Audience of One

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)