Cor Ddiglywed

Cor Ddiglwed (unhearing chorus) takes inspiration from Daphne Oram’s ‘Bird of Parallax’, and was developed with the one-of-a-kind, Mini Oramics, developed by Tom Richards based on Oram’s designs for a revised version of her pioneering graphical synthesis machine.

The piece emplys phrases/samples recorded with Oramics, field recordings taken locally to Wright's home in South Wales, and live processed saxophone which uses the instrument as input to a phase vocoder designed to mimic the writing / replaying / overwriting process that Mini Oramics facilitates.

The piece was written in the context of a highly divisive by-election in which local communities in South Wales saw a hot rise in populist sentiment, and a rise in polarised rhetoric on and offline. While the technical inception of the piece draws heavily on Oram and the legacy of her synthesiser design, the field recording process at this time highlighted the importance shapes and forms in captured human and animal voices – seen through an Oramics lens. The piece explores the idea of diverse clashing narrative threads in a fight for attention – as a metaphorical mirror to the author's recordings of local dawn choruses. Both in the piece and the context of its composition, these voices are, despite their differences, interconnected by common challenges and under-explored common ground, yet are broadly unheard by others.

The piece forms part of a broader body of recent work that explores Oramics in the context of Oram and Iannis Xenakis’ work, and the ways that their thinking and legacy can apply to contemporary musical composition, instrument design, and accessible musical tools and resources.