Snowflake

Sound Piece generated based on the formation of a snow flake

6 Players invited to record individual pieces based on time and tempos divisible by six.

The resulting music was then collated, arranged and processed to create a one hour music piece.

OTR009LP 2014

The project began upon seeing a video of Ukichiro Nakaya creating artificial snowflakes in a laboratory in 1936.

With further research into snowflake formation I devised a set of rules for players to perform by.

All snowflakes follow one rule, they have 6 sides.

So I chose 6 players and asked them to watch a small film I had made cutting from original footage of Ukichiro Nakaya creating snowflakes.

In reaction to this I asked each player to compose and perform a piece of music with their given instrument based upon a predefined 6 note scale and instructed each player to record at 60bpm.

Each player was also given a length of time to play for, from 1 to 6 minutes at 1 minute intervals.

They were told that silences and spaces were as welcome as noises and notes and that was all.

They did not hear each other parts.

Once I received all the audio I set about constructing a piece of music around these parts.

The Vinyl contains 6 remixes of 6 minutes each in length.

The CD contains 1 one hour piece of music arranged and processed from the players original audio.

There is also a free download with the release, a live cassette performance using tapes that loop at 1 to 6 minutes lengths.

The players are as follows:

Russell Burden – Harmonium, 1 minute. Web - starbathing.com | instagram@starbathing.com

Marissa Katarina Bergmann - Voice, 2 minutes. Web - aimari.com

Bill Seaman – Piano, 3 minutes. Web - billseaman.com

Emmanuel Witzthum – Viola, 4 minutes. Web - witzthum.webs.com

Danny Norbury – Cello, 5 minutes

Thomas Ruhe (father of Bryan Ruhe) – Trumpet, 6 minutes. Web - worksbyruhe.net

Vinyl - Reworks by the humble bee

Side A.

Ice (snowcello) 6 min

01 Ice snowcello.mp3

Flurry (snowvoice) 6 min

03 Flurry snowvoice.mp3

Side B.

Drift (snowtrumpet) 6 min

Rime (snowpiano) 6 min

Blizzard (snowharmonium) 6 min

CD - Original score

snowflake 60 min

etching set

‘snowflake’ 6 min original film

Blizzard (snowharmonium) 6 min