Wishart Trevor - Extended Vocal Technique

The Composer's View: Extended Vocal Technique Author(s): Trevor Wishart Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 121, No. 1647 (May, 1980), pp. 313-314 Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/963728 . Accessed: 08/05/2011 22:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mtpl. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

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THE COMPOSER'SVIEW

Extended

Vocal

For the past four yearsI have been researching new vocal sounds with the intention of composing a piece. In 1979 the promise of a commission from the group Singcircle spurred me on to draw these researches together in a booklet, The Book of Lost Voices, from which the following notes are abstracted.' As a composer, my motivation for researching extended vocal techniques was a desire to be able to transform sounds of totally different timbre and pitch-content into one another in a continuous process. Conventional musical instruments, constructedon the assumption that timbre should be held (relatively) constant,are unsuitedto this aim. The human voice, however, is particularly suitable as an 'instrument'both because of its amazing flexibility and variety of sound generation and its direct accessibility (compared, for example, with computer synthesis). As a composer, therefore,I was concernedto explore and categorize the range of sounds the voice can produce, regardlessof any traditional assumptions about what is and what is not 'musical'. Pursuing my researchhas led me to re-examinetraditionalassumptions about the 'parameters'or 'internal architecture' of sounds. In particular I have had to revise notions of pitch and of the limits of a sound-Gestalt (e.g. coherentsound-objectwith unstablecomponents). It may first be useful to clarify some terms. 'Inhaled/exhaled'- a number of vocal sound-types can be produced only on the inhaled breath. 'Voiced/unvoiced' - the usual distinction between (for example) whisperedand voiced speech, not to be confused with 'lunged/unlunged'. Various phonetic clicks (e.g. 'Tut!') are produced by suddenly drawing air into a vacuum createdbehind the tongue; with these sounds one can continue to breathe in and out normally while producing them, and they are therefore 'unlunged'. Other sounds appear to expel almost no published by the author, 1979 (from Philip Martin Music Books, 22 Huntington Road, York Y03 7RL).

TrevorWishart

Technique air from the lungs, but requirea high airpressurebehind the glottis, tongue, teeth, lips etc; breathingin and out is impossible while producing such sounds ('pseudo-unlunged'). An initial (though inadequate)thoughtmodel for describing the human voice may be based on the classical electronic synthesizer. We may describe certain oscillators, noise-generators and filters and treatments of these. The principal oscillators are: (1) larynx - normal sung tones, exhaled and inhaled multiphonics, subharmonicsetc; (2) tongue - vibrated againstthe roof of the mouth, for English rolled-R, uvular-R, Z-coloured-R,pitched sound from X (ch, as in Scottish loch); (3) lips and cheek (referred to as 'Lipfarts', 'Flabberlip'etc below) - lip (employed by brass players), cheek, and tongue/cheek vibrations can be clearly pitched over a wide range, and filtered, using hands to tension lips and cheeks; and (4) whistling - with tongue and lips in normal position, in s-formationor in sh-formation.(Eitherof the lattermay be combined with the former, enabling a soloist to whistle in parallel6ths, tritones etc.) Sub-audio (click-like) oscillations may be producedin at least five distinct ways. Sounds in the coloraturasoprano range can be producedby the male voice, while the femalevoice will reachup beyond the range of audibility. The noise-generatorsof the voice are manifest in the consonants S, H, F etc, which stress different formants(frequency bands) in the voice, changingthe 'colour' of the noise. A vast range of possibilities is opened up by 'combining' consonants, specifying mouth vowelshape, and by using filtering. All the sounds above (and below) may be filtered by varying the size and/or shape of the mouth cavity, or by projecting sound into the nasal cavities, enabling us to stress particularharmonics (as in Stimmung)or define and vary a pitchband. An additionalvariablefilter is provided by placing the cupped hands over the mouth. Filteringis particularlyuseful

where applied to sounds of indefinite pitch. Distinct componentsof a complex sound may be selected (often producing markedlydifferent resultantsounds). Intrinsicallypitchless sounds may be given a filter-pitch. The simplest kind of treatmentof these sounds is 'intermodulation'.A normal, sung, rolled-Ris in fact a sung note being amplitude-modulatedby the vibrationof the tongue. In mid-register this procedure can be used to produce the effect of two pitches, about a 3rd apart, being sung by a solo voice. Similarly 'Flabberlip' will modulate S-whistling to produce a sound like a referee'swhistle;singing will modulate normal whistling to produce bell-like chords, or 'Lipfarts'to produce surprisingmultiphonics;and so on. Beyond this point many traditional concepts begin to breakdown. First of all the idea of pitch as a single, definable quality of every sound begins to dissolve. Instead we have to differentiatebetween fundamental-pitch,the pitch of the fundamental or most prominent pitchconstituent of a sound, and filter-pitch, which is the pitch given to a soundcomplex (which itself contains a wide range of pitch elements or bands) by a filter which focussesdown upon a narrow pitch-range. If we change the fundamental-pitch of a complex sound, the relationships between the constituents are preserved while the constituents are transposed. If, however, we vary the filter-pitch,the relationshipsare preserved, but the constituentsare not transposed. Some vocal sounds can be pitchchanged in both ways simultaneously. Secondly, there are whole classes of sound which do not fall under the categories used above. The clicks on a scratched gramophone record, of indefinite fundamental-pitch,may be imagined amassed into a dense texture which would not, however, sound like conventional white or coloured noise. Sounds of this type we will call 'grit'. The sound 'x' (see above) with plenty of water (saliva) in it is a 'grit' source and 313

