The Composer's View: Extended Vocal TechniqueAuthor(s): Trevor WishartSource: The Musical Times, Vol. 121, No. 1647 (May, 1980), pp. 313-314Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/963728 .Accessed: 08/05/2011 22:51

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THE COMPOSER'S VIEW Trevor Wishart

Extended Vocal Technique For the past four years I have been resear- ching new vocal sounds with the inten- tion of composing a piece. In 1979 the promise of a commission from the group Singcircle spurred me on to draw these researches together in a booklet, The Book of Lost Voices, from which the following notes are abstracted.'

As a composer, my motivation for researching extended vocal techniques was a desire to be able to transform sounds of totally different timbre and pitch-content into one another in a con- tinuous process. Conventional musical instruments, constructed on the assump- tion that timbre should be held (relative- ly) constant, are unsuited to this aim. The human voice, however, is particularly suitable as an 'instrument' both because of its amazing flexibility and variety of sound generation and its direct ac- cessibility (compared, for example, with computer synthesis). As a composer, therefore, I was concerned to explore and categorize the range of sounds the voice can produce, regardless of any traditional assumptions about what is and what is not 'musical'. Pursuing my research has led me to re-examine traditional assump- tions about the 'parameters' or 'internal architecture' of sounds. In particular I have had to revise notions of pitch and of the limits of a sound-Gestalt (e.g. coherent sound-object with unstable com- ponents).

It may first be useful to clarify some terms. 'Inhaled/exhaled' - a number of vocal sound-types can be produced only on the inhaled breath. 'Voiced/unvoiced' - the usual distinction between (for ex- ample) whispered and voiced speech, not to be confused with 'lunged/unlunged'. Various phonetic clicks (e.g. 'Tut!') are produced by suddenly drawing air into a vacuum created behind the tongue; with these sounds one can continue to breathe in and out normally while producing them, and they are therefore 'unlunged'. Other sounds appear to expel almost no

air from the lungs, but require a high air- pressure behind the glottis, tongue, teeth, lips etc; breathing in and out is impossi- ble while producing such sounds ('pseudo-unlunged').

An initial (though inadequate) thought- model for describing the human voice may be based on the classical electronic synthesizer. We may describe certain oscillators, noise-generators and filters and treatments of these. The principal oscillators are: (1) larynx - normal sung tones, exhaled and inhaled multiphonics, subharmonics etc; (2) tongue - vibrated against the roof of the mouth, for English rolled-R, uvular-R, Z-coloured-R, pitch- ed sound from X (ch, as in Scottish loch); (3) lips and cheek (referred to as 'Lipfarts', 'Flabberlip' etc below) - lip (employed by brass players), cheek, and tongue/cheek vibrations can be clearly pitched over a wide range, and filtered, using hands to tension lips and cheeks; and (4) whistling - with tongue and lips in normal position, in s-formation or in sh-formation. (Either of the latter may be combined with the former, enabling a soloist to whistle in parallel 6ths, tritones etc.)

Sub-audio (click-like) oscillations may be produced in at least five distinct ways. Sounds in the coloratura soprano range can be produced by the male voice, while the female voice will reach up beyond the range of audibility.

The noise-generators of the voice are manifest in the consonants S, H, F etc, which stress different formants (frequen- cy bands) in the voice, changing the 'col- our' of the noise. A vast range of possibilities is opened up by 'combining' consonants, specifying mouth vowel- shape, and by using filtering.

All the sounds above (and below) may be filtered by varying the size and/or shape of the mouth cavity, or by projec- ting sound into the nasal cavities, enabl- ing us to stress particular harmonics (as in Stimmung) or define and vary a pitch- band. An additional variable filter is pro- vided by placing the cupped hands over the mouth. Filtering is particularly useful

where applied to sounds of indefinite pitch. Distinct components of a complex sound may be selected (often producing markedly different resultant sounds). In- trinsically pitchless sounds may be given a filter-pitch.

The simplest kind of treatment of these sounds is 'intermodulation'. A normal, sung, rolled-R is in fact a sung note being amplitude-modulated by the vibration of the tongue. In mid-register this pro- cedure can be used to produce the effect of two pitches, about a 3rd apart, being sung by a solo voice. Similarly 'Flab- berlip' will modulate S-whistling to pro- duce a sound like a referee's whistle; sing- ing will modulate normal whistling to produce bell-like chords, or 'Lipfarts' to produce surprising multiphonics; and so on.

Beyond this point many traditional concepts begin to break down. First of all the idea of pitch as a single, definable quality of every sound begins to dissolve. Instead we have to differentiate between fundamental-pitch, the pitch of the fun- damental or most prominent pitch- constituent of a sound, and filter-pitch, which is the pitch given to a sound- complex (which itself contains a wide range of pitch elements or bands) by a filter which focusses down upon a narrow pitch-range. If we change the funda- mental-pitch of a complex sound, the relationships between the constituents are preserved while the constituents are transposed. If, however, we vary the filter-pitch, the relationships are preserv- ed, but the constituents are not transpos- ed. Some vocal sounds can be pitch- changed in both ways simultaneously.

