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Three Modulations for Mute Synth II Electroacoustic musical compositions

The Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre at DMU encompasses a wide range of electroacoustic genres and categories. One research programme theme examines interaction and hybridization between such different practices. The primary significance of this submission is its attempt to develop an aesthetic approach to hybrid discourse (also providing a specific example of an approach to technical compositional realisation), thus offering a potential model to others who wish to explore, or even challenge, traditional genre divides, an issue that has attracted increasing interest since 2008.

This project was in response to a request from John Richards to create a fixed-medium (acousmatic) composition exploring the sounds of a prototype of his latest instrument, Mute Synth II. This is a hand-held, battery-powered, noise-making device. Constructed from cheap electronic components, it embodies a “noise on a shoestring” aesthetic and that of Richards himself in his development of “Dirty Electronics”. Three Modulations for Mute Synth II thus explores the encounter of two very different traditions.

First performed at DMU in October 2013, this project will feature in a 2013 publication of the Mute Synth II (Mute Records) on audio CD and contribution to accompanying text booklet.

Research imperatives were to:

• create music with a brand-new instrument, that was (sonically) idiomatic and celebrated its idiosyncrasies, whilst pushing beyond what it could most obviously do (both technically and in relation to its implied musical language)

• treat the task in a way meaningful to studio-based electroacoustic practice - such instruments are by-and-large used by improvising musicians - thus exploring a novel hybrid instrumental/acousmatic studio relationship

• to develop a new musical genre in a hybrid musical language through exerting a greater degree of compositional control over the aleatoric sound-making aspects of the instrument

• to create new approaches to expressively engaging work using noise-based material.