Tyler Neidermayer | On Process, Iceland & Resonance

Langjokull Glacier, Iceland

On Process, Iceland & Resonance is a graphic score that reflects on practices I follow when processing audio - diffusion, modulation, compression, filtering and form analysis - and how they can apply to a visual medium meant to be interpreted as sound. 

I listened to a set of glacier recordings from Juilliard faculty Dr. Evan Fein, who spent 10 collective years living in Iceland. He sent me five different recordings he had made of the Langjökull glacier caves in western Iceland. What stood out to me most were the fast dripping sounds of melting ice and running water, and low rumbling booms with sharp crunches that felt as if they resonated within the ice. I developed the score by manipulating sketches of the glacier’s recorded waveforms to create a visual displacement between the low frequency of the drawn audio samples and textures similar to a spectral analysis of the glacier’s recording. 

The juxtaposition of these sounds and images led me to consider our current climate crisis’ effects on the Icelandic glacier and how we are approaching a time where the majority of this ice will rapidly melt into the sea and its low resonances will be lost. The live processing elements of this piece create an impression of preservation, freezing moments of this performance out of time until they too decay and distort into a sea of noise. 

Thank you to the Hirshhorn Museum for hosting my work, to Evan Fein for providing me with the glacier field recordings, to my fiancé Caroline Tucker for supporting me while I researching and analyzing glaciers for hours on end, and to you for attending the installation, listening to the piece, or performing it yourself.

Biography:

Tyler Neidermayer (b. 1996) is a multifaceted musician focusing on electronic composition, audio engineering and contemporary chamber music performance. He is the clarinetist and technical director for the BlackBox Ensemble, a contemporary chamber collective in NYC. He works as a live sound and recording engineer at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, Roulette Intermedium, the Knockdown Center, Manhattan School of Music, and produces location recordings with multiple ensembles and composers in the NY/NJ area. Tyler has most recently collaborated on a new digital opera by Yaz Lancaster titled Paper Tiger, presented and premiered by Opera Philadelphia online in May. This summer he will be working as the lead recording engineer for the Seven Hills Chamber Music Festival in Lynchburg, VA, and principal clarinetist for the Ad Astra Summer Music Festival in Russell, KS. Tyler holds a M.M. in Contemporary Bass Clarinet Performance from Manhattan School of Music and a B.M. in Music Performance from Northern Arizona University.