Sonic Composition in "Tongues of Fire" Author(s): Trevor Wishart Source: Computer Music Journal, Vol. 24, No.

2 (Summer, 2000), pp. 22-30 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3681924 . Accessed: 10/07/2011 09:22
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Wishart Trevor
Department of Music University of York Heslington, York YO1 5DD, UK

Sonic
in

Composition Tongues of Fire

manipulation of a sound to produce related sounds, while the term transformation refers to a process of sonic development through time; that is, the use of sonic relationships between events to build musical structures in time. This is also reIn composing, I differentiate between the proceferred to as sonic modulation by analogy with modures I use to generate compositional materials tion between keys in the tonal system. We can and the structures I lay out for the listener. It's not also proceed in several dimensions at once, and in important for the listener to know anything about fact the discrete parameterization of sounds in terms of pitch, duration, etc., does not sit easily my compositional procedures, but I hope they inform the formal and dramatic structure that I do with our perception and recognition of sounds in the real world. hope the listener will perceive and appreciate, much not The method I therefore adopt is quite similar to necessarily consciously. Hence, though of this article is for the benefit of composers rather the computer-graphics model of evolution prothan potential listeners. posed by Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchis a muFire maker (1986): I begin with a starting sound, and (1994) My composition Tongues of sical work created for the recorded medium using apply any number of different small metamorphothe computer. It relies on the computer's signalses. A metamorphosis must lead to a perceptually similar sound, as discussed later. I then transform processing power to metamorphose one kind of sound material into another, thereby making aumany of these sounds a little, and so on. In this dible connections between different kinds of way, I build a tree of interconnected sounds with sounds and enabling a musical structure to be deits nodes and branches. As this process of sound veloped in the sonic domain. generation proceeds, I select particular sounds to Because sonic space is multidimensional and the further metamorphose, or to use finally in the choice of possible starting sounds is unlimited, we piece, on the basis of their intrinsic aesthetic need some way to navigate through this fascinatqualities and their audible relationships to one another. However, some sounds may be used purely ing space of possibilities. In the early- and mid20th century, composers became transfixed by because they form a perceptual bridge between two other more notable sounds, like passing tones permutational procedures, deriving ultimately from the serial method of Schonberg. However, in a pitch-based musical organization. these procedures relied on a finite set of discrete This tree-generation approach is a generative elements to permute. In contrast, sound-space is method, not a compositional rationale. In many unbounded and continuous. A more detailed discases, sets of related sounds used in the piece may cussion of these ideas can be found in my books be derived from connected points along the tree, On Sonic Art (Wishart 1985) and Audible Design but this is by no means necessary. Ultimately, my (Wishart 1995). perception of the relationships among sounds deWe can proceed seamlessly from one point to an- pends on my listening to them, and when I make other (a continuous transformation) or by discrete such judgments, I have no interest in how, or even steps (a sequence of discrete metamorphoses, more whether, the sounds are generatively related. I have akin to traditional motivic variation, perhaps). I criticized elsewhere the confusion of composiuse the term metamorphosis to refer to the sonic tional methodology with audible design (see, for example, chapter 9 in Audible Design). Sounds from very different generative processes originating Music Summer 2000 Journal,24:2, pp. 22-30, Computer 2000 Massachusetts of Institute have audible similarities, while may significant Technology. ? 22 Computer Music Journal

Editor's Note: The sound examples cited in this article can be found on the Computer Music Journal CD volume 24 that accompanies the Winter 2000 issue.

sounds from the input and output of some process may have no notable audible similarities at all. In practice, however, the generative processes I use (and which I have developed) tend to produce sounds that are perceptually related to each other in some way. Otherwise, the generation of material would become arbitrary,and the search for connections hopelessly complex. Hence, the process of evolving materials is not strictly random, as in Dawkins's sense. I use the analogy to stress that it is also not deterministically rational. Part of the excitement of composing with sounds in this way is the often-unpredictable consequences of applying metamorphic processes to new types of sounds-consequences to which one must be constantly open. This quasi-genetic process of variation and selection combines rational exploration with personal aesthetic choice. This balances two important aspects of composing for me: the things that we know that we know (explicit perceptual connections and rational processes of metamorphosis and transformation), and things that we don't know that we know (cultural and personal implicit preferences that may be far more interesting to future listeners than all our intellectual ratiocinations, because they carry information about cultural context and our relationship to it that we have simply taken for granted). This process forms the basis for the next stage, in which the materials are arrangedin temporal sequence, or overlaid contrapuntally (strictly speaking, as counterstreams) to emphasize, mask, or complicate their perceptual connection, forming an evolving structure in time. It is primarily this temporal unfolding of the materials that I hope the listener will perceive and appreciate. In reality, there is not a simple dividing line between the two stages. Often, sets of metamorphosed material are worked into complete phrases at an early stage. Some continuous metamorphoses call out to be treated as musical phrases in their own right, as they extend over a considerable time (for example, the voices to water transformation discussed below, lasting for around 90 sec) and provide a sense of musical motion within themselves. Also, any concatenation of materials,

