ABSTRACT
I like to use a wide range of different sounds, and I’m oĞen particularly taken with ‘dirty’ sounds – sounds we might commonly regard as flawed, or as by-products of normal techniques of playing an instrument, or even as by-products of life, rather than objects worthy of aĴention. I use a lot of extended techniques in my work, and so I really enjoy digging around on an instrument to find things I haven’t heard before, whether it’s blowing into the soundhole of a violin, using different types of pressure on a drum head, or using an instrument like the trumpet as a resonator/amplifier rather than in the normal way. I am also interested in whatever sounds I can find outside of the vocal/instrumental world – the crunch of porridge in a plastic bag, the creak and split of ice in a puddle, as well as field recordings, found sounds and old recordings. This oĞen means that performers of my music find themselves having to play, for example, bags, stones, tape recorders and wool as well as their instrument. I wrote a piece in 2007 for voice and percussion quartet called Physics for the Girl in the Street, and that was such a joy – percussionists expect to be asked to play anything, and they will develop a technique to get it right.
