Shepard’s Ascension and Hope of Return
Utilizing the acoustical space at Silo City, the plan is to install my sixteen computer-controlled speaker Sound Distribution System (SDS) vertically up to the silo’s top. The SDS has the capability for sending any one of four thousand pre-recorded or live sounds to any one or any combination of the sixteen speakers via software. This feature allows experimenting with the motion of sound in the space of the silo.
One source of sound will be ascending and descending Shepard tones. “A Shepard tone is an auditory illusion that creates the sensation of a pitch continuously rising or falling forever without ever seeming to get higher or lower. It is often described as the “musical barber pole” or an “auditory Penrose staircase””. This sequence of tones would fill the space with a sense of sound continually shifting while also creating harmonic overtones.
I developed a software program to generate the Shepard Tones. One aspect of the residency is to explore and manipulate the parameters used to generate the Shepard tones. Some of the parameters are the rate of octave changes, how close or far are the octaves spread out, the number of octaves at any one time and adding noise to affect the atmospheric nature of the sound environment..
Many of my works utilize language as a melodic element. To achieve this, I will add the use of a vocal pitch changer (a Vocoder). Mixing the Vocoder melodies with language in addition to the Shepard tones will be explored as a blending of music and speech.
Art With Held --- David Held 