SEDAYNE // DH7





i) I've long been fascinated by the problems that arise when one seeks the effective juxtapositioning of diverse & orphaned sounds and by the mechanism that then perceives the results as being worthwhile or pants. What region of the brain is responsible for measuring the shortfall between intention on the one hand and result on the other? And what region is then responsible for enjoying the tensions arising from the inevitable disparity between the conceptual & the corporeal wherein might lie beauty after all?





ii) On a more immediate & practical level of course it's to do with the thickness of the wall that divides the music room from the house next door which will necessitate a certain measure of sound-proofing in the near future but what does one do in the meantime? Having got to know the linear sound-editing programme Sound Forge pretty well (this is what I use to transfer the analogue tape stock for the new series CDRs) I set about teaching myself Cubasis VST and began to think about the possibilities of working between the two; sampling, looping & editing on Sound Forge & assembling these various elements using Cubasis then sending the results back to Sound Forge for further editing & enhancement.
Such programmes, whilst being designed to eliminate random elements from music, lend themselves to alchemical randomness in a way unprecedented since I used to record using 5 mono cassette machines with their microphones jammed beneath zither strings splicing & looping the results until a satisfactory level of saturation had been achieved.
Also - this way I can work in silence; it is not that I fear neighborly wrath, rather my concern is with the self-consciousness arising when I suspect that I can be overheard.





ii) On December the 21st 2001 Tertius brought his new digital 8-track over so as I could see what was what & decide whether or not such a thing would represent a wise investment. I recorded approximately one minute's worth of music on each of the eight tracks. On tracks one to four I used the crwth, on tracks five & six I used dumbeks, track seven a Tibetan bowl and on track eight a Turkish whistle flute. We then loaded each track independently onto Sound Forge and proceeded to a seasonal discussion of a text with ended with the statement that:-

"...Enchantment proceeds from nothing but the Chit-Chat of an old Nurse, or the Maggots in a Mad man's Brain."

This proved prophetic when, in the wee small hours of New Year's Day 2002, I began subjecting one of the minute-long crwth tracks to careful scrutiny and having isolated approximately 2 seconds worth discarded the rest and began bricking it up on Cubasis VST whilst shamelessly weeping at the beauty of the resultant music.





iii) At the end of three months of working thus I've created a sequence of 14 bite-sized pieces (the longest is 6.19, the shortest 4.30) in a genre I'm calling Proximal Ambient Electronica; I've been seduced by the ghost in the machine molle - conducting a virtual seance to conjour forth the spectres of something I might once have dared call Music and, after toying with such titles as Lap-top Dancing & Remote Control Freak, I settled on DH7 which had been the working title all along.





iv) DH7 is now available in an exquisite hand-crafted CDR edition & those interested in acquiring a copy should contact dh7@sedayne.co.uk without further ado.