“I noticed that in my work, I tend to write pieces that are self contained bubbles where they are starting and ending in the same way. So quite often, it is a slow, gentle beginning; then I’m taking these recordings and manipulating them, then bringing them back down to things that are sort of enclosed.”
Joy Ingle
Joy Ingle (she/they) is a composer and sound artist currently based in Manchester. They are interested in melding oral history practices and cartography with composition, ecomusicology, and exploring concepts of decay through sound. Recent commissions have included ‘interruptions’ for artist Ilona Skladzien, ‘Living Light’ for Terra Invisus, and ‘Cantus Terram’ for the Delia Derbyshire Day in 2023; they were also the winner of the 2021 Berwick Music Series’ International Composition Competition. They hold an MMus in Critical and Experimental Composition from the University of Leeds. Alongside composition, Joy is a self-described Bagpuss enthusiast, fiddle player, and attempted Northumbrian Smallpiper.
Patrick Ellis had a video call with Joy to discuss field recording locations and processes, collaborations with friends, acousmatic storytelling, Hildegard von Bingen, and much more…
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Patrick/PRXLUDES: Hi Joy! How did you first get into composition? There was an early piece of yours written for a short film that I found online…
Joy Ingle: Oh my god… -laughs- I did a bunch of stuff during the middle/end of high school. I have a friend who was an aspiring filmmaker at the time, so we would collaborate on projects together, which was a lot of fun. I first got interested in writing music during the time of my GCSEs, and at the time, I very much had an idea of wanting to be a Hans Zimmer-type of film composer. Then after high school, I went to the University of Leeds — and the department there focuses purely on contemporary music… -laughs- I found that I really liked it and from then on, I just got involved in that world from then on leaving everything else behind.
Was that quite a seamless transition for you? Did you have any shocks from some of the contemporary and experimental music that you were exposed to early on?
I don’t think that it was a difficult transition, although some pieces were shocking. I remember having a visceral reaction to a Xenakis piece that we were played in our first year classes and I was thinking “Jesus Christ, what is this?”. But overall, I don’t think that much of it was a surprise. I had grown up listening to a lot of classical music and some 20th Century music; my dad is a big Radio 3 head which was on around the house all of the time.
The things that I struggled with in terms of making the transition, I guess, was part of learning the process of how to compose, and figuring out what works for you personally. We were taught how to use [a] lot of systems and processes — and I became more caught up with that more, maybe, than what I actually wanted a piece to be. For example, I thought if I was not using a certain process, then I thought that the piece would not be “experimental” or interesting enough.
For those pieces, what kinds of processes were you using?
Generally, I have really not got a set process. -laughs- I am much more of a concept-driven artist than a process driven composer. There are techniques and timbres that I will definitely come back to, because I like them — for example, I love repetition and drones — but my starting point 90% of the time is derived from a non-musical concept or idea and how those things intertwine.
How do you embed those concepts into a work — or turn them into musical ideas?
I quite often turn to British folk music for inspiration. A lot of my stuff is inspired by that tradition. It’s a mix of folk and what I consider mimicry — especially as with a lot of my work I am trying to emulate natural world sounds. That is the basis for how little musical cells or melodies float up.
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On the topic of natural sounds: I remember listening through some of your work where you utilised and embedded field recordings into the music. There is ‘Walk the Shore’, which you wrote for the Ligeti Quartet; and ‘Cantus Terram’ with visual artist Laura Spark. You use it in a more literal way rather than representationally…
Definitely! In the case of a ‘Walk the Shore’, that was very much in a literal sense, which was a piece about the Jurassic Coast sounds from there. ‘Cantus Terram’ on the other hand, there weren’t any field recordings used. It was a piece commissioned by the Delia Derbyshire Day in 2023 for the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who and their annual celebration of Derbyshire as a composer. So it was more taking cues from the radiophonic workshops’ approach to sound effects, which was like Pierre Schaeffer’s collage approach — where you would grab anything in the room that you have, hit it, and then see what happens. -laughs- So ‘Cantus Terram’ includes sounds of me breathing, washing up a wine glass. The heart beat motif at the end is actually an in utero heartbeat of Laura’s baby — she was pregnant at the time and she asked if I wanted to use it, and I said “yes, absolutely”.
Wine glasses aside, that piece is still linked to nature and the natural world…
On ‘Cantus Terram’, we were trying to build an alien landscape, so I wanted things that sound like they could be from the natural world but in an unnatural way.
Do you see your use of field recordings as more of a way to try and emulate the natural world, or do you use it more for the timbral quality?
It is a mix of both. When I was making ‘Walk the Shore’, I stumbled across this great article by Panos Amelidis, which was all about the concept of acousmatic storytelling: using spoken word in combination of field recordings and composed material, to create specific narratives built from different perspectives in one whole piece of art. I think that has become a sort of cornerstone of how I think and compose. So [for me], field recordings are both timbral and thematic.
