In order to have some text to work with I have tried to extract phrases or words from the original short story. The original is very (over) descriptive so i was cherry picking the strongest words and, had been pointed out to be by Nigel in a supervision Poe is using "parallelism" as a means of driving his point home. Meaning instead of one descriptive word he will list three, so the challenge was finding the 'best' words. I also had to try and find words which might be connected as line endings, if not exactly rhyming. Below is an example of how I marked up the story to extract the words I thought would 'sing well'.

“I call architecture frozen music.”— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Skeletons/Paths/Ghosts as applied to an urban space once it's abandoned.

Skeletons are the original architectural designs. You've often heard people talk about the "bones of the building" to refer to the structure.

Paths are the ways you find through a building. Either exploring the building or designed into the building in where there are stairs or corridors.

Ghosts are the old purposes of objects.

Things being recognisable even though they have been degraded by decay. They rely on your conscious memory to reconstruct them, and some objects which you can’t “figure out” may play on your subconscious memory (not being able to place an object in context but recognising it “somehow”).

Some things retain their shape (you can see their purpose) but are just visual (unusable) objects. This could be, for example, a metal chair which would still be recognisable even if very rusted (transformed), but would not be serviceable to be used for sitting on.

Some things are almost unchanged and look more incongruous around other objects badly decayed. This could be a plastic chair which hasn't decayed at all, and could be still used for its original purpose.

The contour always remains in each of these examples above. 

The dust on the floor is a sound you hear when walking through an abandoned building. These elements of the building that created the dust on the floor (that mostly were decoration in the past) are remnants that produce sound. The purpose they first served, such as : wallpaper, or plaster, or a poster that used to hang on the wall, lose that original purpose and something with only the ghost of it's old use remaining. They now decorate the building in a different way.

All along I have been trying to make connections between how a physical structure has connections to musical material. This is how I see the Skeleton/Ghost/Paths connections to 
the music in my final creative response.

The musical skeleton is the structure, or how the "bones" of the piece are put together (vertically as in the musical arrangement, or horizontally as in the time-based structure). The ghosts are the associations in the listener to the material used. The listener hears a transformation of a melody they have previously heard in the piece, and that transformed melody contains the ghost of the original (through intrareferential memory). The paths are the directions of either the melody, harmony, or the structure takes. That dictionary definition from earlier could apply to the transformations a melody goes through in the course of a piece of music - " a very slight amount of something that is left behind". (2015)

The backbone of the piece became the skeleton of the contour of the cliffs. In the music the violin melody came from a contour. Take away the melody and another ghost of that melody remains since the harmony which followed the melody is there but the melody is missing. Keeping the chords, but losing the melody created what I hope is another musical 'ghost'. A thing which makes musical sense with something “taken away”. This is, I hope, particularly noticeable at 1’12’’ in the piece where there are staccato chords “in the distance” which seem to be punctuating something which is missing and, instead, it produces strange cross-rhythms “by chance” (which I will look at more a little later).

I didn’t care about timing things exactly in rhythm, since the poly-temporal nature of memory was a goal in the piece so (and what I have discussed in relation to the Ives work), unless something distracted from it not “fitting” and standing out too much for no reason. Whatever accidents of rhythm that occurred were part of the process, and I was looking to happen. The goal is to create poly-rhythm. Anything that felt like a grounding regular pulse I reworked to avoid the listener's ear latching on to in as a pulse. Since that rhythmic grounding I wanted to be absent, I allowed there to be moments of tonal recognition. Tonality and not rhythm is what I hope grounds the piece. Sometimes the harmony comes together (unintentionally but I would leave that “traditional” element in), but since the harmony was left up to the element of chance and not planned by me in any way there are just happy accidents of tonal moments.

I briefly mentioned Aleatory before and I see this music as Aleatoric music. Aleatoric derives from the term from the Latin word “alea” meaning dice. I see this piece as “chance music”, since when I’m adding an element to the mix which has a musical characteristic : pitch and duration, I don’t know the result till I hear it back. Each added element is a new “roll of the dice”.

