Submergé pour Électronique · Deniz Çağlarcan

Préface, continued

For this reason, sound waves can be emitted in material environments such as solids, liquids and gases. In our daily life, our relationship with sound is made almost entirely by air waves.

Submergé (underwater, sunken) is a work that has emerged to reposition our relationship with sound. The name of the work, which consists entirely of water sounds, comes from the process of the music. Music starts on the water, slowly sinks and disappears in the depths of the oceans.

The gravity pulls the sound downwards and at some point the sound enters the water medium from the air environment and gradually becomes heavier and deformed. This is in some sense a kind of alienation, a process of transformation and disappearance. In this dark journey towards the unknown, the ear always looks for a light.

Compositional process

Tool · 01

SoundHack

spectral processing
of recorded source

Tool · 02

Max

algorithmic patch
for rhythm

Tool · 03

IRCAM tools

analysis and transformation

Tool · 04

Kontakt

sampler built from
sorted water drops

Max patch screenshot — algorithm generating rhythmic patterns from water-drop samples. — **Plate I**Max patch · rhythm

Max patch screenshot — second view of the rhythm-generation algorithm. — **Plate II**Max patch · detail

I limited myself to compose music with sounds of water drops and flowing water. I used SoundHack, Max and IRCAM tools to manipulate the sound.

First, I recorded lots of different water drop sounds (dropping to metal, plastic and wooden surfaces) and categorized them by their pitch and character, then made a sampler with Kontakt. After that, I connected that sampler to Max and made an algorithm which helped me to play water drops in different rhythms according to a curve.

With that, I could make a natural-sounding rain and slowed it until reaching individual drops. Also, with that Max patch I recorded different rhythmic patterns. Through the music, I wanted to linearly change the shape of the sound and reach a different sound world.

Submergépour Électronique

Submergé
pour Électronique