STUDY NO.3: TWIST! (2025)

Duration: 19.5 mins

TWIST! is a compositional study which takes advantage of the unique capabilities of IRCAM’s ISiS vocal synthesizer, a tool which ‘performs’ musical scores by stitching together specially-made recordings of pitches and phonemes, according to style models derived from analysis of the commercial recordings of a selection of prominent French singers. Since ISiS is not subject to quite the same technical limitations as a human vocalist, TWIST! is able to explore extremes of musical speed, agility, precision, stamina and clarity of articulation that would otherwise be impossible. The ‘libretto’ consists almost entirely of French tongue-twisters or virelangues, and the only other sounds used are sampled footsteps which help to create the illusion of a singer that (/who) is virtually present in the performance space, moving around the audience in both realistic and rather more disruptive ways: the piece is designed to be heard on a 3D multi-speaker installation, preferably in darkness. The ‘performer’ of TWIST! may appear to take on various characteristics at different times: tentative, exploratory, didactic, cheeky, ostentatiously virtuosic, obsessive and even hysterical.

A surround-sound Dolby Atmos recording of the piece is available to purchase from immersiveaudioalbum.com

A binaural (stereo) version can be found on Bandcamp

and clips can be found on the playlists below:

Other electronic and vocal works

Study no.2: Picket fence and chips
Study no.1: Boots…
Feather-Small and Still
A Motion of Dawn