Portrait of Guy Baron (Photo: Robert Bartholot, Berlin 2021).

Post-Euphoria – A Practice-Based Music Research: Part 1

Short Essay

In a four-part series, Guy Baron reflects upon the making of his album Post-Euphoria. Utilizing practice-based research, he examines notions of nostalgia in relation to lost experiences and club music.

DAW-based strategies of electronic music production used to connote aspects of recollection and missing are at the heart of my practice-based research. Engaging in a range of electronic music-making practices, my research creatively responds to the concept of «post-euphoria» – conceived here to describe a subjectivity with which lost, yearned-for experiences relating to electronic dance music are recollected and reimagined. It presents an original body of musical work that expressively interprets post-euphoria as a musical aesthetic, using Ableton Live and incorporating electronic dance music-inspired motifs alongside elements of songwriting. The study thus explores ways in which nuanced and complex meanings relating to retrospection and reminiscing can be articulated musically, establishing a musical vocabulary that is concerned with the residual and the faded and with what remains once perceived blissful experiences subside.

Conducting the creative work, I developed music production strategies informed by discussions of production mediations (Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen 2016) and sonic metaphors (Demers 2010), whilst symbolically foregrounding DAW-induced production traits. This includes creating what I define as «production embodiments» to figuratively suggest aspects of recollection and transformation: from slowing-down and time-warping electronic dance music samples («22–122») and utilizing a sustained freeze-mode reverb («Epilogue») to connote an attempted prolonging of fleeting euphoric moments, to incorporating fragmented quoted vocals («Forget U»), grain delay («Reprise») and audio-to-MIDI conversions («Too Late», «Residue») to metaphorically suggest a fragmented and transformed memory of perceived euphoric experiences. Musical repetition, shortened compositional structures, elaborated outro sections, and volume fade-outs are further utilized to figuratively embody haunting and decaying euphoric experiences, in such a way that sheds light on the relationship between musical form and meaning.

<br />

Unfulfilled Euphoria

In addition to using such production embodiments, I further employ characteristic elements of electronic dance music to examine how euphoric feelings associated with this type of music can be presented as mutated and missing. These elements, to which I refer as electronic dance music tropes, include intensifying build-up sections (Solberg 2014), which are presented throughout the body of work as stripped down and never-resolving – establishing a sense of unfulfilled euphoria by foregrounding the absence of key electronic dance music elements, such as a kick drum. In addition, I create reworks of my own musical recordings as an act of «self-remixing», reflecting intertextuality between different recordings and a revisiting of my own productions to musically portray the idea of transformed recollections.

Undertaking this research and developing the recorded body of work enabled me to examine how retrospective subjectivities relating to electronic dance music can be articulated through employing music production technology, to further the relatively sparse practice-based research in this field. In addition, and as a global pandemic made dancefloor euphoria seem like a distant memory, my concept of post-euphoria received a whole new layer of meaning to include reminiscing to a time and place in one’s life – and in our collective memory – that may never quite be what it once was. Enchanted by lost nights out and lingering on remnants of a faded euphoria, this is where my musical journey into the realm of post-euphoria begins.

List of References

Brøvig-Hanssen, Ragnhild, and Anne Danielsen. 2016. Digital Signatures: The Impact of Digitization on Popular Music Sound. Cambridge: MIT.

Demers, Joanna. 2010. Listening Through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music. New York: Oxford University Press.

Solberg, Ragnhild Torvanger. 2014. «Waiting for the Bass to Drop: Correlations Between Intense Emotional Experiences and Production Techniques in Build-up and Drop Sections of Electronic Dance Music». Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture 6 (1): 61–82.

This article is the first of a four-part series on the practice-based music research project «Post-Euphoria» by Guy Baron aka Semi Precious.

Biography

Guy Baron holds a PhD in music production practice and serves as an associate lecturer at London South Bank University, conducting practice-based research in music production. He works as a music practitioner under the name Semi Precious, with his releases being endorsed by Electronic Sound Magazine, The Sunday Times and The Guardian for their conceptual songwriting approach. Baron’s previous works focused on sampling of easy listening music and included a Channel-4 audio-visual commission exploring aspects of queer club utopia. He currently co-runs the electronic music record label and artist collective, squareglass. Follow him on Instagram, and Facebook.

Published on October 14, 2021

Last updated on April 11, 2024

Topics

Creativity

Music Production

All Topics

Special

Post-Euphoria – A Practice-Based Music Research

Snap

print as pdf

Post-Euphoria – A Reincarnated Ruin: Part 2

Short Essay

by Guy Baron

In part 2 of Guy Baron’s Norient series on his practice-based music research project Post-Euphoria, he thinks about compositional strategies to interpret themes of recollection and reimagination.

In the two recordings titled «Too Late» and «Residue», I utilize audio-to-MIDI conversions as a compositional strategy and to foreground sonic transformations that interpret themes of recollection and reimagination explored in my album Post-Euphoria. «Too Late» was conceived through editing and manipulating a four-bar audio sample containing a piano chord progression typical of house music productions. Importing the sample to Ableton Live, I used the software’s audio-to-MIDI conversion tool – a feature that enables the user to reproduce an audio recording in MIDI (a format that digitally stores notation and rhythmic information) – and assigned a virtual synthesizer to the newly converted clip, creating re-arranged versions of the original sample.

I also slowed down the converted sample and created different transpositions of it, while applying audio effects like chorus, phaser, equalizer, and reverb automations to examine how it can be sonically expanded. Further incorporated is a sung phrase based on the lead vocal line from Carol King’s «It’s Too Late» (King and Stern, 1971), which I re-recorded using my own voice as a short, duplicated fragment. I then created an additional, complementing recording titled «Residue», in which the converted MIDI clip is once again rearranged and sounded through another sample.

<br />

Malleability of Sound

Employing these production strategies enabled me to playfully reimagine elements of electronic dance music and to explore new meanings and associations that emerge through their reconstruction and decontextualization. In particular, the audio-to-MIDI conversion made me think of drawing a connection between the malleability of sound and the shifting mental image of recollected euphoric experiences. As the original audio sample is being converted to MIDI, it inevitably transforms and becomes mutated, with some musical information being lost due to failures in the digital conversion process. The misconfiguration of the audio sample was in this way emphasized to present a mutated and reincarnated ruin of the original sample. The conversion also served as a useful compositional and arrangement tool, with which I was able to create different musical sections, distinct in timbre and pitch, based on a single loop.

A Hazy Sentiment

The vocal line, which fragments a lyrical and melodic phrase from a previous song, can be seen as further embodying the idea of a fragmented ruin – mediated and transformed through my own singing body, which operates as a sampler-like device. As the lyrics suggest a sense of belatedness yet remain sparse and ambiguous throughout, the idea of a late and faded reincarnation is further implied, feeding into my understanding of post-euphoria as a subjectivity that entails fleetingness and retrospection. And as the once-pulsing samples of electronic dance music motifs are being reconstructed and abstracted, a hazy and reflective sentiment takes the place of dancefloor euphoria.

<br />

The audio-turned-MIDI sample is being further alienated in «Residue», as it is sounded through another sample. What emerges from conducting such a resampling process can be figuratively described as a memory of a memory, as the original sample is being reimagined twice. This idea is reinforced by presenting the two recordings as part of an integrated concept album, suggesting a sense of intertextuality with which memories of past euphoric experiences and their transformation over time can be portrayed musically.