at any stage of sequencing or layering, can itself become the subject of further metamorphosis. The "theme" of Tongues of Fire is a rapid solo vocal utterance less than 2 sec in length. This theme was chosen both for expressive reasons (it is recognizably human, but slightly grotesque, slightly comical, and without any linguistic content in any existing human language) and for sonic structural reasons (it is a sequence of several spectrally complex and different sounds, thus making excellent raw material for many kinds of sonic metamorphoses). The theme of Tongues of Fire can be heard, repeated, in Sound Example 1. The theme is immediately repeated. Structurally speaking, I tried to make it clear to the listener that this surprising and-on first hearing-apparently arbitraryevent is significant for the piece. In fact, all of the sound material in Tongues of Fire develops from this seed. In this sense, Tongues of Fire does not differ from a traditionally conceived instrumental work that proceeds by the metamorphosis and development of notated pitch motives. However, Tongues of Fire deals with sonic metamorphosis and development. Using the computer, we can apply many processing procedures both directly to the waveform of the sound or to the timevarying spectrum of the sound, and we can reassemble the sound in many different ways, at many perceptually different timescales (from phrase frame to rhythmic frame to grain frame to imperceptibly short sonority frame). Further discussion of this procedure may be found in Audible Design (pp. 16-19). In this sonic space, traditional categories and hierarchies of musical parameters break down. In particular, "timbre"-essentially an umbrella term for all those features of sounds not captured in traditional notation, including stationary spectra, spectral changes, formant structures, formant changes, vibrato/tremolo and their evolution, graininess, jitter, etc.-provides a multidimensional arena in which pitchness is but one dimension. We can navigate and explore the timbre of sounds in detail for the first time, now that computer analysis and manipulation provide us with the power to do so. (Pitchness and pitchal are terms used in Audible Design to designate the Wishart 23

spectral quality of a sound that gives it a clear sense of possessing a single pitch, as opposed to being noise-like, inharmonic, or multipitched. The term is used to distinguish it from the harmonic sense of pitch. Thus, a rapidly sliding sine tone, especially one that crescendos from inaudibility and then diminuendos into inaudibility, may never have any specific pitch in the harmonic sense, yet it is perceived as having a pitch-like spectral quality, to have pitchness, or to be pitchal.) The signal-processing power of the computer means that the starting sound becomes almost infinitely malleable. In these circumstances, we need to make a distinction between what is technically a metamorphosis and what is perceptually a metamorphosis. As an extreme example, any starting sound can be converted to noise by multiplying each successive sample by a different random number. Technically speaking, this could be regardedas a metamorphosis (the algorithm involved is quite straightforward),but perceptually, there is no relationship between the starting sound and the resultant sound (and in fact the same or very similar perceived resultant could arise, regardless of the starting sound). However, even in this case, it is possible to conceive of creating a sequence of increasingly noisy versions of the original sound, spanning the timbral space between it, and noise (compare, for example, the metamorphosis of the boy's singing voice to a pure sine tone in Karlheinz Stockhausen's Gesang der Jiinglinge [1958]). Perhaps in this way we might create a set of perceptually acceptable transformational steps for the listener, linking starting sound to noise. Moreover, when presenting this material in a piece, we don't need to sequence the increasingly noisy sounds in that temporal order. As long as it is possible for the listener to make the connection at some stage of a repeated listening, we have a perceptible transformational structure, an audible connection between two quite distinct sounds: our starting sound and noise.
In practice, I am more perceptually demanding than this example suggests. Quite subtle changes in the nature of a sound (for example, changes to the attack characteristics) can radically alter our source attribution (what we imagine the source of

