Antonio D’Amato
Organica
This piece comes from the purpose of generating an illusion of a new instrument through analysis, de-structuration, and recombination of real samples of an acoustic instrument, using mostly progressive subtraction or selective saturation processes.
All the basic materials in the piece are audio samples recorded from a baroque organ and nothing else. They were chosen for the complex structure of the tone textures. Nevertheless great care is taken in the elaboration of the natural instrument noises and non-harmonic contents, which are already included in the original samples, bringing these elements sometimes in front of the scene or putting them under a particular light.
Noises and debris - as starting materials in many passages - are extracted from the whole sound of a real early organ, with all its unwanted and undesirable components: mechanical noises, vibrations, hums , hisses, and the dirty attacks full of inharmonic contents, typical of early organs built by Italian, Spanish and Mexican makers. That peculiar attack, called in Italy spit of the pipe, gives mordant and attitude to an organ stop. In this piece they are widely elaborated in order to carry out a re-evaluation of disharmony in the organ sound.
An intensive use of computer-based DSP elaboration is employed through the entire piece, especially for the spectral re-distribution and alteration. Some dsp algorithms are driven to their extreme settings as far as glitches, distortions, unstable or ambiguous intervals, and undesirable outcomes become fundamental elements in the economy of the composition. Just before the final coda a very soft passage, like a subtle reverberation of a speaking silence reveals the breath of the instruments, and is built just on the noise of the air running through the bellows. I intended this air noise as a carpet on which even the most majestic organ stop is grounded.
The embraced aesthetic assumption should reveal here that artifacts and debris, through manipulation and mixing, can assume a first place role in the creation of a piece, and the beauty of the sound paradoxically can lie in its artifacts, when wisely balanced with harmonic pure components, exactly as it appears in the most refined organs built during the early baroque era.
The spacial idea, on the other side, is the aim of creating an artificial landscape in which the listener moves around and in that non-material instrument, with moments of slow acceleration and episodes of static enchantment, in a sort of far observation, where sometimes he gets lost in an unpredictable exploration.
The title is an hommage to Francisco Correa de Arauxo (1584鈥�1654) author of the 鈥淔acultad Organica鈥�.
Bio
D鈥橝mato graduated from the conservatory in Piano, Harpsichord, Music for Multimedia, Music Pedagogy and Electronic Music. He studied composition for eight years and bassoon for three years, as well as baroque organ and audio engineering. In 2010 he was a student of Ondes Martenot in Strasbourg and Paris. His current interest is to combine traditional composition procedures with the expansive opportunities of computer-based music. D鈥橝mato鈥檚 instrumental works have been published by Forton Music, U.K, and his first electronic composition was selected for a performance during the ICMC 2012 Conference. His works have been performed in Australia, Brazil, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Slovenia, Taiwan and USA.
Download
Organica Antonio, D'Amato Acousmatic, Stereo. Duration: 7 minutes 25 seconds.
