“…while the marimba, xylophone, and vibraphone were
highly ranked for Happy.“
(Chau, Chuck-jee, 2016)
For my piece, I decided to record some xylophone, specifically the xylophone in Canary Wharf – a place I associate strongly with my piece as it represents a place of calmness and tranquility that I aim to convey with the piece. I wanted to make use of music concrete, and this seemed like the perfect way to do so.
As I was capturing the sounds of the xylophone, I also captured surrounding atmosphere sounds such as people talking, birds singing, etc which I felt enhanced the very minimal and natural tone I wanted to achieve. This will later be used in a sampler to play and accompany other forms of instrumentation.
I used the midi pattern from vocal percussion by converting it from audio to midi and using the pattern to use sampled xylophone notes. Although I recorded Initially I only used one note from the recording I did but decided to change it and use all the notes and map it to the sampler.