Second Square To None

Amanda Feery - The Shipwreck by SSTN Noise


Our featured artist this week is Amanda Feery , a composer rising fast in new music circles. She was recently chosen for a residency at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival from an international cast of young composers, and among other things was previously a member of Attention Bebe.

What are your reasons / motives for making music, and how you arrived at this
style?

AF: This piece was written for a play called 'The Insanity of Mary Girard', by Lanie Robertson. Mary Girard is condemned to a lunatic asylum by her husband without proper pyschiatric evaluation, which hubbies could do lawfully in 18th century America. The director wanted to explore the theme of water and it's tension between containment and compulsion to overflow, which ties in nicely with being trapped in a madhouse and wanting to escape..

I read an interesting line in the script which got me working. Mary compares the entrapment in the tranquilizing chair to being "drowned without being dead". I wanted to try create the sound of being submerged deep underwater, falling through the wreckage of a ship.



What sort of environment it is intended for /what is the intended effect on
listener (if any)?

AF: Originally, the piece was played through speakers in the theatre and was ancillary to the action onstage. As a piece in it's own right, I think headphones would be better. For best results listen with empty bladder.

What sort of equipment you use (e.g. computer, hardware, home made gear,
circuit bent stuff etc.) do you use to make your sounds?

AF: Er, I have a computer with Ableton Live and a few plugins. For this piece I primarily used field recordings, which I favour over synths. I did use the Virus synth for the obvious bubbly sounds that ebb and flow throughout! I recorded water sounds myself which I have used in the piece but they're in the background. The director wanted clearly audible bubbly water sounds, which is why I used the Virus. The field recordings include piano strings, a cymbal, a double bass, bells, and a beer bottle with some beer in it.

Any memorable noise-related incidents/interesting gig anecdotes?

AF: About three years ago I was playing clarinet with my friend Regan O' Brien, who was singing. We stumbled upon intervals where I would play a note and Regan would sing a note very close to my note, resulting in a perceived third note, which I later found out were difference tones (where the perceived note is the sum or difference of the frequency of two notes). We continued to play around with intervals to find interesting difference tones, but an hour or so later we both had terrible headaches and had to stop. Seems our heads were not fond of the absolute brawl of vibrations we were experimenting with. Oh, and we both needed to go to the toilet so we may have touched on some sort of brown note phenomena..close call!

Info on upcoming gigs, preferred web address, releases etc.

July, National Concert Hall.
July, Bang on a Can Summer Festival http://bangonacan.org/summer_festival


http://www.cmc.ie/composers/composer.cfm?composerID=213