that the part where the character moves into the 3rd (Shadow) panel and cries is one of the strongest parts of the sound composition, as it is at the moment the sound suits that part really well, I feel that it is the right sound.

I suggested the kinds of sound that might work. Some short mischievous, childlike sounds for the little character as it appears in the centre (Ego) panel, possibly starting off with a higher pitch and ending up lower at the end of the animation to denote the growth of the character. I feel that some kind of icy or crispy sound needs to be added when the salt is used in the animation as this changes the texture. We will review what we have once we have built up another layer of sound.


2nd version:


To build on that we talked about the emotional tone for the piece. My previous work has been quite macabre but for the purpose of this project I wanted to make something that was much lighter. Although it starts of quite bleak and lonely the figure then becomes less afraid of it's surroundings and finds another figure. This meant that the tone needed to become more hopeful towards the end so Phil created another layer of sound to reflect this: