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'A Topography of Will' is, personally, a high water mark for the Vibratelepathos series, and for my extensive development of procedural systems in general. As with entry number 82 in this catalog, entry number 83 is a totemic event, and stands apart from the remainder of the Vibratelepathos sessions, while also contributing to the definitive representation of what these sessions are designed to do.
Following in the footsteps of "classical" procedural music, I've decided to return to the old way of making things that were intended to recur very little, and I've recorded three distinct sessions that are each unique and dynamic, but are designed to be played alongside one another in any number of infinite combinations.
The first session is the "Karplus Garden" - an assemblage of Karplus-Strong synthesis in the form of five different recordings of varied runtimes, each themselves containing two different Karplus machines each playing only one note. These five recordings repeat over and under each other in different ways across an hour, with each of the five also possessing no less than ten different modulations - stereo panning, volume level and eight reverberation or delay effects on auxiliary sends - every cyclical envelope of which is equally incommensurable, and has been drawn by hand.
The second session is the "Wavetable Garden," containing five distinct held-tone forms that swell and modulate through various chordal voices, generated using two wavetable synthesizers - Synthesis Technology's E352 Cloud Terrarium and Waldorf's NW1. Like the "Karplus Garden," these five sessions are overlaid in different ways and routed through subtle reverbs from time to time, again with several hand-drawn cycling envelopes providing the motion.
The third session is the 'Subtractive Garden," focusing on specific inclusions from some of my favorite analog machines - the Lowrey "Magic Genie" organ, Wildfire Laboratories' Yanqui non-controllable CMOS oscillator and Behringer's reiteration of the Solina string synthesizer. These machines are played as lead and mid-bass range elements that contrast against those in the "Karplus Garden" for a combined approach that blends analog and digital instruments.
All three of these different "Gardens" are offered here separated, with my intent being that listeners should feel free to play the three of them alongside each other or themselves, in any combination, for any length of time, as desired. To this end, there is no single canonical recording named 'A Topography of Will' that is or will ever be complete - only these three parts have been given with this set of instructions, allowing 'A Topography of Will' to exist in a permanent state of superposition.
The purpose of this complex array is to not only create a spatial and dynamic audio environment that is always in motion, never in a static state, but also to create a monument of procedural work that masquerades in uncertain changes and pseudo-random outcomes, but at its heart is manually composed and arranged, through a creative process that is as much accumulation as it is decision. In our current age, held hostage in the shadow of an artifice whose builders insist is an intelligence, I find these kinds of artistic statements are an essential refutation of those presumptive constructs.
Further, the notion of laying bare the entire process used to create this work is in line with my personal feeling that the world would be a richer place with open systems such as these, which would (ideally) make it easier for other creative minds to build beautiful things simply by using their own tools, input sources, decisions and arrays, with something like 'A Topography of Will' being offered less as music or an emotive experience, and more of a proof of concept work that I hope can provide insights into the world of procedural generation.
credits
released March 1, 2024
W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar Workshop, February 2024. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB83, 84rd in the Vibratelepathos catalog. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2024. All nights preserved.
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Wow! This is absolutely gorgeous! I haven't made it all the way through yet but so far, this is my favorite overnight broadcast to show up on Bandcamp. d york
