SoundFjord | Drone Room | Tim Yates

Drone Room
Date: 07-12 March 2011 | noon-6pm
After Show Celebration: 12 March | 7-9pm | RSVP
The Drone Room is the resonating chamber of an interactive musical
instrument in which both the perfomer and audience are in the belly of
the instrument they’re hearing. To become the performer, an audience
member simply steps up and takes control of the interface.
Exploring ideas of change and control, the drone room subverts traditional synthesiser design by allowing the player real-time access to elements that are normally fixed and hidden in the depths of traditional
synthesisers. Giving access to the underlying wave shapes from which the sound is constructed, attention is drawn to the subtleties of timbre in time and space that often get lost amongst the higher levels of musical form and structure. Small changes to the shape of a sound wave can result in dramatic changes to the character and experience of that sound both as a direct consequence of the change and as a result of the complex interactions that happen when different sounds interact in space.
The listener/performer is encouraged to explore these changes in the character and experience of sound spatially, temporally and through direct interaction with the abstractions we use to describe the fundamental attributes of sound in the digital world.
Tim Yates is currently studying for an MMus in composition at the Royal
College of Music, with a special interest in electronic and electro-acoustic composition. He is a founder member and organiser of the college laptop orchestra and runs the college free improvisation group. He has also studied Philosophy at the University of Leeds, Classical Guitar Performance at Trinity College of Music, and spent time working as a database developer and IT teacher.
Tim is particularly interested in exploring the way that we listen to and
interact with musical materials and instruments in the digital domain,
and in finding new ways of making and listening to music that make use
of the extraordinary power that new technologies offer. He designs and
builds software instruments for laptop orchestra, solo performance and
gallery installations and is particularly interested in finding ways
that novel musical interactions can be facilitated by the use of digital
technology. An integral part of this work is the exploration of the
space between composition, performance and improvisation using both the electronic and acoustic sound sources (including traditional instruments).
As a performer, he is also an active member of the free improvisation community in London, in particular as a regular attendee of Eddie Prevost’s influential free-improvisation workshops.