Ottski – Composing for Spaces and Places

We all went to the Great North Museum during the workshop last week to have a quick guided tour. I’ve already been a couple times in the past so I was mainly using that time to think of what sections I’d be most interested in composing for.

I decided to go back today and have a better look, as my initial idea was the huge amethyst geodes. My idea was to create a very spacious, echoey atmosphere with soft crystal dings and glittery sounds, then treat the amethyst like a sort of creature, wanting to crack open its shell and be free or something. I wanted a deeper meaning past the whole “amethyst brings peace and calm” sentiment.

I beelined straight for the crystal and rock section and just inspected everything there, identifying everything and researching where they’re typically found and what symbolism they hold. Although I still wanted to do the amethyst geodes, I ultimately settled on the meteorites.

My idea for the meteorites is to essentially follow them along their journey through space, and how they have affected Earth’s evolution. This would include the big bang (as that’s when many of them formed), the early chaotic stages of our universe, flying past formed planets and ultimately colliding with ours.
As for the big bang, I was thinking of a soft high pitch drone (symbolising, essentially, nothing) with a percussive heartbeat accelerating over maybe ten bars as the other instruments (spacey synths and strings I think) all form a big crescendo. The crescendo would then abruptly fall silent for a couple seconds to emphasise the dynamic increase.
It then moves to the chaotic early stages from (only just researched this) the planck epoc to the dark ages, characterised by absolute musical chaos that comes in abruptly after the rest and slowly becomes more orderly. I’m imagining something like the THX intro but just all over the place (but not atonal).
I’d use radiowave soundscapes of our solar system’s planets within the “flying past them” parts, starting from Pluto and moving my way inward. I think I’ll keep the Sun’s radiowaves constantly under everything else but slowly growing louder as the meteorite grows closer to Earth.
Finally, for the collision with Earth, I’ll slowly bring in radio transmissions from around the time the specific meteorites hit (or I’ll just pick an interesting bunch of them) and layer them to show how noisy and chaotic the human race is, both sticking within the radiowave transmission idea and linking back to the early stages of the universe.

The planet fly-bys and Earth collision sections will be alongside almost like a musical score, but that’s a thought for later.

Anyway, I think that’s what I’m going for!