There are, however, different types of Aleatoric music or types of indeterminacy in the process of a composition. The Ives example of “Central Park In The Dark” should sound different at each performance since the two tempos of the two separated ensembles create different relations to each other if each group chooses different tempos from performance to performance. The score remains the same and the performances are slightly different.

A visual score creates the most indeterminate performance. Each performer is asked to interpret shapes on a page into notes and rhythm and each performer at each performance will have different interpretations of what music is intended by the score. Taking the musical decisions out of the composers hands and into the performers. The score stays the same and the performances differ greatly each time.

With my piece I’m looking for indeterminacy in the composing, but a set experience for the listener. I don’t know what these elements sound like when combined but once I do they will always sound the same on the recording.

This has been the biggest part of this process. I had to work on a sound which I thought was needed. I worked around a concept, for instance adding a new colour to a metallic percussion instrument to “represent” the transforming effect of rust, but then I don’t know how the individual sound will turn out until I make the changes to it, and then again I don’t know how it will sound when placed in the mix of other sounds. This is yet another element of chance, but once decided upon becomes fixed.

The reason this was the biggest part of the process was because, even if the concept is solid, the resulting music might not convey the concept behind it.

An example of this “dead end” (of which there were many), was me thinking of having the “fiddle tune” be played in two tempos and keys and separated widely into either speaker of a stereo mix. This is what I wanted to borrow from “Central Park In The Dark” as an experiment for this piece but, when executed, it didn’t sit within the sound world of the rest of the music. It had too human an element to it, and the folk idiom didn’t make sense in a piece about urban decay and memory. It didn’t convey the element of nostalgia I was looking for. It was a different kind of nostalgia relating to a different kind of environment. I had wanted it to become an intrareferential element. I wanted the listener to be introduced to it in the piece and then for it to be transformed into something else. I wanted it to be something traditional and coherent and then something “split apart”. No matter how much I distorted the violin part it didn’t fit in with the sound pallet of the piece. I feel like, if the duration of the piece was much longer, or it was a set of pieces then it might have worked. Giving me either longer to get from a traditional sound to a decayed sound or letting the more traditional musical material sit in a context in which it would fit more easily.

The only part of the violin melody I retained was a couple of phrases digitally stretched to make them three times slower and made into a “loop” to add one more “human” element. A backdrop to the more industrial metallic sounds. 

Another thing which didn’t work, but had worked in the first draft of this piece is the visual metaphor of the wallpaper peeling off the walls.

The first stage of trying to work out how to write a Scottish dance as one of the movements for a set of pieces for piano quintet I looked at a traditional "Reel". Below is one, showing the characteristic constant quaver movement of the form.

The next step was to come up with an original musical theme which had the features of the piece above but was my own music.

​Below is my theme.

As can be seen from "Lord MacDonald's Reel" (printed above) - from bar 9 it goes into a second section, so I had to compose a second section which served the purpose it does in the traditional reel of being a distinctly new section but with similar music.

Below is a video of the second section leading back into the theme again.

The original reel I am using as a starting point is in the key of G major. My theme is 'in G' but is using a modal scale.

Below are written out all the traditional modal scales (all beginning on the note C).

The mode I used in the theme of my reel is the Mixolydian mode. This mode is characterised by it being almost exactly a major scale but with the second last note flattened. The reason I have shown the modes all starting on C is to explain as simply as possible the 'change' from the conventional major scale. If you were to play all the white notes on a piano keyboard from C up to the next C you come to it would be a C Major scale. If, instead of playing the second last white note you come to (a B on the keyboard), you played a Bb then that would be the Mixolydian scale.

[Note: in the key my theme is in (G), again you play all the notes from G to the next G. Normally you would play an F# as the second last note of the major scale but if you flatten that to an F Natural, then you have the Mixolydian scale beginning on G]

Generating more material
If, from the outset I have set up a modal character how can I use this feature to create more musical material? Can I create a new modal scale which makes musical sense from the original theme?