When you are recording, do you have a general approach of philosophy to how you record or is it quite instinctive?
It generally varies from project to project. I did a piece a couple of years ago titled ‘Ilk’, which was a bunch of manipulated recordings of this one part of Ilkley Moor [in West Yorkshire], up above Backstone Beck, which were layered on top of each other. That was taken from one recording and then I edited it. That was very much just “this is the place where a specific sound is happening”, and I’m sitting here for an hour and we were just recording the sounds.
Other times, I will just wander around. When I was doing the field recordings for ‘Walk the Shore’, and reading acousmatic storytelling, the idea of the microphone and the field recordist being a voice within that set of perspectives that I was talking about earlier really intrigued me about what we were doing. You’re editing as you are doing it; there are certain things that I am actively not recording because I don’t want them in my specific audio vision for something.
Have you found that over time you have become more intentional with how you capture the field recordings?
Yes. I tend to have a location and time in mind, then follow through on that. However, if I am hearing a cool noise, I will capture it; I have a lot of voice memos in my phone that are just cool noises that I came across whilst I was out. But if I’m thinking about a specific piece, then it’s more intentional.
When you are working with field recordings in a piece, how do you work around some of the unintended noises that can occur?
At some point, when I have the resources, I would like to have all of the fancy equipment, so that I don’t have to keep accommodating wind noise in a piece… -laughs- Sometimes I find that it can really work and lend itself to really give an interesting texture to a piece, but then other times, I am just trying to mitigate it. Most of the time though, I try to work with what I have. Going from that idea of “well, if I’m representing this place, this is what was happening at this place when I was recording it and so let’s try and work with that” — rather than trying to edit out all of the ugly bits away.
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Do you texturally try to contrast or match the field recording with your own musical materials? Or does it really depend again?
It depends; but I think that I tend to try and have composed material that both compliments and contrasts within the same piece. There was a piece that I did with a friend of mine, James Creed — ‘Woodhouse’ — which was a layering of field recordings that were done just outside of our windows, and then a cycle of dyads on two reed organs. In addition to this, we were boosting certain frequencies in the field recordings that matched those dyads that we were playing to give everything this lovely, dream-like quality, and make things blend into each other more. So I do try to go for a fusion of field recordings and composed material.
With something like ‘Walk the Shore’, that was more of a marriage between the composed material and the oral history interview parts; mapping pitches and rhythms to people’s speech rather than the field recordings. But generally, I try to pull all of these disparate parts together at different points.
Alongside James and Laura, you’ve collaborated with a number of artists including Mia Windsor and Ilona Skladzien. How did you meet them all and what sorts of collaborations have you done?
I met James and Mia because we were all doing [a] composition masters at the Uni of Leeds. James I decided to write this piece pretty quickly; we were both in the School of Music’s composers collective society, we were both quite bad attendees… -laughs- But we wanted to write this piece together. It was quite an early session in the year; we had gone around chatting to everyone about the kind of stuff that they did, and it just seemed like our sensibilities really clicked — and I thought that there was something we could do there.
We both liked long slow music. -laughs- For the piece, it was quite an easy process. We just thought “let’s do this field recording”; we decided to do it on the windows of our houses, because we lived on streets with very similar names. They were across quite a small section in Leeds. He then mentioned that he had two reed organs, so we decided to add those in and then it all came together pretty quickly.
Mia [is] someone that I haven’t formally collaborated with, but I think she’s great and she’s definitely helped me a lot with ideas for pieces. I’ve played on a couple of her tracks and she’s helped me when I have been desperately trying to understand MaxMSP and failing at it.
The collaboration with Laura Spark, for the Delia Derbyshire day project… We were put together, and we had both talked about loving world building in our proposals. This was my first time working on a big project with a non-musician — someone who works in a completely different practical way to me — which is interesting. I think that we were lucky that we had quite similar ideas in what we wanted the project to be, with different capabilities; which was really nice — especially when you are stressed with a project and then you are getting positive feedback from someone who is outside of that field. I thought that everything she was doing was incredible and she thought the same. We mostly worked remotely — I’m based in Manchester and she is in Liverpool — but then we had one big final session at her studio in Liverpool. It was this tiny, cold little room where we were really locked in, which was a lot of fun.
And then the collaboration with Ilona came about because my aunt is an artist down in Dorset, and knew Ilona through various art groups. Then she got in touch with me to ask if I’d like to do an installation for her exhibition that was called play nicely, and she was super open and hands off about it which was very cool. She told me her ideas about the exhibition, and then she said “I want you to do whatever you want — don’t make it sound nice.” -laughs-
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Where do you draw the line between collaborative and non-collaborative work?
