Program Notes

The Letter is a work of consolation created using an FFT Channel Vocoder with Additive Synthesizer. Historically, the vocoder was developed during wartime to enable communication among allies. It reduces wideband speech to a narrower band for transmission and then reconstructs it at the receiver. In short, a vocoder sends important words over distance and makes their faint traces audible again.

As a composer, creating music is much the same. I keep listening to people and the world, their voices. Then, I compress, interpret, and reassemble those words in my own terms and offer them back as a piece.

Unlike the vocoder’s original purpose, in a time when war is no longer shocking news, I wanted to use this technology to carry comfort. The lyrics come from a poem I wrote during my military service to endure a hard period (not in combat). This piece does not present a political agenda; it is a letter to anyone facing painful circumstances, on any side, in any degree.

Technically, I aimed to design a vocoder with greater precision than a conventional channel vocoder. Instead of using bandpass filters, I applied Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) analysis to collect more detailed and accurate amplitude information, which allowed clearer rendering of vowel formants. This approach led to the creation of a Max for Live (M4L) FFT Channel Vocoder patch.

I also developed an Additive Synthesizer M4L patch capable of producing a wide spectrum of sounds, from pure sine waves to noise. When combined with the vocoder, this synthesizer allows the clarity and harmonicity of speech to change according to the lyrics. Since the text relates to the transformation of light, I used this Additive Synthesizer to achieve a tone painting that reflects those luminous changes.