… about The Un-Tempered Orchestra and Who Has the Biggest Sound?

Who Has the Biggest Sound? is the most substantial of the two pieces on the CD…

In this work, I go on a journey around the world, looking for sounds produced by insects and animals. Who has the most beautiful melody? Who can play the fastest? I found a direct relationship between animals of a specific geographical region and the unique music style from that area — for example, when it’s slowed down, the rhythm of crickets matches flamenco and other Latin rhythms; the rhythm and pitch-bend of barnyard animals matches country and western music. This project suggests that humans hold their musical creative abilities in too high an esteem.

One wouldn’t necessarily think you were always using sounds from nature…

I didn’t want a nature-sounding work — you should only hear pure music. But what you are in fact hearing is the sound of insects and animals translated on to musical instruments, and into a musical structure we can understand.

Are the sounds electronically generated?

All my music is based on the live performance of instruments. Musicians are hired and recorded one at a time — although I play all my own string parts, from violin to double bass, from banjo to electric guitar. I then do whatever editing is needed before mixing all the tracks together. On average, my ‘virtual orchestra’ comprises 400 members, and the size of different sections changes within a piece or even within an individual movement.

What’s The Un-Tempered Orchestra about?

Part of my ongoing quest since the 1980s has been to make us feel vibrations or music in a different way. I find our tuning system quite ugly and its vibrational combinations a cliché. I use the recording studio to create vibration or frequency patterns that you cannot achieve with conservatory-trained musicians in the concert hall. In this particular piece, I’m fascinated with non-octave tuning systems and the emotions and colours they create. When there are no octaves, it forces the ear to feel new sensations.

What are your musical influences?

I listen to all types of music from across the world and these genres are put through a huge ‘Dolden filter’ when I sit down to write. Who Has the Biggest Sound? is a piece in which I most directly mimic the colours and gestures of other genres — country, rock, Latin, Baroque — although this has a lot do with the musical material that the insects gave me! But the work isn’t simply a pastiche of styles, as each section is united by the use of the same melodic and harmonic material.

What can your music offer traditionalists?

Classical listeners may be turned off by the distorted guitars and pounding drums but an ‘ideal listener’ will be open-minded enough to join me on a journey into microtonal heavy-metal hell and through to sustained, blissful, consonant choirs accompanied by soft instrumental sounds. I believe this ‘ideal listener’ exists in the mind of every artist.