I don’t know where that line is. There are two pieces that I’ve done which have been incredibly collaborative and for specific performers. I wrote a piece that was an adaptation for a folk song called ‘the unquiet grave’ for an instrument called the halldorophone; I wrote that for and with my friend Billy Harrison. We had this instrument at the Uni of Leeds and the process of writing it was also really the process of figuring out how the instrument worked. Billy is a great cellist, and so [it was about] how best for him to get sounds out of it and then figuring [out] how to write it down; that was very collaborative.
Then the piece that I did for Terra Invisus, ‘Living Light’, was also super collaborative. It’s a score that has big chunks of improvisation and indeterminacy that I gave very minimal instructions for at certain points; these little nuggets of textural ideas. But then they went off and did something amazing.
In terms of making electronic sounds, what kinds of timbres are you drawn to? Are there any patterns that you have noticed in your own work?
I’m drawn towards manipulating recordings rather than producing raw electronic sounds. If I’m not doing a straight field recording, then I’m playing with boundaries between the familiar and the unfamiliar; not obscuring the origin of a sound — so extreme in a musique concrète way — but playing with that line is something that I enjoy to do.
Are you taking a germ of a recording and then it’s playing along, but it’s sort of being developed or altered each time?
It’s essentially an electronic version of classical composition techniques — such as retrograding the material, using diminution, etc. — but I am doing it through Reaper, not on a page.
Do you use those techniques in more of a structural or a development way?
Generally, it is more of a structural tool. I have an idea of what the end point will be for that sound. It does chop and change; but I noticed that in my work, I tend to write pieces that are self contained bubbles where they are starting and ending in the same way. So quite often, it is a slow, gentle beginning; then I’m taking these recordings and manipulating them, then bringing them back down to things that are sort of enclosed.
When you utilise these techniques in Reaper, do you try a completely new thing each time? Or is it built on the previous piece that you’ve done?
I am always building upon what I have done. So I’ll know various techniques, filters, ring modulators that I go to for certain things. With new pieces, that’s possibly when techniques become developmental rather than structural when I hit a wall in the process. That’s when my old reliables have not been reliable.
Could you tell me what some of the old reliables are?
Sometimes, it’s a lot of various EQs and frequency filters. I enjoy pitch-shifting; even if it is only a tiny bit, somehow the whole sample takes on a weird quality that I can’t quite put my finger on. Another one is using the same sample, but having two very close pitches — which I enjoyed doing.
Earlier on, you were mentioning interaction and interplay. How do you deal with it in ‘Living Light’ for Terra Invisus?
It’s a piece that’s based on Hildegard von Bingen’s visionary theology. It’s her first book, Scivias; and so I literally embedded bits of it in the score. The improvisation sections where I gave the players tiny snippets of an idea were accompanied by quotes that I wanted to inform how they developed that idea in that section.
The piece is broken up. There is an intro and an outro, and then it is fragmented into these improvisatory sections, each of which is preceded by a fanfare that is taken from three parts of Scivias — and the rhythms are taken from the opening lines to those three parts. So I really tried to embed the book and what it envisions as much as possible into the score to really tie them together. Looking at the way Hildegard von Bingen describes these visions is so detailed and bright, where the illustrations are these really vivid reds, golds and blues. And she refers to various visions as “living light” — which is where I got the title from. I wanted to reflect that as much as possible. And then between each seduction of the improvisations are little snippets from Hildegard’s own sacred monophonic works.
What have you got next project wise? Also in terms of processes and procedures, what are you moving into?
I’m still very much a concept driven person — but the piece I am working on did start as a purely musical idea. I am actively trying to think less about the themes, but more about the focus being the sounds.
At the moment, I am working on a piece for Square Music, which is a relatively new piano quartet made up of Clare Spollen, Fernando Yada, Jay Austin Keys and Maya-Leigh Rosenwasser — all amazing pianists! I wanted to write for them as I had shied away from the piano, so why not write for four? I wanted to challenge myself in that regard. And then I really had a musical motif stuck in my head, which was actually the first few bars from ‘Living Light’ — just these gentle, rolling, repeating fifths with occasional seventh clashes here and there. In the original draft of ‘Living Light’, I had written six bars to open and close the piece. When I was working [on] that piece with Terra Invisus, I decided to extend the motif; but now clearly I didn’t extend it enough because I’ve now written a hundred bars of it.
The rest of the piece will be an odd arrangement of the Steeleye Span version of ‘The Lark in the Morning’, with pianists passing the tune around each other one note at a time to create this slightly odd and detached performance of the song. It is an interesting thing to do — as they are very freely flowing — to make something quite robotic out of it.
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Learn more about Joy Ingle and their practice at:
- https://www.joyingle.com/
- https://www.instagram.com/joy_ingle/
- https://soundcloud.com/joy_ingle
- https://joyingle.bandcamp.com/
References/Links:
- Panos Amelidis, ‘Acousmatic Storytelling’ (2016), Organised Sound, 21 (3)
- Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias (1152)
- Steeleye Span – ‘The Lark in the Morning’ (1971)