the sound to be). No matter how abstracted from reality our sounds might be, we will still tend to attribute material and dynamic causation to them that is based on our experience of sound in the real world. (See for example the chapter entitled "Is There a Natural Morphology of Sounds?" in On Sonic Art.) Hence, sonic metamorphosis can be a multifaceted and subtle art. However, occasionally I allow myself to "run with" the result. For example, just beyond the pulsed-rhythmic climactic section of the piece (at ca. 20:20), there is an extreme metamorphosis. I usually refer to this as the "fireworks" metamorphosis. I always attach names to sounds, giving some hint of their audible substance. This, for me, is a vital organizational procedure when dealing with hosts of sonic material. Simple numbering or technical naming makes it difficult to locate a sound again when one has a musical, rather than purely technical, goal in mind. One advantage of composition with computers is that one is forced to give a name to all soundfiles, whereas in the analog studio, one is faced with segments of tape, looking more or less identical (apartfrom their length), and elaborate cataloging procedures must be followed to keep track of sound materials. The immediate starting sound (or sonic node) for this metamorphosis is the sound voismetal (discussed in more detail later), which has a percussive vocal attack leading to an extended "metallic" inharmonic sound whose tessitura descends slowly. The metamorphoses use waveset averaging: the duration and shape of the starting sound's wave between each zero crossing is averagedover time. Applied to such a complex starting sound, waveset averaging produces many unpredictable and noisy artifacts. The only perceptibly retained feature of the starting sound is the descent in tessitura. Although it is on the edge of perceptual justifiability, I felt that this extreme metamorphosis fit well at this particularly dramatic moment in the piece, where the energy of the pulsed rhythmic material subsides. Here, the piece has reached its transformational outer limits, and is about to tie up the loose ends in a traditional coda, using mainly recapitulated (rather than further metamorphosed) materials from throughout the piece. The

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time-stretched voice and the fireworks metamoran inharmonic, semi-metallic quality. This tail can be heard in Sound 2. phoses Example glides down slowly in tessitura. This vocal-attackThe larger-scale structure of Tongues of Fire to-metallic-extension sound is the starting point does not differ markedly from that of a comparable or sonic node for many sonic processes, and I refer instrumental work. At the largest time frames, we to it as voismetal. are no longer dealing with source recognition or The second theme variant is a texture of sonic detail, but with overarching connections be- gabbling voices, extending the solo voice theme tween blocks of material. Hence, in some ways, material into a disgruntled-crowd-like event by suthere is no reason to abandon existing procedures, perimposing several different variants through time. I refer to this as gablcrowd. This variant is though of course new means of formal organization become possible, particularly those using also an important sonic node. source recognition to project overall sound landLast of all, the percussive vocal attack mentioned before is stacked (several tape-speed-like ocscape or narrative. Just as the initial theme is immediately repeated, tave transpositions superimposed) with attacks the whole first extended phrase, in which that synchronized, and a kind of reverberant extension theme is developed in a number of ways, is followed added to the higher-and hence shorter-compoat ca. 1:00 by an echoing phrase, the theme now de- nents. This brings out the pitch (D) of this event, which otherwise is difficult to focus upon in the veloping differently. Similarly, on an even larger the first section ends at ca. when sonic context of the theme. This variant appears scale, major 10:00, the progressive granulation of the voice slows to a very close to the start of the piece, and its clock-like to a After the regular tick, leading pause. pitchness sets it apart in the nonpitchal context. I the theme returns but is then followed refer to it as pichstak. It also becomes the seed of pause, by four cycles of a rhythmic variant of that theme, further developments. which becomes crucial to the continuing evolution The original theme, its rhythmic variant, of the piece. It recurs at 11:50, 13:10, 16:50, and voismetal, gablcrowd, and pichstak can all be 17:00 (where it already takes on some of the pitched heard in Sound Example 3. The development of characterof the later development). This leads ultithe rhythmic version at the climax of the piece can be heard in Sound Example 4. mately to the material at 18:20, where it forms the Let's now return to the opening of the piece. rhythmic basis of an extended pulsed-rhythm section in which changing pitchfields become imporSonic development begins immediately. The vocal theme itself starts with a percussive vocal attack, tant, and which forms the climactic conclusion of this part of the piece. After the dying away of activ- and ends with a "slurp" sound. These elements are ity (from 20:40 to ca. 22:20), short segments from all immediately developed. After the two statements over the piece are juxtaposed amid silences at the of that theme, a third statement begins with the start of the coda. At the end of the coda, the theme percussive attack, but is truncated directly to the is recapitulated in a truncated version of the openslurp, which is then repeated, semi-overlaid, at lower pitches and speeds, leading to the pichstak, ing. The piece concludes with a fragment of the theme as a cadential event. the strongly pitched version of the percussive. One Three other theme variants play an important of the few steady-pitched sound events in the role in the piece. The first is a metamorphosis of piece, pichstak becomes an important marker, anthe almost percussive vocal attack of the theme, nouncing the start of short or long phrases, somein which the tail of the sound is greatly stretched times transposed, until it becomes the pedal point of the harmonic sequence of the pulsed-rhythmic in time. (The initial attack is not stretched, in order to preserve the sense of a vocal origin for the climax previously mentioned.
sound.) With extensive stretching, the noisy spectrum, a spectrum that varies rapidly in a brief space of time, becomes slow moving and takes on At its first occurrence, pichstak introduces a decelerating sequence of the original percussives. This deceleration prefigures the accelerating Wishart 25

