Hildegard Westerkamp: Transformations: liner notes

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Transformations
CD 25.00 CA$ [?]

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The Music and Soundscapes of Hildegard Westerkamp

by Pauline Oliveros |imed_9631-0001|

Sound surrounds us. We are sound inside and we resonate with the soundscape even if we are not listening. Hildegard Westerkamp is sensitive to soundscape. She ably shapes fanciful, imaginative music from her recordings, mixing and transformations of the soundscape. Westerkamp creates new possibilities for listening. One can journey with her sound to inner landscapes and find unexplored openings in our sound souls. The experience of her music vibrates the potential for change. Her compositions invite interaction—a chance to awaken to one’s own creativity. One can transform through listening as she has. In the music and soundscapes of Westerkamp we feel memory and imagination as we hear through to the future.

Pauline Oliveros, Kingston (NY, USA) [viii-95]


Transformations, the disc

by Hildegard Westerkamp |imed_9631-0002|

I feel that sounds have their own integrity and need to be treated with a great deal of care and respect. Why would I process a cricket’s voice but not my daughter’s? If the cricket had come from my own garden, had a name and would talk to me every day, would I still be able to transform it in the studio? Would I need to?

The moment of recording the cricket in the Zone of Silence (a desert region in North Eastern Mexico) had been a magical moment (see Cricket Voice’s note). So, studio ‘manipulation’ of the sound seemed somehow inappropriate. Its transformation into a composition had to become a new sonic journey of discovery to retain the level of magic first expe-rienced. I remember when I had to say ‘Stop’ to electroacoustic experimentation: the cricket was in danger of being obliterated.

Same experience with the raven in Beneath The Forest Floor. Slowed down, it reminded me of a westcoast Native Indian drum. By sampling a small portion of the slowed down raven’s cry, I tried to make it beat with a regular drumbeat. But it simply wouldn’t let me. It kept turning into a drum machine. It took a whole day to fly off into ‘electronic land’ before returning to the original raven call, finally really hearing it and letting it be what it was in the first place: a sound reminiscent of the drum.

On the other hand I was ruthless with the truck brakes in A Walk Through The City. I processed them until they were unrecognizable: by filtering out all the low frequencies from the surrounding traffic, I managed to extract pure-pitched sounds, mixed them with each other into chords that ended up giving the composition a melancholic undertone, most unexpected from such a screechy, ear-piercing sound source.

I hear the soundscape as a language with which places and societies express themselves. In the face of rampant noise pollution, I want to be understanding and caring of this ‘language’ and how it is ‘spoken.’

I compose with any sound that the environment offers to the microphone, just as a writer works with all the words that a language provides. It is in the specific ways in which the language is selected, organized and processed that composition occurs.

I like to use the microphone the way photographers often use the camera, searching for images, using the zoom to discover what the human eye alone cannot see. I like to position the microphone very close to the tiny, quiet and complex sounds of nature, then amplify and highlight them for radio or any other electro-acoustic medium: to make them audible to the numbed urban ear. Perhaps in that way these natural sounds can be understood as occupying an important place in the soundscape and warrant respect and protection.

I like walking the edge between the real sound and the processed sound. On the one hand I want the listener to recognize the source, and thus want to establish a sense of place. But on the other hand I am also fascinated with the processing of sound in the studio and making its source essentially unrecognizable. This allows me as a composer to explore the sound’s musical/acoustic potential in depth.

But I abstract an original sound only to a certain degree and am not actually interested in blurring its original clarity. I transform sound in order to highlight its original contours and meanings, similar to the manner in which a caricaturist sharpens the contours and our perception of a person’s face.

These compositions are now on this disc, an altogether abstract place, far away from the places in which the sounds originated. They now may have to put up with bad playback equipment and noisy living rooms, with car radios or distracted ears. A forest piece in an apartment by a freeway… can it draw the listener back into the forest? An urban piece in quiet country living… is it necessary?

Recordings for the live portions of this CD (Kits Beach Soundwalk and Fantasie for Horns II) as well as the final mix for Kits Beach Soundwalk were done at Ireme Studio in Surrey (BC), the studio of Canadian composer Sergio Barroso. I would like to thank Sergio and Michael Maguire for lending their experienced ears to this process. The final mix for Fantasie for Horns II was done at the composer’s own studio Inside the Soundscape.

Hildegard Westerkamp, Vancouver [viii-95]

Hildegard Westerkamp: Transformations: liner notes

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Prices are in Canadian dollars — 1.00 CA$ ~ 0.98 US$ ~ 0.63 € ~ 0.49 £ ~ 1.05 AU$ ~ 102.50 ¥ — and include handling, shipping and applicable taxes.


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