I Am Sitting in a Room by Alvin Lucier – The Melody of a Space

Alvin Lucier’s voice in the tape recording undergoes a gradual transformation until it becomes unrecognizable, as if it would dissolve itself, and only leaves behind the remaining acoustic resonances of the respective room. The repeated recording of his spoken text results in the surfacing of the room’s resonant frequencies which normally are hidden and thus go unheard. While the room’s own tone sequence becomes progressively audible, the recorded voice little by little diminishes in comprehensibility. What is taking place is the eradication of the voice and the concurrent auralization of the spatial frequencies. Although the language of his speech loses its meaning and his voice vanishes into unidentifiable noise, the rhythm of his speech sounds persists and is now clearer and much smoother.

 

This piece demonstrates the acoustic room influences on composers and their works and causes me to think about whether or to what extent composers consider the acoustic arrangements of a room in terms of the sound of their compositions in that particular space and how that might inspire them regarding their compositional techniques. There are quite a few acoustic conditions that need to be taken into account such as, for example, the size of the room, the furnishing and the number of people present in that room. The reverberation and echo should be estimated as well. A lot of acoustic aspects must be calculated. For this reason, soundchecks before a live performance are absolutely essential in order to adjust the sounds as best as possible to the sound technology and the architectural characteristics of the venue.

 

A personal experience that reminds me the most of the musical practice mentioned above is the utilization of water-filled glass bottles as instruments to play music. By blowing over the bottle’s opening, vortexes generate vibrations which in turn produce high and low tones, depending on the bottle’s size and the amount of water. The bottle can also be viewed as a room, a smaller room and therefore with less spatial volume. "I Am Sitting in a Room" illustrates that music and spatiality are inextricably linked with each other. Each room has its own sound character, and any music sounds different in different rooms because it is influenced by the spatial components.