"bouncing" sounds to come. The deceleration is achieved with a nonstandard time-stretching technique, giving stretched duration proportions of 1:2:3:4:5:6:7.The stretching process divides the original signal at every other zero crossing, and treats the signal segments thus produced as individual waveforms. Time stretching is achieved by the immediate N-times repetition of each waveform before proceeding to the next. Clearly, with a simple waveform such as a pure, fixed-frequency sine tone, this procedure produces perfect time stretching, but applied to complex or rapidly changing signals, it generates strange artifacts. In particular, once a waveform has been repeated about four times, it will generate a unique pitch. (This is based on my own experience. It may be that more cycles are needed with very high frequencies.) It is therefore possible, for example, to start with a complex signal and proceed, step by step, to a 256-times repetition of each component "waveform," thereby generating a melodic sequence of arbitrarytimbres and arbitraryrhythms. In our case, as the number of waveform repetitions increases, the original signal gradually breaks down into an ultra-rapid stream of brief pitch cells. Toward the end of our sequence, therefore, this pitch bubbling becomes apparent. Near the end of the sequence, the same percussive vocal sound reappears, grouped into an accelerating and decrescendoing set, suggesting a bouncing object as its source. This rhythmic/loudness motive is repeated with sonic variations in which the waveforms are altered to a different shape for each repetition of the motive. Perceptually, we seem to hear bouncing on or in different physical materials, for example, sand. The whole phrase concludes with a repetition of the resonant D, sustained, with a slight tremolo as it decays to nothing. The complete opening phrase, as described above, can be heard in Sound Example 5. Hence, sonic development is intrinsic to the piece
even within its opening phrase, and we could continue to examine the whole piece in this amount of sonic detail. However, I intend to look at just a few example phrases to illustrate some of the multifarious sonic processes used. Note that a sonic metamorphosis may proceed in the continuum, a sound

seamlessly becoming something different, like the voice-to-bees metamorphosis in VOX 5 (Wishart 1990), or as a sequence of discrete steps, like the metamorphosis from singing voice to pure sine tone previously referredto in Gesang der Jiinglinge. In the continuous case, and also where discrete metamorphic steps lead gradually away from one type of sound to a recognizably different type, I have compared this sonic process to key modulation in the tonal system. Clearly, sonic space does not have the strictly symmetric and cyclical structure of the tempered scale's cycle of fifths. We do not even have an analogy of the octave in sonic space. But it is possible to create a similar sense of movement from one part of musical space to a recognizably different one, for example, from voicelike to wood-like, or to return to a sound sonically close to the original starting sound and to have a sense of "distance" from our starting sound. Thus, just as F-sharpmajor is much further from C major than is G major, so an inharmonic resonant bell sound is further from the sound of pouring sand than from an inharmonic nonresonant bell sound. As sonic space is multidimensional (Wessel 1979), it is difficult to impose any simple measure of sonic distance (a metric) on that space; whereas in tonal space, G major is the same distance from C major as it is from D major, measuring around the cycle of fifths. However, I am not concerned with drawing an exact parallel, but rather with merely demonstrating a certain analogy in the sonic domain with tonal motion, tonal return, and tonal distance. We begin by examining the phrase that starts with the pichstak D attack at ca. 2:40 and lasts until ca. 4:00 (as in Sound Example 6). The node sound from which this phrase develops is voismetal, and is heard immediately after the pichstak attack. It is developed in various ways. In the first case, we produce a rather artificial tremolo in the tail of the voismetal sound by imposing a rapid sequence of brief, shallow, loudness dips. The first of these is heard at 2:40 (where the phrase begins), and is the first of a sequence of discrete metamorphoses that gradually leads elsewhere: a sonic modulation. Thus, on each recurrence of the voismetal sound in the ensuing overlayed texture, these loudness dips cut deeper

