The Loop

This is a music project ultimately exploring inaudibility. Composed as site specific for the Deafblind UK building in Hampton, Peterborough, this is architectural music.

All buildings produce sounds ( although many of these are too low to be heard )  and are due to the stresses within the construction or to its conductivity of outside vibrations. Architectural music is a composer’s  approach to developing these sounds creatively   (this does not necessarily mean that the actual sounds of the building are employed but that the composer seeks to enhance the space with his own music).

The Deafblind UK building is of recent design and takes the shape of a circle with a wide corridor running all the way round. All rooms are accessed from this one corridor. Also encircling the building, but out of sight, is the audio loop circuitry for the deaf to access through their hearing aids.

The music of “the Loop “ will be accessible through this system as well as over the speaker system which is in place in the very popular, large conference area at the far end of the building  This space may be divided into two through the use of a partition. Each of the two rooms so formed will have a separate track of  the Loop running concurrently. There are two tracks which may be heard as pieces in their own right but, anyone passing from one space to the other will notice, there is a further dimension musically which is shared between them. The music consists of short elements and,even when one track is playing instrumental sounds and the other vocal ones, the durations of each element are identical.

Originally, the project was suggested by Christine Carswell, PR liaison officer for the new Hampton township’s development. This was before the centre was begun. Laura Reid MBE, fund raising director for Deafblind UK was also contacted and offered support suggesting there may be some way to make my music available to deafblind people through  feeling the vibrations – perhaps having some form of touch sensitive ’terminal’ as part of an exhibition.

The proposals for this project were not brought to fruition until after the construction of the building. Heather O’Brien , educational liaison director for Deafblind UK, was contacted and suggested that deafblind people themselves should have a part to play in the music, since they had been consulted in the design of many of the building’s features.

I decided I could employ the voices of deaf people ,sampling their ‘notes’ and mapping them on to a keyboard so that they could be played back at will within the score. I had also decided not to use any distortions afforded by the sampling medium.

There are a number of practical difficulties in that deafblind people have to be taught to gain the confidence to try to produce sounds through their own voices. The composition demands clear sounds on a variety of undefined pitches. Workshops are set up for volunteers to experiment as well as gain some enjoyment in the use of their voice boxes. Recordings are being taken and the sounds required will be extracted from these.

Deafblind UK

Deafblind UK is a national charity supporting deafblind people throughout the UK. In June 2003 Deafblind UK’s patron, Earl Spencer opened the unique National Centre for Deafblindness in Peterborough. The centre is a dynamic resource and was developed in full consultation with deafblind people themselves. The building acts as a centre of excellence for disabled access and offers a unique educational experience to adults and children, giving them an insight into deafblindness, the difficulties it causes and yet how much deafblind people can achieve with the appropriate assistance.   

Deafblind UK provides a wide range of services, tailor-made to the needs of individual deafblind people throughout the country.  These include rehabilitation training to regain daily living skills; the provision of support workers so that deafblind people can go shopping or take part in leisure activities etc; a 24-hour helpline which deafblind people can ring on special equipment for help or advice and publications in large print, Braille or Moon.

Diary

Mid 2001  Christine Carswell,PR liaison officer for Peterborough Southern Township Ltd, suggests that the new Deafblind UK headquarters  to be built in Hampton, Peterborough, may be appropriate to site a permanent piece of architectural music. Telephone conversations with the Touchstone Appeal director for fundraising for the new building, Laura Reid MBE, showed an alert interest and she suggested that there may be a way to have a permanent ‘display’ where deafblind visitors could feel the music in some way.

Nov 2002  Stan Hansel, together with his professional violinist colleague, Roger Stimson, meets with Heather O’Brien, Education Manager for Deafblind UK. Heather suggests involving deafblind people as participants in the project since it was with their help that the new building had been designed.  It was decided that the best way to proceed was to hold workshops and record the sounds made by deafblind people with the help of a specialist trainer. As a preliminary investigation of what may be possible, Roger conducted a workshop with Doreen in the same month.

 Late July 2003  Stan begins seriously to try to jot down musical ideas for the composition. These rarely come quickly and it was not until August 18th that the business of writing out the hefty score was begun.  During the early part of August Stan was visited by an old musical friend, Stuart Bowyer,who slipped him a recording of the American composer John Cage’s Concerto for Prepared Piano.  This occurred on the very hot day which broke all records. Stan had never actually heard the piece before ,presuming that it was simply rarely performed. However, it seemed that here was an interesting technical precedent for the idea Stan had for the use of deafblind voices. A prepared piano is one where materials are inserted next to piano strings in order to alter their sounds; Stan was going to record the deafblind voices and, after editing, these would be sampled onto a keyboard so that they could be played back at will.  Is this not using the keyboard as a prepared piano ?

 Oct 2003 - Feb 2004  A series of workshops are held for deafblind participants at Rainbow Court, Paston Ridings,Peterborough. Karen Collard,an experienced singing teacher from Huntingdon, is training our performers to use parts of their vocal apparatus in ways they are not used to. The events become fun for all involved and the entire workshops are digitally recorded.

It becomes obvious to the organisers that there is an issue over transport for deafblind people and so invitations are sent to local deaf clubs for participants and also through Deafview, the monthly magazine published by the Royal National Institute for the Deaf, which may potentially reach thousands of deaf people in the country.

During the period the workshops are held, Heather leaves to have a baby ( how’s that for timing ! )and Karen Falco takes over, soon mounting the rather steep learning curve which may be imagined for anyone coming into a project halfway!

One of our volunteers,Violet Ansell, has been experimenting with all sorts of materials which have the potential to vibrate when stretched across a round frame. John Stead had told Stan of a piece of new technology called a Soundbug which acts as a very small loudspeaker when attached to a resonating surface. Stan  ordered one of these from their designers, Newlands Technology in Hull, and the idea becomes to try to place a soundbug in the middle of the device so that deafblind people may put their fingers on the resonating surface and experience certain aspects of the music. By common consent at one of the workshops, the invention is christened a ‘vibourine’. It is intended to encase three such vibourines for use by visitors within the education department at Deafblind UK.

Stan finally finishes the details of the score on Jan 1st,2004 and promptly goes to Hull to meet with John Stead ( director of the Electro Acoustic Ensemble) to record the bulk of the material.

Before Christmas, two of Stan’s recording engineers, James Preston and Paul Telfer, cleaned up the recordings which they had made at the sessions and a comparatively small number of sounds were chosen for holding a reasonably steady note. Further cleaning up by Paul and Stan and a multi layering for cluster sounds meant that a file of sounds had become ready to send to John in Hull, who sampled them onto a keyboard according to Stan’s instructions. When Stan arrived, all he had to do was to play in the score using Cubase SX software.Two days later most of the music had been digitally recorded.

John Cage’s Concerto for Prepared Piano is actually played live at the Barbican,London,and broadcast by the BBC !