Secondly, there are whole classes of sound which do not fall under the categories used above. The clicks on a scratched gramophone record, of in- definite fundamental-pitch, may be im- agined amassed into a dense texture which would not, however, sound like conventional white or coloured noise. Sounds of this type we will call 'grit'. The sound 'x' (see above) with plenty of water (saliva) in it is a 'grit' source and

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has a vast array of possible forms (a high- frequency pitch-complex; a crack-like sound; 'rocket-roar'; childrens' gun- imitation; clearly pitched high-frequency band; and so on) all of which may be varied and extended.

Thirdly, there are numerous sounds with pitch-content but where no sound stands out as clearly prominent (various types of multiphonics, which are not mere 'chords') or where pitch- constituents are unstable (pitch- complexes). Some examples are 'throat- roar' (or 'glottal overpressure'); inhaled sound-complexes and multiphonics; 'teeth-wind-tones' produced by forcing air out between the teeth; and so on.

All these varieties of sounds may be further complicated by processes of 'ar- ticulation' and 'multiplexing'. Articula- tions are additional manipulations of the air-flow (or cheek-tension etc) involved in

making a sound, produced by rapid tongue movements, trilling or ululation, or various manual interferences, e.g. at the diaphragm. Multiplexing (a term from telephone transmission) is used to refer to a process of rapid juxtaposition of given, different sound-elements (too fast for conventional notation-reading) pro- duced by a solo performer. (I have used multiplexes extensively in my Tuba mirum, for solo tuba and visual theatre.)

Finally, there is the special case of very short sounds. These can consist almost entirely of inharmonic transients, and a great variety of such essentially pitchless sounds may be produced by the voice. They can, of course, often be given a filter-pitch using the (variable) resonance of the mouth cavity. To produce sounds of sufficiently short duration requires much practice and the use of 'stops' such as the glottal stop found in some urban accents (e.g. in 'spo'id', = 'spotted'). Other stops, essentially sudden stoppages of the airflow by tongue or lips, can be related to the consonants P, T, and K. Classifying these short sounds is a small nightmare and requires very careful aural perception; I have classified more than nine distinct sound-types from the conso- nant P alone!

Apart from cataloguing individual sounds, I have also been concerned to ex- plore to what extent and in what ways each sound can be varied (in pitch, pitch- content, filter-settings, noise-content etc) and in particular how - physically speak- ing - sounds can be transformed into one another in live performance. In this way one defines a 'compositional space' dependent on the characteristics of the sounds and the 'instrument' (the human voice) rather than on an a priori theory of musical organization (such as serialism,

which I have berated elsewhere).2 This approach is very close to one way of working in free improvisation, and im- provisatory exploration has been an im- portant element in my research.

A major problem in the compositional use of these new sound resources has been to develop a notation which is both sufficiently detailed (requiring lots of in- formation about timbre and about modes of production, normally taken for granted in a conventional notation) and yet suffi- ciently clear to be read in performance (requiring as little information as possi- ble!). If one also wishes to be able to notate continuous transformations bet- ween sounds, the problems are com- pounded. In Anticredos3 I have developed a three-level notation giving duration and loudness on the top level; pitch, general timbral information and transformational data on the middle level; and very specific timbral information on the lowest level. After the initial shock, the performers seem to have found this approach very clear. I have also produced a studio ver- sion of the entire piece, singing all six voices on to a multi-track tape-recorder - not least to demonstrate that the piece is possible to perform with the voice alone - in order to define clearly the sounds re- quired. As such new timbral areas are opened up the use of tape in this way, as a notation procedure, will undoubtedly become increasingly important.

2 see 'Musical Writing/Musical Speaking' in Whose Music? A Sociology of Musical Languages published by Transaction Books Inc. (USA, 1980). 3 This commissioned work was performed at St John's, Smith Square, on 27 April, and will be published later this year.

English Parish Church Music Watkins Shaw The claim that Nicholas Temperley's re- cent large work on the music of the English parish church* represents the first treatment of the subject as a whole is in no fear of contradiction. One wonders why this should be so. It might have been

possible to tackle it in a straightforward way simply as a critical account of the music in chronological sequence. Possi- ble: but not at all easy, for large parts of the repertory of such music constitute hitherto unexplored tracts. Furthermore, adequate historical criticism of it involves a more complex background than does, say, cathedral music, in which there has been an underlying unity of aim and

practice throughout, irrespective of locality, standards, churchmanship, and repertory. But extensive differences would mask the unity supplied by a com- mon liturgy were we to compare the wor- ship of Puddletown Parish Church, Dorset, in 1830 with that of Leeds Parish Church at the same time, where, before Vicar Hook and S. S. Wesley, a profes- sional surpliced choir sang. And what of

* The Music of the English Parish Church, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1979): i, xxiv, 447pp., ?30; ii, v, 213 pp., ?15

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