Recorded on the 20th of December 2023.
Sheet Music:
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Piano Performance: • Red Skies (Piano Perfo...
This piece was composed for an assignment at The University of Birmingham.
Note: not all of the following information is relevant to this performance.
This composition was an experiment in transferring a piano performance into a multichannel piece. The main intention behind this piece is to simulate eight equally spaced pianos playing the same piece and adding spatialisation to different phrases.
‘Red Skies’ is a piano composition inspired by Debussy’s Arabesque No.1. This piece is in a ternary form containing a calm first theme and a livelier second theme. Furthermore, the composition has been specifically composed so that it can be easily transferred into a multichannel piece. For example, the spaces in between each phrase allows for individual phrases to be rearranged spatially.
In order to make the final piece sound realistic, a performance was recorded (by myself) on a ‘Yamaha DGX-650’ keyboard and the MIDI was exported into ‘Ableton’. By exporting the MIDI into a DAW it allowed phrases to be easily moved between tracks and make changes easier later in the project, for example, changing how long the sustain pedal was held for.
Within ableton, each phrase and note was arranged into different tracks corresponding to different angles for multichannel editing. The piano sounds that were used included ‘e-instruments Grand Piano’ and ‘Spitfire Audio’s Upright Piano’. Each sound was slightly edited so that none sounded the same, for example, each piano sound was detuned and extra noises such as the hammers and pedals were emphasised.
In preparation for multichannel editing, the main parts were routed to two grand piano sounds and the accompaniment parts were routed to 6 different upright piano sounds. Before exporting, each track included an ‘EQ Eight’ (to roll off lower frequencies), a further ‘EQ Eight’ (to refine the EQ) and a ‘Limiter’ (to prevent the peaks from clipping).
Once the tracks were imported into ‘Reaper’, each track was equally spaced around the azimuth using ‘IEM’s Stereo Encoder’. The two grand piano sounds were positioned at ±22.5° and the upright piano sounds were positioned at ±67.5°, ±112.5° and ±157.5°. The master track included ‘IEM’s Multichannel Compressor’ and ‘IEM’s Reverb’. For consistency, the left and right hand parts should primarily be heard in the left and right sides of the space and higher pitched phrases or notes should mostly appear behind the listener. Furthermore, the individual notes of the arpeggios that lead into the middle section should rotate clockwise around the listener to create a special effect.
Overall, the final piece should create the impression of multiple pianos playing a single composition in a surround sound environment.
20 июн 2024