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into the sound, and the tail begins to separate per- by waveset distortion. In this process, the signal is divided at every other zero crossing into waveceptually into a sequence of discrete struck-wood events. (Descriptive adjectives like "metallic," forms, and these waveforms are replaced by differ"struck wood," or "cicada noise" are meant to ent waveforms but of the same duration and the of sound event referred suggest type to, being amplitude. We can then apply a process of inrather than to give an accurate description of their betweening, a term I have borrowed from cinphysicality.) Using a grain-detection program, we ematographic animation, where principal picture can isolate these brief events and duplicate and/or frames are drawn by the chief artistic designer, then the many in-between frames that produce the transpose them, and this approach is used to produce a further variant that more strongly emphasense of movement linking one key frame with ansizes the perceptual distinctness of the other are produced, originally by assistants, but struck-wood events. By now, we have sonically more recently using computerized methods. In the "modulated" from stretched voice to struck-wood- sonic case, beginning with the pure struck-wood like (ca. 2:50). The metamorphosis from voismetal event, we produce a sequence of sounds in which to wood can be heard in Sound Example 7. more and more of the new waveform (and hence From here starts a texture in which time-variable less and less of the original "wood") is mixed. As the two waveforms being mixed are synchronous pitch shifting is used to create variants of the original voismetal sound, which pitch-slide down or up at their zero crossings, we are effectively generatover largerranges, or which oscillate wildly from the ing a gradual sequence of metamorphoses of the mean pitch. In the context of the piece, I hear these waveform itself, and hence of the sonority. Putting more as variations on the voismetal original than as these mixes together in a progressive sequence, we true metamorphoses of that original, but there is no produce a sense of sonic motion from struck wood line between the and to some exto "drum-like." The sequence also accelerates, sharp dividing two, tent it depends on where the time sequence of varilike the bouncing sound referredto earlier, but ants, as laid out in the piece, leads. In a similar way, now the sound sequence is a crescendo (rather a pitch may be judgedto be a chromatic passing note than a diminuendo), suggesting, perhaps, intenor a pivot of tonal modulation, dependingon what tional force, rather than the energy dissipation of to the of free eventually happens surroundingsequence bouncing (as in Sound Example 10). events. This texture forms a to a final The pitch bridge phrase terminates (from ca. 3:52) with yet statement of the struck-wood the another variant of voismetal. This applies the strong sequence, of the wood events even more separateness being brassage technique, as used in the "harmonizer," emphasized by the ritardandoof the wood sounds (as to voismetal. Standardharmonizer brassage chops in Sound Example 8). up the starting sound into segments about 50 msec Here the wood sounds accelerate and rise in pitch, in duration, sufficient to preserve the instantaneous pitch of the event, but insufficient to give leading into a texture of higher-pitched, shortened, much of a clue to any changes in pitch that might repeated sounds, over a small pitch range, vaguely like cicada noise, an even more distant sonic modu- be taking place. By splicing these segments back lation (3:07-3:17, in Sound Example 9). together again, in the same order but with a We also hear here a dramatic extension of the greater or lesser degree of segment overlap, we can voismetal sound, a stack of transposed versions of reproduce the original event with an altered durait. This is also prominent elsewhere, and it serves tion, but with no shift in pitch. (In reality, we as the penultimate sound of the entire piece. This have to slightly randomize the durations of the cut then becomes the second part of a repeating phrase segments to avoid creating a spurious pitch from unit (3:17 and 3:28), whose first part is an accelerany regular sequence of splices used.) This process can be varied in many ways. In parating sequence of attacks. This accelerating material also emerges from the struck-wood events. ticular, we can adopt the following routine. First, The waveform of one of those events is modified we cut up the original sound as usual. Then, for the Wishart 27

