This composition is for carillon plus electronic track. The product includes downloadable sound files required for performance.

Performance media:

• Download media here: https://bit.ly/3agkJbt
• Alternate carillon tuning versions can be adapted from the file provided.
• Contact The Guild of Carillonneurs of North America for any other queries.

Materials needed:

• Carillon tower (4 octave range, chromatic)
• PA system (fidelity + placement) w/ ample bass response, and EQ on hi/mid/low ideally.
• stopwatches (digital stopwatch is acceptable, on mobile phone)
• digital file of playback track (in correct tuning with carillon)

Speaker placement:

Audio playback system to be located ideally in the tower, with the carillon, as to not need a monitor, wiring complexities, or latency issues. If PA is on the ground, place the speakers or subwoofer for playback within an alcove, corner, or arch, to create maximum reverberation and volume amplification. In this case, a monitor would be needed for the live carillonneur to hear the reverse bell hits in time, to play in tandem. Keep in mind audience will absorb some sound as well.

Cueing:

All cueing of live carillon entrances are indicated by time code in score, and stopwatch. Ideally, it is helpful to secure an on-site production assistant who is able to support the carillonneur with page turns, reverse bell placement, and overall balance of mix.

AIM to strike live carillon hit at the apex of the reverse hit's crescendo (or prior!) in order to overlap/elide the sound into one continuous sound for the listener. It is safer to strike earlier, and have more overlap, than later, and risk a break in sound.

Soundcheck checklist:

Secure enough time to set up all equipment, test audio, balance levels and EQ—and for a run through or two as needed. Main objective is for:

• seamless balance between live carillon and playback reverse carillon (this should sound like one continuous football-shaped waveform sound, if possible, with NO break between the reverse and actual).
• bass amplification is audible, clear, not muddy, and not clipping the system.
• heartbeats are loud, clear, not muddy, while white sounds are crisp, and textural.

Sections to soundcheck for balance:

1. reverse bells w/ normal carillon: Rehearsal Letter A (1:05)
2. big loud part for bass EQ clarity: approx. 2:58 (for sine bass line) and 3:30 (for kick drum)
3. Ensure heartbeats are loud and clear enough (not muddy, legible) (5:00)
4. White sounds (breath wind, Bible pages, celestial chords) are crisp: approx. 4:40, 5:38 and at top.

SOUNDFIELDS: Celestine is an aerial audio musical work re-imagining and re-framing the iconic and historic carillon instrument within modern instruments and technology. Featuring an electroacoustic soundscape of heartbeats, vinyl crackles, breath wind, Bible pages, Morse code, celestial tone clouds, fireworks, and reverse carillon bells—the sound design animates a visceral quality to the architecture, evoking the spirits it may house, and conjuring the layered histories that live within its materiality.

Inspired originally by the Edinburgh Tattoo (a spectacle of fireworks and marching band), and the idea to create a duet between land and sky—SOUNDFIELDS: Celestine is imagined as a kind of musical weather system, an alchemical process where elements, matter, and energy collide and transmute. The work is organized akin to the fluid dynamics of atmospheric movements: the density of live and reproduced sounds shifting and swirling from high to low concentration, where sounds from above shift into sounds in close proximity, and close sounds elevate into the aerial audio speaker – as the historic instrument speaks across distances, time, and space.

—Bora Yoon