Islamianity (electronic and music concrete)

Islamianity: listen online

Hardware
imac
Yamaha cs6x
CME VX-8

Software
Audacity
Garage Band
Ivory VSTI

Sound sources
People reading Bible passages
Recorded singing and chanting
Chinese Baoding
News reporter clips
Clip of USF Evangelical preacher outside of Cooper
Electric Toothbrush
Explosion sound clips

Final Project Summary:

This piece fuses together the acts of radical Islam extremists and radical fundamentalist Evangelicals, whose crimes, although vastly different, embody the same amount of hatred. Islamianity is a representation of this hatred. The piece follows an abstract ABA format with a short recall of the choral introduction at the end. Part A starts with juxtaposing a made up monk like chant to the psalm for Agnus Die and The Islam Call to Prayer. The Catholic chant was recorded in three parts and reverb was later added. The call to pray is a mixture of 3 different clips I found on various websites, with which I edited the sustaining portions of singing together into block chords, that actually goes well with the chant. Going on under this are Chinese Baoding balls being struck, with the two different tones layered together and struck several times with later added reverb to get the heard bell toll effect. Then some pads and percussions effects from Garageband's VSTI library are used, controlled by a CME-V8 MIDI controller. A progressive rock like theme emerges with a Bosendorfer piano played through the VSTI Ivory and accompanying horn ensemble and electric guitar, also from Garageband's VSTI library to emphasize certain passages. Under this fast paced rock theme are a number of news reporter clips from Britain, cut and pasted together all dealing with the possible threat of terrorism in Europe and rebellion of British Muslim extremists. Also white noise is heard back and forth in the left and right speakers that separate important words and phrases in the various news reports. The song then enters a B section that represents an innocent child born into the world that is surrounded by the religious chaos that is occurring in sections A and C. This section features an electronic sound constructed on a Yamaha cs6x that is mainly composed of a square wave, saw wave, xylophone wave, and string pizzicato wave all of which have are assigned to a portamento effect giving the sound its childlike playful quality. A light flute also contributes to this section with which the last to notes are layered with the words "God" and "Allah" indicating the start of the C section. These two words are used in the jazzy choral type sound where it is exhaustedly layered and reversed then pitch shifted and layered together to form the chords heard. Also going on is a male voice with distortion on it reading the Bible passage John 3:16 in the left speaker while in the right an extremist Evangelical lady condemns Harry Potter. Once again bursts of white noise are used to emphasize different parts of her speech. Also the word "death" is stretched out at the end of the clip. While this is going on a variation of the progressive theme is played with a guitar solo this time also played through the midi controller. The C section then moves into a more abstract soundscape that is characterized by the words, "God", "Allah", and "Bible" are mixed together in a very rapid succession, although the majority of the time the sound is severely cut up or reversed. Also, an electronic toothbrush is featured with reverb, echo flange, and distortion. The toothbrush suggests the progressive theme with its slow pitch shift in a pentatonic scale and is also played in reverse. This sets up for the emotional climax in the piece, where an array of police sirens are mixed together, played on the cs6x, followed by several explosion samples and a news sound clip of the second plane hitting the world trade center with a reporter describing the devastation as the public at the site are in disarray. The Bell toll effect is synonymous with the first explosion heard. The piano takes the place of the Bell toll, which later comes back in after the powerful phrase "there are no words". The end of the C section reinstates the choral theme from the beginning of the A section along with various clips of extremism on both the Evangelical and Islamic side.

wow it's so much reading, took me longer than an actual piece
it sounded nice, i liked all rush-ness of records and of music (which is midi if am not mistaken?). would've been even nicer if i didn't know the hell lot about this situation regarding terrorism and 9/11. politics...but all in all it was good and reminded me of bob ostertags piece all the rage with that intensity...and, hey, i think it should be longer
regards

Very cool. Nice presentation, nice piece. It's very compact.

I would call this more a collage of different things than music concrete, but in either case, what I like is the fact that the piece itself doesn't lend itself to an obvious character save for the moment where the soundclips are recognizable and understandable. I would've used more processing, personally.

I like the organization of the sound sources, but due to the compact nature of the piece I would have picked maybe shorter clips, or lesser clips altogether.

Was this piece intended to be descriptive or a representation of something? There are certain characteristics which of course make the context/theme easily recognizable, was that on purpose?

Thank you very much for the constructive criticism. Yes, the piece does have a symbolic value behind it. Its supposed to approach the subject of corruption in extreme forms of religion by juxtaposing islam extremism and christian evangelical extremism. But I also wanted the message to be non biased so that the listener is the judge to question which religious system is more harmful or are they both equally harmful but in different ways.