first segment of the reconstructed sound, we choose the first segment of the original sound, but for the second segment of the reconstructed sound, we choose the second or the first segment of the original sound. For the third segment of the reconstructed sound, we choose the third or the second, or the first segment of the original sound, and so on. As a result of this selection procedure, there is always a possibility that some of the early, percussive-attack segments of the original sound will appear anywhere in the reconstructed sound. Hence, this attack quality gets distributed randomly over the time-stretched resultant sound, producing the "gargling"quality that we hear after 3:52 (as in Sound Example 11). Thus, by putting all these variants of the voismetal sound node together in an appropriate temporal sequence, we have constructed a complete phrase based on the sonic development of the original sound node (as in Sound Example 12). This is an example of phrase construction mainly using discrete sonic metamorphoses. However, we can also generate entire phrases by the continuous or semi-continuous metamorphosis of the starting sound. In the two examples considered here, we are using gablcrowd as the sound node from which to begin. The first example applies sound shredding to gablcrowd. The shredding process takes a given duration of sound material, and cuts it at a given number of randomly chosen positions; for example, seven cuts divide the sound into eight disjunct segments, each of random length, though the sum of these lengths equals the original duration. These segments are then shuffled into an arbitrary order, and rejoined to produce a new sound of exactly the same length as the original. This process is then repeated many times. In general, at each shred, the new cuts are unlikely to coincide with any existing cuts, so any preserved continuous stretch of the original sound will tend to be cut again into even smaller segments. At each shred and shuffle, the starting sound is
increasingly fragmented and increasingly randomly shuffled. Of all our sound experiences, vocal sounds retain their recognizability, even under extreme deformations. Thus, even after a hundred

superimposed shreds, the shredded gablcrowd sound retains some vocal clues. Eventually, after thousands of shreds, the dominant events in the resulting sound will be the splices themselves, and any originally complex starting sound will be reduced to low-level noise. However, there is a point along this path of successive shreddings where the vocal quality of the starting sound is lost, but not its sonic diversity. At this stage, the sound becomes akin to the sound of water falling gently around stones in a mountain stream. Our phrase (13:20-15:10) is constructed by splicing together successive, cumulative shreds of gablcrowd so that the voices gradually dissolve into the water-like texture. This basic phrase structure is counterstreamed by other events: deep attacks initiating rising noise-bands derived from the shredded voices. It also continues, seamlessly, into a second continuous metamorphic process, evolving a pitchal upward portamento out of the noise texture to lead us into the pitch attacks of the next phrase. The technique used here is end-synchronized delay. First, several copies of a sound are made at slightly different speeds, analogous to tape-speed variation. For example, we might decimate a waveform of 48,000 samples to 47,600 samples, thereby changing both duration and pitch very slightly. These copies are then superimposed so that they synchronize at their beginnings. The resulting precise beat frequencies caused by the precise delay times between the copies will be heard as a pitch portamento descending from "infinitely" high at the outset, where the copies are all synchronous, through the audible-pitch range as the copies get out of phase and the increasing delay gap generates a falling pitch, into the sub-audio range, resolving into a sequence of decelerating echoes. If instead we synchronize the ends of the copies, we will begin by moving into accelerating echoes, leading into a rising-pitch portamento. This is what we hear at our phrase end. This effect occurs no matter what the nature of the original sound: it is a
process-determined (rather than a source-deter-

mined) effect, so we can use it to move from

nonpitchal sounds into pitchal sounds. This entire phrase can be heard in Sound Example 13.

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As a second example of phrase structure based on a continuous metamorphosis, we again start from gablcrowd at 17:07. The metamorphosis begins by making the crowd texture increasingly dense, by superimposing randomly delayed, inexact copies of the starting sound. The copies are not exact copies, to avoid artificial-sounding delay or pitch effects between copies. With complex material like this at sufficient density, the spectrum becomes saturated, and we hear just a band of noise. At the same time, this band is made to rise in tessitura. As the process evolves further, the original gabbling voices re-emerge occasionally, retaining the connection with the starting sound. The noise is next put through a filter bank of increasing Q prior to the application of portamento, so that it gradually becomes a set of parallel portamentoing pitches. The continuing portamentoing means that the "chord"is never able to settle in any particular harmonic space (therefore it is not a chord in any traditional sense, technically speaking). The phrase continues by reversing these processes, returning first to noiseband and then back to gablcrowd. A counterstream of portamentoing parallel pitches splits away during the course of the phrase and descends slowly in pitch, in contrast to the up-anddown wave-like motion of the principle stream. This phrase is thus based on a classical arch form using continuous sonic metamorphoses (as in Sound Example 14). An arch form might be regardedas a sequence of events or sounds followed by its retrograde.The idea of a retrograde,however, is not as straightforward as it seems. In traditional notated music, a retrograde of a sequence of musical events means that we play the original events in reverse order. We are retrogradingonly the starting times of the events. We do not reverse the time flow inside the events themselves. We could extend this notion of retrogradeto different time scales; for example, a dance piece of overall form ABBA might be thought of as having
a retrograde structure. However, if we reverse the flow of time itself, by running a tape backwards, or reversing the order of a sequence of samples, the result is often surprising to us, as we reverse the events themselves and hence their flow of causal-

