The first visit to Peterborough United football ground by Stan Hansel with other members of EAE (Electro Acoustic Ensemble) checking to see what facilities can be used for the project.

Stan working on the different sections of music that will be played over the Tanoy in the football ground, John assists Stan in the production of the music.

Click here to listen to an MP3 extract of Sound Spheres. (1.3 Mb)

The challenge of silence as a kind of anti-matter or opposite polarity to music seems to be the single most powerful factor to be considered by composers over the last fifty years.

The Year of the Artist award has enabled me, a composer working with the very tensions which exist when music is nearly or actually silent, to create a work to be heard and responded to by a large local public. I have always sensed the musical tensions inherent in objects and the interiors and exteriors of public buildings. All around us there are sounds which we can not hear but many of which may be picked up by highly sensitive scientific instruments. Buildings create their own subsonic noise ( and, so, incidentally, does the ground beneath our feet ).

My work seeks to elicit tensions to such an extent as to lead to hearing sounds which at times are not physically present. I call this direction ' PSYCHIC MUSIC '. ' Forcefields ' of sounds are built up and juxtaposed with contrasting energies. Each forcefield consists of a sequence of brief and contrasting elements, many meant to be barely audible and very staccato. Sounds of irrational durations enhance instability to the extent of developing tensions. Signal-like sounds are heard throughout as extraneous to the score but integral in alerting the listener to the often very soft passages coming afterwards. For Psychic Music to work there has to be structure and intensity. The music really takes place at the points where juxtapositions meet - if the music is written well, that is where the strongest vibrations and energies are felt. Further, musical conditioning can lead to a reflex hearing of sounds not physically present but amplified by suitably irrelevant, very soft passages of high staccatissimo sounds. However, the sequences can take some time to build up and from this need there is a strong argument for creating the music environmentally as an integral part of architecture - architects and designers ignore the need to enhance and manage sound in buildings at the peril of not fully integrating or understanding the materials with which they work.