Below is the Mixolydian scale on C. 
​
EXAMPLE A

 I have used slurs to show where the semi-tones are. So the Mixolydian scale consists of: a tone, a tone, a semi-tone, a tone, a tone, a semi-tone, and a tone.

As this is the scale that forms my theme, how can I modify this scale to create a new scale which I can use to generate more material. If I read the scale backwards (i.e. its retrograde), then the descending scale would consist of: a tone, a semi-tone, a tone, a tone, a semi-tone, a tone, and a tone. Below is exactly that (each interval that ascends in the original just descending in the example below: 

​                                       EXAMPLE B

So, to clarify, In example A the scale moves up a tone, then a tone, then a semi-tone etc. Example B moves down by these distances ( a tone, then a tone, then a semi-tone etc). In example C, below, all I have done is put these notes into an ascending scale (on the note C), and in example C (ii) we see exactly the same scale begin on the note G (since that's the starting note I need for my composition)

​                                   EXAMPLE C

                                 EXAMPLE C (ii)

Now this new scale can be applied to the music I have already written to create a "variation".

Below is a video (with the score) showing how I applied this 'transformation' to the second half of my original theme.

Applying the same kind of process to another movement in the work for Piano Quintet, I looked at the Scottish Strathspey.

Below is an example of a traditional Strathspey.

The rhythmic feature which immediately stands out is the "Scottish Snap" rhythm. I began to sketch ideas around this distinctive feature but wanted to see if I could create a more melancholy mood. Music which is reflective, rather than music to be danced to.

Below is a video of a piano piece I wrote which acts like a sketchbook of ideas for a more substantial piece.

Those sketches in the video above started to generate music which is becoming the opening of the second movement. There is a lot of material from the "sketches" which didn't make it into this version below so I have lots of material to work as transitions, or for the basis for a new section (if needed) to balance out the form. The opening of the movement is in the video below.

​The 'Slow Movement'

Since my Quintet is basically following "Sonata Form" I need to find a way of producing a slow movement which has a relation to Scottish traditional music. I break from my idea of this being a work made up of dance movements by having a lyrical Scottish Ballad to form my slow movement. As composers have often done with this 'singing style' (cantabile) slow movements.

The following solo piano piece takes it's phrase structure from the famous poem "Auld Lang Syne" and is basically a "song without words" for piano.

As you can see from the score below, it is a mainly chordal piece which I thought could be treated like a chorale ( a hymn-like tune harmonised in a chordal/homophonic way) as is this piano piece.

The scope for generating music for this slow movement began to form when I realised that, if this piano piece is a chorale, then the form used by composers, throughout different periods of musical history, of the "Chorale Prelude" could be the inspiration to draw on for this movement.

The Britannica Encyclopedia says of the form as it is often applied today that: "​Generically, the term chorale prelude is often applied to compositions that are not genuinely associated with the chorale but that do preserve the genre’s textural characteristics."

It also describes the compositional features of the form as: "The chorale prelude retained improvisational characteristics even as a fixed compositional type. Typical examples feature the hymn tune as a cantus firmus (fixed tune), which is broken down into its constituent phrases played in long note values and preceded, accompanied, and followed by contrapuntal manipulations of their salient motifs.​" https://www.britannica.com/art/chorale-prelude​

Detuning The Nation
Since lockdown, walking the streets near where I live I have been constantly noticing how everything is becoming 'out of tune'. It is obviously true when talking about musical instruments which need a tuner to visit to maintain their pitch and tuners have not been able to gain access due to the lockdown restrictions, but I have also noticed church bells and town hall chimes slowly de-tune during this time.

Normally, when I walk to church on a Sunday to do by job as a church organist I hear the clear bells from the clock tower of the church at the top of the hill on the street where I live (pictured below) and, as I continue on, those bells recede into the distance and half-way through my journey I hear the chimes of the Town Hall clock chime the quarter hour (telling me I'm on time to turn up for work). I can always tell if I'm running late since the church bells (to my right are still too loud), and the Town Hall chimes are too distant.