ity. As the evolving loudness and timbral envelope of a sound is often a vital recognition cue, reversing it can completely alter the perceived qualityand hence the recognition characteristics-of that sound. In general, however, continuous sonic metamorphoses can be retrogradedin this way without too many surprises. But if our phrase structure is built out of discrete metamorphoses, we must use the event-order reversal form of retrograde to achieve a comprehensible sense of retrogression. Or we may need to use some combination of the two. In the next example (7:40-8:30), we begin with gablcrowd, raising the tessitura and then applying spectral tracing to the sound. Spectral tracing preserves the most prominent partials in the sound, moment to moment (window by window). With simple, unchanging sounds, this process produces first an elementary noise reduction and then a gradual simplification or impoverishment of the spectrum. With complex sounds, however, the set of N most prominent partials changes on a moment-to-moment basis; some partials leave the set while some enter, resulting in the revelation of complex weaving "melodies." (An example of spectral tracing can be heard in Sound Example 15.) In this example, the originally vocal texture gradually becomes pitchal in the timbral sense, rather than noise focused. After somewhat mechanistic echoes, we reach a metallic-clang event generated by stacking transposed copies of exponential decay-enveloped versions of the spectrally traced sound (as in Sound Example 16). When this material is later recapitulated in retrograde form (10:50-11:40), we hear the continuous metamorphosis evolve in truly reversed time, from weaving melodies to transposed gablcrowd to original gablcrowd. However, the metallic-clang event is presented again in its original, time-forward form, and it subsequently develops through transposed repetitions of this original form. Furthermore, as we already know this material (we have heard it previously in the piece), I have placed a counterstream against it. Here, "breathing" sounds shorten and accelerate, becoming click-like and evolving into a regular pulse, like the "clock" first heard prior to the pause at 10:00, Wishart 29

and leading into a recapitulation of the pulsedrhythmic version of the theme at 11:45. Furthermore, the clock and metallic-clang "bells" are briefly associated in a tangential reference to some external reality-but this brings us into a different realm of analysis. This process may be heard in Sound Example 17. We could continue examining Tongues of Fire phrase by phrase, but I hope I have given sufficient insight into the musical processes at work. I have concentrated on the use of sonic metamorphosis in phrase building, and have said little about criteria for counterstreaming or for the more general sequencing of events. Nor have I discussed issues of sonic landscape, which in Tongues of Fire are dealt with in a more tangential manner than in my other compositions Red Bird (1977) or Fabulous Paris (1999). These are of equivalent importance in putting together the piece, but they are probably easier to relate to traditional musical form-building techniques; therefore I'll leave these matters to other analytically inclined listeners to tease out. But in conclusion, I must add that Tongues of Fire

stands or falls by its impact in the real-time aural experience of its listeners. References New Dawkins,R. 1986. "TheBlindWatchmaker." York:Norton.
Stockhausen, K. 1958. Gesang der Jiinglinge. Cologne:

Stockhausen-Verlag. Wessel, D. 1979."TimbreSpaceas a MusicalControl

Structure." Computer Music Journal3(2):45-52. Wishart, T. 1977. Red Bird. Albany, NY: Electronic Music Foundation. Wishart, T. 1985. On Sonic Art, new ed. London: Harwood Academic. Wishart, T. 1990. VOX 5. In The Vox Cycle. York, UK: Orpheus the Pantomime. Wishart, T. 1994. Tongues of Fire. York, UK: Orpheus the Pantomime. Wishart, T. 1995. Audible Design. York, UK: Orpheus the Pantomime. Wishart, T. 1999. Fabulous Paris. In Or Some Computer Music. London: Touch.

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