Terra Incognita
“During the flight I saw for the first time with my own eyes the earth’s spherical shape” – Major Yuri Gagarin: 13th April 1961
See her then swing through space, another moon
Wrapped in a shining singleness, an Earth
That no division knows nor count of time,
Nor name for war and peace, dying and birth:See her with mountains, but no barriers,
Countries, but countries by no owner claimed,
Continents linked in passionless embrace
Neither by greeds nor loyalties inflamed.If such the bright impersonal wanderer –
No guarded frontiers, no jealous dates –
Such too the unknown Earth on which we walk,
Hid by our map of human loves and hates.George Rostrevor Hamilton
Terra incognita, a setting of the above poem, was my final project for studio composition this year. The brief merely stated that some form of live electronics be used; I used a vocoder to process the (spoken) voice with a synthesiser. It’s not perfect: the copy of the poem I used to record the text had an extra “d” after “an” in the second line (so yes, I do say “and Earth” by mistake), and the drum parts start off pretty bland and really should have had more work done on them. Apart from those minor points, I was reasonably pleased with this – particularly as the majority of it was done within 24 hours! It’s quite stereotypical of a particular genre – nothing groundbreaking, but at least it’s listenable to (I think).
Matthew @ 19:41, May 26, 2008 to Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
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