The Composition of "Vox-5"

Vox-5 is the fifth in a series of six pieces exploring the musical possibilities of the human voice. All the other pieces in the series are for live performance by four amplified vocalists, and most of them also use sound-on-tape as the accompanying medium, and simultaneously the environment in which the vocalization takes place. Each piece in the series is concerned with different ideas of musical structure, different performance techniques, and different aspects of human experience. Prior to the composition of this series I had developed a thorough system of notation for vocal sounds together with a systematic classification of vocal techniques. Vox-5 forms a bridging recitative into the finale of this series (Vox-6), and is also a "poetic summary" of the preceding material. The primary aural focus of Vox-5 is a (super)human voice that metamorphoses into many recognizable sonic images, such as the sounds of crowds, bees, a horse, or bells. This voice also employs various extended vocal techniques (such as ingressive complex sounds, subharmonics, ululation, and special consonant production). These are further extended by spectral manipulation of the material by the computer. In all the spectral transformations one aesthetic aim has been to retain the "source credibility" of the resulting sounds; that is, they must always be believably vocal or naturalistic, even if startlingly unexpected in their spectral development. I have been working with ideas of sound transformation since about 1970, but not having had access to computing facilities, I developed my previous techniques in a classical tape studio, using only editing, mixing, and speed changing. The opportunity to realize these processes in a much more precise manner was one of the principal reasons for coming to the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris to do a project.