I bought a pair of Roland CS-10EM binaural headphones to be able to capture this sound of bells at a certain point in my walk to work every Sunday.

I went on my first sound walk and captured the sound of church bells in one ear and Town Hall bells in the other. When playing back on my PC speakers I couldn't hear what I heard while I walked, but when listening with headphones I can. Below is a recoding of that four minute walk where one bell can be heard throughout and then the two bell sounds can be heard towards the end.

.Since lockdown began it's forced me to think about 'performance spaces' in a totally different way. Since these spaces are known to me through them having physical bodies of people in them either rehearsing or performing music or being the audience for live music I've begun to see these spaces differently and have become aware of the acoustics of the buildings when empty a lot more. I also focused on what sounds were in and around these buildings.

Normally I play some improvised music as the congregation is arriving and I help drown out the sound of the traffic outside. In "Music and Mind in Everyday Life" (when describing the role of the organist as the congregation assemble for the funeral of Princess Diana), it is described as: "​The music masks environmental sounds and in doing so it serves to demarcate the physical space as one which is different from the ‘everyday’, and provides aural privacy between waiting members of the congregation."

I decided, instead of masking these sounds,  by improvising music at the same frequency as the traffic noise outside, what if I 'collaborate' with these sounds.

​The video below is taken on my phone but the sound comes from the binaural recording from my headphones.

The church is also near a hospital so often there are ambulances going past. I didn't manage to capture that sound on this recording, but did later.

​​The “pitch” of the traffic noise is roughly between middle C and D two semi-tones above.

What if I take this ‘drone’ as the starting point of a piece of music I create inside the empty church building.

I then set about creating a drone close in pitch to the traffic noise. Since I am the only person creating this piece I had to find a way to get a note to sustain on the organ while I am not physically there to play the note.

In order to gage the resistance of the ‘touch’ of a keyboard instrument you might put a pile of pound cousins on the key to see how many coins it takes to depress the key. The more coins the more resistant the key. I put a pile of coins onto one of the keys on the organ in order to be able to make it sound while I could go off to another area of the church to play the piano along with the drone it created. I also wanted a drone from one of the notes of the pedals of the organ and so placed a book on the pedal to keep it playing. Below is a video of me triggering these two pitches.

​With this constant drone I then moved to the piano which is situated on the lower level of the church (where the organ is in the organ ‘loft’ one floor above). This is a perspective of sound I never get since I am always producing the sound so the organ I only hear from being directly in front of it while playing. The picture below will give you an idea of the distance between the upper level (organ loft) and ground level (where the piano is situated).

Composition One

​The video below is the first of three compositions which explore being influenced by the environmental sounds around the space in which they are created.

While the drone is constant from the organ I create a piece of piano music which moves around the pitch of the drone and often settles on the fundamental pitch of middle C (the ‘traffic noise drone’).

I created the composition below by recording my piano piece first and then listening back with ear-phones while recording interjections from me playing strings inside the piano (in and around the fundamental pitch). I then synched up the two recordings to make a piece which is in three layers - drone, piano composition, and piano string “interjections”.

In order to be able to play the strings inside the piano so the sound would ring on I had to keep the pedal down. Once again, being the only 'performer', I had to find a way to do this and, similarly to the organ solution, I used a weighty object to hold down the pedal. The piano stool (pictured below).

I titled this piece “Siubhal” which is the Gaelic word for “walks” (or “passing” or “traversing”). This word is used in connection with the playing of Pibroch where a player will create variations around the drone or “ground bass” of the Pibroch with variations (or 'siubhal')

In my piece the variations are harmonic. The fundamental pitch is constant throughout and the harmony in the piano music is sometimes sympathetic with the pitch of the organ drone (often returning to being in unison with the organ pitch) or sometimes the harmony is in direct conflict, but always clears away to restate, on the piano, a consonant sound with the pitch of the drone (for instance harmonising the drone with a simple major chord which recurs - one example is at 48'' seconds in the video). To signal this consonance more clearly this is where the strings of the piano are plucked. I also used a separate piano in a room behind the "sanctuary" where the organ is to add another timbre to the sound.

