MUSICAL WORKS

CHENG Chien-Wen / 鄭建文

2003

Samadhi / 三摩地

Birth Y: 1972 Birth C: TAIWAN Gender: Male

Dest: Concert

Media Specification: Tape

Duration: 6:10

Prog. notes: Samadhi, a terminology in Buddhism and Hinduism, is a state of deep meditation contemplation which leads to higher consciousness. Inspired by the thinking of Buddhism and with my personal experiences and preference of practicing meditation, I try, in this piece, to convey an imagery of deep meditation and concentration and to create a mysterious atmosphere of oriental religions. However, I did not draw the raw materials directly from real sounds recorded in oriental temples. Instead, only a male’s talking, noises produced by a cart, and school bells recorded from regular life are used. Through the techniques mainly including convolution, granular synthesis, time-stretch, morphing, spectral filtering and etc., the raw materials are transformed into different sounds but at the same time in some way bear the resemblance to the original to be identifiable and are rearranged musically to achieve coherence.

This newly composed piece has been programmed recently to be presented in the International Electroacoustic Music Festival “Primavera en La Habana” on March 21, 2004, held by the the Cuban Institute of Music and the National Laboratory of Electroacoustic Music.

三摩地，或稱三昧，譯為等持、正定。即遠離心之浮沉，而得平等安詳之修行境界。此曲乃由於佛教思想與個人靜坐經驗所啟發，藉由聲波編輯的技巧，包括convolution （多種聲音檔案之特質相乘而產生新音色之技術）, granular synthesis（粒子化合成）, time stretch（聲音在時間上的延展之技術）, pitch change（音高改變之技術）, morphing（既有的聲音檔案在時間軸上漸變成另一個既有的聲音檔案之技術）, 及spectral filtering（頻譜上的濾波處理），將一些擷取於日常生活中的聲音（包括說話聲、手推車的聲音、學校鐘聲等）經過上述技巧做聲音變形並按照音樂美學上的原則，重新組合混音而來，藉以呈現東方宗教的神秘色彩及禪定中的神秘境界。

Editor: MB

Phono: Collection of Awarded Work in 2006 National On-line Arts Creativity Competition, GPN-4309504203, Taiwan.