"Strings & Shadows" by Åke Parmerud is an image of an old dying actress, drawn into a last flowing sequence of dance through the shadows of her past, while death slowly appears as her partner in the last Pas-de-deux.

In "Strings & Shadows", the strings of the harp act like gates that open up and let out a variety of other instrumental, quasi instrumental and (sometimes) vocal sounds that flow in a constant stream of transformations. These tumbrel shadowsare complemented with mirroring of the harp using a variety of synthesised string sounds. There is, however, also another kind of musical shadow present. A short melodic fragment from the film score of a Greta Garbo film ("Queen Christina") can be heard in a slightly distorted mirror image of the harp, in the middle section of the piece. In fact, the whole melodic development of the harp part has been to a large extent derived from this melodic theme. The poetic vision of the piece is an image of an old dying actress, drawn into a last flowing sequence of dance through the shadows of her past, while death slowly appears as her partner in the last Pas-de-deux.

The sound material of "Strings & Shadows" is based primarily on three types of sounds: sounds of different acoustic instruments (wood wind, strings etc.); vocal sounds that transform into instrumental and / or synthetic sounds; and a variety ofsynthetic string-like sounds. To obtain the transformations of timbres, I have used all kinds of techniques ranging from simple overlay and mixing, to spectral interpolation and phase coding. The string synthesis was accomplished through frequency modulation, string-modelling algorithms and tuned resonant jitters (with various sounds acting as plucking impulses).

Technical Background

The original sound material was put through several chains of digital signal processing. A major tool for the initial phase of treatment was the newly realised GRM-tools for the Macintosh. This real-time environment for DSP is a special version of the Syter system developed during the 1980's at GRM, Paris. These processed sounds were later further processed using standard hardware DSP-units like the Ensoniq DP-4, RSP-technology's Intelliverb and Lexicons LXP-300. Additional material was later created using the Eventide UltraHarmoniser. Some non-real-time software like Digidesign's TurboSynth and Tom Erbe's SoundHack and Jupiter system's Infinity were used to achieve special processing like phase vocoding, complex loops, etc.

MIDI control processes were created using Opcode/Ircam's Max and Vision. All material was later transferred to harddisk in Studio Charybde at GMEB, Bourges. Assembly and synchronisation of the piece was accomplished using 1 SampleCell II card with 32 Mb memory, 1 SampleCell I card with 8 Mb memory and a 4-channel ProTools system, all controlled by Opcode's Studio Vision.