SEAMUS

Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States

Exhale – a sound object

The sonic bed "Exhale" was featured at Roosevelt University Electroacoustic Festival (April, 2017)..

Composer: Beth Bradfish

Year of Composition: 2017
Instrumentation: Tuba - Beth McDonald; Percussion – Neal Markowski
Type of Electronics: Fixed

Duration: 7 minutes
Video Component: None

Recording

Exhale

Composer – Beth Bradfish
Sculptor – Celia Greiner
Consulting Engineer – Gregory O’Drobinak
Tuba – Beth McDonald
Percussion – Neal Markowski

Exhale is as much about feeling sound as hearing it. We invite you to lie down and let the sound flow through you. Breathe in, exhale – and let go of everything you don’t need.

This project is a collaboration that started a year ago. Celia explored various woods and their resonance while Greg invented micro-electronic solutions to meet the problems we created.

As a composer I am interested in the intersection among the sounds of life, the sounds I create in my studio and the sounds performed by musicians on acoustic instruments.

Exhale was inspired by the work of Beth McDonald (tuba) and Neal Markowski (percussionist), especially with their duo Korean Jeans.

Please take off your shoes, enjoy and ask questions, if you feel like it.

Details

  • Tuba and drum kit percussion were recorded at a recording studio
  • Voices and miscellaneous percussion were recorded in composer’s studio
  • All tracks were mixed in Pro Tools in composer’s studio
  • Tracks were bounced to 4 mono channels (tuba, voice, drum kit, other percussion)
  • Celia and composer experimented with various woods and found silver maple to sound best with tuba and percussion
  • Celia experimented with various designs to find one that would complement the idea of Exhale
  • To create a clean visual appearance Greg O’Drobinak was asked to find a mico-electronic solution that could handle four channels and a complex patch that would pan any of those channels
  • The micro-electronic solution includes: four 4 ohm tactile transducers, a Raspberry Pi micro computer, a micro interface, two 150 watt power amplifiers
  • The software running it all is a Pure Data (PD) patch

For the past year our team has focused on ways to expand the experience of sound to include touch. We have worked with different woods as well as brass to explore how these materials carry sound when combined with tactile transducers. We hope that you take the opportunity to feel and listen to Exhale by lying on it.