Works » By Title » V » Veils: Studies in Textural Transformations (28:32 / 1984-85)

Veils is a series of textures or walls of sound, which act as an invitation for the listener to explore an environment where new acoustic sensations and associations can be discovered. The texture, a sustained chord of usually 14-56 notes, is constantly transforming by changing the instrument type that is articulating the sound (i.e. from strings to voice, to brass, to piano, to marimba, to glass, etc.) No electronic effects were used and only straight recordings and mixing of acoustic instruments were used. However the sound source or instrument type at any moment is not usually obvious to the listener, hence the sources are “veiled”. This veiled sound is created by three main factors: the extensive multi-tracking (180-280 tracks of the same instrument are used at any one moment, the tuning of the chords which is new microtonal intervals that do not occur in our normal 12-Tone Equal Tempered tuning system and the recording method of close miking in a dead acoustical space which brings out aspects of each instrument type that we normally do not hear. The title is also an analogy to a real veil where one can switch between seeing individual strands and viewing the overall pattern. In Veils it is imagined that the listener can freely drift from one type of perception to another (i.e. micro to macro level or individual layer to mass effect).

Studio composition in 3 parts.