Tempus Adapto

Tempus adapto is an electroacoustic album that divides the day into eight parts with each of the movements representing different cadences of time from a few moments to several hours. The common thread between all tracks is that they explore change vs stasis. The sequence of tracks compares the disparities in our perception of time. The eight times of day are dawn, sunrise, morning, noon, sunset, twilight, dusk, and midnight. Dawn and midnight are moments in which change is almost imperceptible. All three of the first pieces describe light conditions through ambient volume that moves very slowly through the tracks. Sunrise, morning, twilight, and dusk are moments of significant change in the light conditions as expressed through the electro acoustical soundscape. Noon is an outlier in that it represents a very specific moment when the sun is at its peak—while it is not specifically with or without change, it functions as a benchmark—at this moment, the sun is highest, the shadows are shortest, it is a very symbolic moment.

Track 1: Dawn
Stasis is an ambient piece which has slow moving processes which work together. It is the only purely pitch-based piece in the entire album, making it a very striking introduction to the rest of the track. The piece uses pure sine waves to explore beating patterns. This process to create beating is done by automating pitch on one track in order to slowly pull the pitches of two chords away from each other. There is no transformation of timbre of the synthesizers, as all timbres, once introduced, are static, unlike many of the other tracks in the album. At the very end, a bass drum sounds in the distance, which hints towards footnote, the next track. This kick has heavy reverb processing, and the wet is gradually decreased.

Track 2: Sunrise
This piece consists of a live percussion setup feeding into a MAX patch with live processing. The percussion instruments used are two woodblocks, a snare drum, a bass drum, and a tam-tam. The MAX patch is cue-based, meaning it holds different presets which change based on a MIDI foot pedal’s tap. Most of the effects are relatively subtle until the end, either with delay or harmonization, and some sample-based “interjections”. Towards the end of the piece, volume distortion is applied to the tam-tam and bass drum to fill the sound space with a blanketing noise. This sound world continues until the end until the sounds slowly die out, leaving the bass drum alone once again, pounding at its slow but steady rate.

Track 3: Morning
morning, city represents 6 hours of the day and most literally is meant to create the changing soundscape of a city in the morning. This is most clearly represented by the slow transition from only reverb (100% wet, 0% dry), to no reverb (0% wet, 100% dry). The majority of the FM modulation occurs through ring modulation. Additionally, the piece is purely sample-based. In the first part, there are only samples from aviaries playing, spliced together to make small phrases, a combination of birds and city sounds. These are somewhat unrecognizable at first because of the combination of heavy reverb with ring modulation. As the piece continues, sounds of construction, bell tolls, car engines, and city ambience become more and more prominent until they dominate the soundspace completely.

Track 4: Noon
(re)cording explores the idea of looking at various ways to record a piano—from different angles to examine the different timbres and harmonics that can arise from the same note. The material of the song is very static—about three twenty-minute clips of piano angle playing, some with the lowest notes on the piano and others with an arpeggiated figure moving upwards. The piece starts with low notes with various forms of ring modulation, pitch shifting, and panning. There is also ambience, which are extremely slowed-down samples of the pitches. As the piece continues, percussive sounds from the pedals or loud attacks are added as phrase markers. Arpeggios begin to dominate the soundscape, especially towards the end. I play heavily with panning here to give “movement” to the arpeggios—as well as being very specific on how the timbre changes over each cycle.

Track 5: Sunset
Chromtrast combines both audio samples and synthesizers. Some of the audio samples can be found in the previous four tracks—most noticeably, the birds from morning, city. There are few effects on the samples, only reverb and delay. There are samples of sounds like doors or water that have gone through granular processing. The other imported sound samples are from VCV racks and MAX patches (which were performed and recorded separately). These sounds are accompanied by FM synthesizers. The timbres of the sounds vary widely to reflect the transition from day to night. The word chromtrast is a portmanteau of “chroma”, as in color, and “contrast”. The piece goes through a drastic shift of soundscapes, which reflects the changing time in the sky as the sun’s rays scatter.

Track 6: Twilight
Umbra activi – “Lively shadow”.
This piece uses solely synthesized sounds. There are several MAX patches, a combination of additive and subtractive synthesis. There are some effects, such as chorus and flanging. The majority of the piece is MIDI, but most sounds are so noisy or low-pitched that it becomes difficult to determine their actual pitch. The piece can be divided into two parts: the first heavily focuses on the higher end of frequencies, while the second part focuses on the using the entire frequency spectrum.

Track 7: Dusk
In art, negative space is the space around the subject of a painting. When people draw negative space, it brings focus to what is around the subject—and in this case, what remains with a lack of light. After the light has mostly disappeared with only a faint glow lighting the sky, what remains are traces of shadows and a very different world. The piece establishes a foreground and background and these roles never change, even when one or the other is removed. The foreground is constantly being removed and added back again in order to bring out this contrast. The piece is a hybrid of MAX patches and some found sounds, although most of the found sounds are heavily processed. The MAX patches have a significant amount of randomization—either using LFOs, or through randomizer objects. This gives it a very noisy and disorganized sound.

Track 8: Midnight
The title, microdisequilibrium, references the stark contrast between the macroscopic conformity of the synthesizers and the dynamic behavior of the samples. The recordings are all ambience—radio static and rivers samples taken from previous pieces and overlayed samples of crickets. Unlike many of the pieces in the album, which are heavily synthesizer or sample based, this piece consists of combinations of synthesized and found sounds throughout the piece. The samples have few or no effects on them, and the synthesizers (Serum) are generally devoid of significant modulation. Additionally, this is the only piece which utilizes binaural panning with automation. Most of the synthesizers are not panned at all, but the samples are binaurally panned and layered to make a clearer juxtaposition between the constant and the dynamic aspects of the song.