making a sound, produced by rapid tongue movements, trilling or ululation, or various manual interferences, e.g. at the diaphragm. Multiplexing (a term from telephone transmission)is used to referto a processof rapidjuxtapositionof given, different sound-elements(too fast for conventional notation-reading)produced by a solo performer.(I have used multiplexes extensively in my Tuba mirum, for solo tuba and visual theatre.) Finally, there is the special case of very short sounds. These can consist almost entirely of inharmonic transients, and a great variety of such essentiallypitchless sounds may be produced by the voice. They can, of course, often be given a filter-pitchusing the (variable)resonance of the mouth cavity. To produce sounds of sufficiently short duration requires much practiceand the use of 'stops' such as the glottal stop found in some urban accents (e.g. in 'spo'id', = 'spotted'). Other stops, essentiallysudden stoppages of the airflow by tongue or lips, can be related to the consonants P, T, and K. Classifying these short sounds is a small nightmareand requiresvery carefulaural perception; I have classified more than nine distinct sound-typesfrom the consonant P alone! Apart from cataloguing individual sounds, I have also been concernedto explore to what extent and in what ways each sound can be varied(in pitch, pitchcontent, filter-settings,noise-contentetc) and in particularhow - physicallyspeaking - sounds can be transformedinto one another in live performance.In this way one defines a 'compositionalspace' dependent on the characteristicsof the sounds and the 'instrument'(the human voice) ratherthan on an a prioritheoryof musical organization (such as serialism,

The music of

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has a vast arrayof possible forms (a highfrequency pitch-complex; a crack-like sound; 'rocket-roar'; childrens' gunimitation;clearly pitched high-frequency band; and so on) all of which may be varied and extended. Thirdly, there are numerous sounds with pitch-content but where no sound stands out as clearly prominent (various types of multiphonics, which are not mere 'chords') or where pitchconstituents are unstable (pitchcomplexes). Some examples are 'throatroar' (or 'glottal overpressure');inhaled sound-complexes and multiphonics; 'teeth-wind-tones' produced by forcing air out between the teeth; and so on. All these varieties of sounds may be further complicated by processes of 'articulation' and 'multiplexing'. Articulations are additionalmanipulationsof the air-flow(or cheek-tensionetc) involved in

English

Parish

Church

which I have berated elsewhere).2This approach is very close to one way of working in free improvisation, and improvisatoryexplorationhas been an importantelement in my research. A major problem in the compositional use of these new sound resources has been to develop a notation which is both sufficiently detailed (requiringlots of informationabout timbre and about modes of production,normallytakenfor granted in a conventionalnotation)and yet sufficiently clear to be read in performance (requiring as little information as possible!). If one also wishes to be able to notate continuous transformationsbetween sounds, the problems are compounded. In Anticredos3I have developed a three-levelnotationgiving durationand loudness on the top level; pitch, general timbralinformationand transformational dataon the middle level; and very specific timbral informationon the lowest level. After the initial shock, the performers seem to have found this approach very clear. I have also produced a studio version of the entire piece, singing all six voices on to a multi-tracktape-recordernot least to demonstratethat the piece is possible to perform with the voice alone - in orderto define clearlythe sounds required. As such new timbral areas are opened up the use of tape in this way, as a notation procedure, will undoubtedly become increasinglyimportant.

2 see 'Musical Writing/MusicalSpeaking'in Whose Music?A Sociologyof Musical Languagespublished by Transaction Books Inc. (USA, 1980). 3 This commissioned work was performed at St John's, Smith Square, on 27 April, and will be published later this year.

Music

Watkins Shaw The claim that Nicholas Temperley's recent large work on the music of the English parish church* represents the first treatmentof the subjectas a whole is in no fear of contradiction.One wonders why this should be so. It might have been * TheMusic the of EnglishParish Church,Cambridge University Press (Cambridge,1979):i, xxiv, 447pp., ?30; ii, v, 213 pp., ?15

314

possible to tackle it in a straightforward way simply as a critical account of the music in chronological sequence. Possible: but not at all easy, for large parts of the repertory of such music constitute hitherto unexploredtracts. Furthermore, adequatehistoricalcriticismof it involves a more complex backgroundthan does, say, cathedralmusic, in which there has been an underlying unity of aim and

practice throughout, irrespective of locality, standards, churchmanship,and repertory. But extensive differences would maskthe unity suppliedby a common liturgy were we to comparethe worship of Puddletown Parish Church, Dorset, in 1830 with that of Leeds Parish Church at the same time, where, before Vicar Hook and S. S. Wesley, a professional surpliced choir sang. And what of