It all started with looking at the shoreline along the bays when I arrived, and imagining the peaks of the trees and the hills as sound.

As I was looking at the shoreline, a thought popped into my head. This looks like a sound wave!

A digital sound wave is a visual representation of an audio recording, and can be viewed as a “map” of the recorded audio. The peaks represent sound, and valleys represent the absence of sound.

The digital sound wave shown has several distinct sections. There is a large section of spikes near the left hand side that get smaller and eventually turn to a thin, smooth section in the middle, with the last portion being a mix of valleys and spikes. Audibly, this gives us an idea of the “sound map” that is being represented. This specific example starts quite loud, then gets quieter and less drastic, with a section in the middle that may contain some longer, more connected phrases, before returning to the more varied changes in dynamic contrast and textural complexity. Using the digital sound wave as a blueprint, one could compose a piece mimicking the dynamic, temporal, and textural contours of the original, creating a totally new piece of music that borrows its structure and form from something related.

My idea is to take the natural landscape of the shoreline, and translate it to these “blueprints”. Using a variety of interpretation techniques, including instruments, vocal exploration, and notated score to make recordings and notated musical sketches, I would take these musical sketches and transcribe them into full compositions based on specific areas of the Isle Royale shoreline.

Specifically, I would be borrowing the dynamic contrasts (height of the trees), the temporal changes (distance between the trees and interpolation of sky/background), and the textural aspects (complexity and details specific to each tree/foliage area) of each shoreline sound wave blueprint.

Below are several images of Isle Royale’s shoreline, before and after some digital photo manipulation to show the visual similarity and aesthetic relationship to the digital sound wave image shown earlier:

To be completely frank I have no idea how to go about this process. I just wanted to get the idea out there and see if anyone has some input.

Would you start with a DAW? Manuscript paper?

I am not used to reverse engineering sound waves, but I FEEL like there is some solid potential here.

Would love to hear any and all thoughts about how other composers would proceed.

In the mean time I am going to shelve this method/idea because as of right now, I am working on finishing a WIND BAND composition based on METAL (iron that is). Hoping to put that post out soon!

Stay tuned for more on making sounds!

At the beginning of May, Bridge Ensemble went on our first tour, a journey up into the Thumb!

The Thumb Tour was Bridge Ensemble’s first multi-city run, three stops in a single day through a part of Michigan that most people drive through on the way to somewhere else. Harbor Beach, Caro, Fenton. We assembled and broke down the five octave marimba six times. We put in over five hours of driving.

I would do it again in a heart beat.

Harbor Beach was the first stop and, honestly, the one I keep coming back to. The town has a population of about 1,550. Ten people showed up. Josh ran the math afterward and pointed out that proportionally, that turnout would be equivalent to 3,500 people filling seats in Detroit. That reframe matters to me, because it is the whole argument for what we do in a single statistic.

We also premiered my piece Of Vernal Rot and Bloom there. Hearing your own music played back at you is a strange experience under any circumstances. Hearing it in a small room on the shore of Lake Huron, for people who had no particular expectation of what they were walking into, made it stranger and better.

I’ve linked a score video of the piece below.

Another highlight for me was being able to sit behind the electronics rig for David Beidenbender’s Red Vesper. If you have not heard this piece, it is built around these layered wolf calls and ambient insect sounds that slowly take over the room. Running that part live, watching the audience’s faces as the wolves started bleeding in, was one of the quieter thrills of the day. Contemporary music can do things that nothing else can, and that piece does several of them.

At every stop, someone told us they had never heard anything like it before. I heard it three times in one day and it did not get old.

At Harbor Beach a student caught us after the concert. She looked genuinely puzzled.

“Why did you come here?”

“To play for you.”

“Okay, but why did you come HERE?”

“To play for YOU.”

That exchange is the whole thing, really.

Please consider donating to help us achieve our mission of bringing music to all areas of our beautiful state: https://www.bridgeensemblemi.org/donate-now

HUGE thanks to everyone who made the day possible.

Musicians:

Alex Sellers

Brendan Callies

Carlie Tate

Chelsea Koziatek

Erin Dowler

Tia Harvey

Yvonne Pruneau

Volunteers:

Erik Anderson

Nicole Tremonti

Zach Tobias

Sandy Hargreaves Foguth

Elizabeth Eby

Partner Organizations:

Harbor Beach Area District Library

Caro Area District Library

St. Judes Episcopal Church

BE Team:

Josh Tobias

Lily Tobias

Antonio Caballero (yours truly)

Kristin Ball

Obligatory Photos from the day: