Never been at home '93
Feb 09, 2022, 09:28 AM
Vicenza's Piazza dei Signori reimagined by Celestial Noise Disco (Aaron Zwintscher).
"I have never been to Vicenza, Italy, so when listening to the sound I selected, I was uncertain where to start; how to take and remake and remix the sounds in a way that speaks to my own personal experiences and ideas to hear through but also translates for an audience.
But as I was listening, I reflected upon the fact that I have been to Italy. As a small child, I went on a whirlwind family vacation of Continental Europe. It was 1993, I had a glimmer of the sense of the importance of the trip that marked the transition of my family living as Americans in Japan to just living in America.
It was then that I, entirely by accident, found and isolated a clip from the ambience of the Piazza dei Signori that, to me at least, sounded distinctly like a small child saying (in English) to their guardian: “I’ve never been … I’ve never been at home.” I had found my organizing principle: dislocation, displacement, and a touch of the unheimlich.
I took that sound clip as well as extractions of bells, horns, and rhythmic walking and affected and arranged them in Cubasis on my iPad. I used a number of the internal Steinberg effects, over-processed Cubasis drum loops, Waves plugins, and several Eventide reverb plugins to create a lofi ambient soundscape that embodied that sense of dislocation and displacement. I think that the overall process was enhanced by the fact that I was composing and arranging on my iPad while myself dislocated and away from home in Florida instead of NYC. I had limited gear with me and adapted those limitations into the overall sound of the piece. As a nod back to my trip to Italy in ’93, I set the BPM at 93 (apt for lofi), and locked many of the plugin controls to 93, 9 (my age on the trip), and a few other numbers relevant and related to that trip and my own personal experience as a small child in Italian piazzas.
To finish the piece, I mixed and mastered it for surround and Atmos (as much as the headphones I had with me could allow) in Logic and Ableton Live. It is now the musical reflection of a fuzzy memory of of a childhood experience in a foreign country while in the middle of an international move as reflected by dislocated adaptation of a field recoding nearly 30 years later. I hope it translates."
"I have never been to Vicenza, Italy, so when listening to the sound I selected, I was uncertain where to start; how to take and remake and remix the sounds in a way that speaks to my own personal experiences and ideas to hear through but also translates for an audience.
But as I was listening, I reflected upon the fact that I have been to Italy. As a small child, I went on a whirlwind family vacation of Continental Europe. It was 1993, I had a glimmer of the sense of the importance of the trip that marked the transition of my family living as Americans in Japan to just living in America.
It was then that I, entirely by accident, found and isolated a clip from the ambience of the Piazza dei Signori that, to me at least, sounded distinctly like a small child saying (in English) to their guardian: “I’ve never been … I’ve never been at home.” I had found my organizing principle: dislocation, displacement, and a touch of the unheimlich.
I took that sound clip as well as extractions of bells, horns, and rhythmic walking and affected and arranged them in Cubasis on my iPad. I used a number of the internal Steinberg effects, over-processed Cubasis drum loops, Waves plugins, and several Eventide reverb plugins to create a lofi ambient soundscape that embodied that sense of dislocation and displacement. I think that the overall process was enhanced by the fact that I was composing and arranging on my iPad while myself dislocated and away from home in Florida instead of NYC. I had limited gear with me and adapted those limitations into the overall sound of the piece. As a nod back to my trip to Italy in ’93, I set the BPM at 93 (apt for lofi), and locked many of the plugin controls to 93, 9 (my age on the trip), and a few other numbers relevant and related to that trip and my own personal experience as a small child in Italian piazzas.
To finish the piece, I mixed and mastered it for surround and Atmos (as much as the headphones I had with me could allow) in Logic and Ableton Live. It is now the musical reflection of a fuzzy memory of of a childhood experience in a foreign country while in the middle of an international move as reflected by dislocated adaptation of a field recoding nearly 30 years later. I hope it translates."