Each of the instruments in the church is 'out of tune' to some extent. The organ is a micro-tone flat of "concert pitch" (according to this tuning app, almost a full quarter tone).

Below is a video of my "Composition One"

​Composition Two

In the second composition I wanted to look at interpreting a space while not in the space. So everything I worked on in the church I wanted to translate into sound but at home. I reused the binaural traffic recording as the backbone of creating a work in a DAW. I already knew that the recoding produced pitches around middle C and I used mostly Spitfire Audio's "Labs" sample libraries. I first tried to find sound which complimented the sounds I hear around the church, but found that the "industrial" or "urban" sound libraries were too close to field recordings I could have recorded myself from the real sounds around the church. I chose to work with instrumental sounds which had some timbral connection with my own recording of the traffic noise. Their sample library "London Atmos" was doing something that I was looking for but was full of sounds not heard near me (London Underground, large traffic-jams, talking crowds etc), so I decided not to use that library and only use sounds I'd recorded myself.

My very first attempt included instrumental sounds which had less defined pitches or would 'slide' pitch so the first two libraries I used were "Frozen Strings" (utilising string effects which were less focused on one exact pitch), and "Trumpet Fields" which Labs describes as being "long notes with a range of granular elements — from double tonguing to slow bends". 

​Below is a screenshot of how the DAW looked in my first sketch (limiting the sounds to just 3 virtual instruments and two field recordings (one being the traffic noise and one being a sample of an ambulance siren and its doppler effect).

The ambulance sample didn't blend with the other sounds in the arrangement well and so I had to make them sound more like the sample library sounds I was using. I slowed the ambulance sound down by 300% and lowered the pitch by half an octave (pictured below).

 This ambulance sound drops in pitch as it passes by. This "doppler effect" I wanted to capture since it created a sliding pitch which I wanted to explore as compositional material for building the piece. It goes from being a Gb to an F. This particular drop in pitch gives me a harmonic "leaning note" (or 'appoggiatura') onto the second note which creates the consonant harmony of an open fourth interval (if I keep the pitch of C as the drone). I ended up changed the fundamental pitch from C, up one semi-tone, to Db so the C became a consonant note of a major chord instead (similar to the piano piece in "composition one" returning often to a simple major chord)

Below is a recording of the first attempt at using found sound and sample libraries.

With my 'first try' I decided I was letting the pitched sampled instruments 'take the lead' too much and creating music with the traffic sound as background. In my second composition I wanted the traffic noise to be the foreground and the picthed samples only 'pick out' the notes of the traffic noise occasionally. I wanted it to be more in the style of "musique concrete", where the recorded sounds were the raw materials.

​Below is a recording of my second composition.

In "Composition Two" I wanted to see if musical pitches could be imposed on field recordings and if pitches could be derived from those recordings. The piece is an interplay between these two things. I took the Doppler Effect of the ambulance and mapped it to the first three pitches in "Composition One" (“Siubhal”). I then shifted the pitch of the original piano recording (without organ or traffic drones), to match the sliding pitch of the ambulance sound. When the "music" settled on the pitch of the bells from the first sound walk then I introduced the bells to the mix to provide a new drone or "pedal point".

Composition Three

For my final composition I wanted to combine all the elements of the previous two compositions and have the organ be the primary instrument and the other sounds as the sonic background. This piece plays with the out of tune elements of all the sounds. Playing with the complex overtones until reaching a resolution with some kind of cadence. In this piece it resolves onto a major chord. the 'resolution' of all the out of tune elements landing on a consonant chord.

Final Thoughts

Since all the acoustic instruments I was working with were out of tune to different degrees, I felt that it gave me a lot of scope to composer with harmony rich in clashing overtones and work out ways of resolving the pitches to some kind of consonant sound. These out of tune instruments blended much better with environmental sounds since those were of indiscriminate pitch.