Dth is a kid doing college down in New Orleans who asked a whole bunch of people how they were feeling and then cut it up into samples of their recorded voices, dividing it up into a 16-point scale (weird, right?) based on how they were feeling.
The results amount to a glitchy mashup of sampled talking, with some smooth guitar and synth instrumentals and a whole army of digital clicks and corresponding clacks. And some jazz drum, at one point.
Many of these tracks sound a lot like the premeditated “aleatoric” music of The Books, but with a perfomative fourth wall cracked away at between the recorder and the field-recorded.
Here's how he explains the project:
I set up two mics in an alcove outside my school's dorms (then had to move to inside the commons building because of rain) and stopped numerous people, hit record, and asked them, “How are you feeling today, on a scale 1-10?” After receiving a good amount of responses, some short and some long and elaborate, I quickly cropped out some abrasive noises and pops in the recordings around the responses they gave me (resulting in some gaps between answers). Then I had a series of conversational clips, each containing at least 1 number.
I devised a way to scale these numbers to notes – a simple version of a major scale, but intervals of every other note (for instance 7 = C, 8 = E, not D.) This way, I could also account for the times I got responses of a half number, like 8.5. I played the corresponding notes whenever a number was spoken in my clips, and sustained it somewhat until the next number was spoken. When the same number was spoken consecutively (as in two people in a row said 7), I would play the octave of that note.
People's moods making music together.
Dth, “I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day”
You can go here to download the whole album.
