Uploaded April 2014 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago

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Jean-Claude Risset - Sud (1985)

This work was commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture, from a project initiated by the GRM, where it was produced circa 1984-1985. The piece mainly uses sounds recorded in the Massif des Calanques, south of Marseille, as well as sounds synthesized via a computer (again in Marseille). These sounds were then treated via another computer at the GRM. The natural and synthetic sounds are first presented separately. Along the piece, they increasingly merge, through mixing and processing. Thus real bird songs, as well as synthetic bird-like or insect-like sounds, have been spatialised. In the third movement, the filtering of birds' caws first appears as a colored echo, later as a genuine bird's "raga" using the defective scale. The origin of the many sounds deduced from the germinal material can be ascribed to a "family tree" displaying the sonic proliferation and resembling a rhizome. (J-C. R.)

Video created with Sonic Visualizer and Vokoscreen on an OpenSUSE 12.3 Linux System.