Thursday, January 1, 2015

John Chowning - Turenas · Stria · Phoné · Sabelithe

John Chowning - Turenas · Stria · Phoné · Sabelithe

Classic slice of early computer music by the father of FM synthesis, John Chowning.

Finally got a hold of this beauty through my good friend Alexandre St-Onge, who was kind enough to share this with me and let me post it up here.

Chowning composed these four works between the years 1971-1981.

Turenas (1972) made extensive use of the spatial manipulation programs that Chowning was working on at the time, and it's one of the first electronic compositions to create the illusion of moving in a 360 degree space. It's also interesting to hear the instances in this piece where FM is used for timbral transformation coupled with spatial manipulation, so you get these sounds that change timbre as they move across space.

Stria (1977) was created using inharmonic spectra and all frequency components are based on powers of the Golden Mean. It has a ghost like quality to it, full of crystal apparitions and slowly decaying reverberations.

But my favourite has got to be Phoné (1980–1981) with its disincarnate virtual reality voices and AI choirs. It is really quite something. Phoné was created exclusively by using an algorithm based on FM for synthesis of sung vocal tones that Chowning worked on while he was at IRCAM between 1979-1980.

Sabelithe (1971) is most notable for being the first ever piece created using FM synthesis.