Cistern as Instrument

I have to admit that Stuart Dempster's piece that we listened to in class last week fooled me. The recording and the instruments involved sounded all the world to me like they were heavily processed and/or synthesized. Also, seeing as a new “final cut” of the movie had been released, I thought it might have been part of keyboardist Vangelis’ score to Blade Runner, partly due also to my rough memory of there being hand-chimes/bells played somewhere during the soundtrack.

I would’ve loved to have found out just how the performance of the Dempster piece was recorded. I’m sure if they had used unidirectional close-mic’ing of the instruments the results of the performance would have sounded much different than whatever mics were used to capture the rich resonating and echoes of the cistern as “activated” by the ensemble. I also wonder to what extent trial-and-error factored into the recording situation; if it was a one-take deal or if several, possibly shorter, runs in order to nail down a satisfactory mic situation were attempted; and how frustrating it might have been to have to wait after a botched take for the echoes to die down in order for the next take to begin as envisioned.

In doing a little reading about Oliveros and deep-listening, I was struck by this part of her Wikipedia entry--

Oliveros coined the term "Deep Listening", which she then applied to her group The Deep Listening Band and to the Deep Listening program of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. (formerly The Pauline Oliveros Foundation), which she founded in 1985. The Deep Listening program includes annual listening retreats in Europe, New Mexico and in upstate New York, as well as apprenticeship and certification programs. The Deep Listening Band, which includes Oliveros, David Gamper, and Stuart Dempster, specializes in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as caves, cathedrals and huge underground cisterns. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Oliveros)

The idea of a group of people traveling around and exploring both natural and artificial structures’ sound really intrigues me. As someone who has played music in various places around the country, the sound of a room almost becomes at times a personal bane, a never-ending struggle with trying to sound similar, a different room night after night, to how things sounded in a “control” room like a practice space. Here is an aesthetic that prides itself on going around and activating those places’ characteristics! In a way it almost undercuts traditional notions of the performer, in that it could be said that greater allowance is made for aspects of individual spaces to play the musicians after a fashion.