Piggy Back Ride

Scott Perry

Inspired by:

Papa Hu Tapestry

Corinne Okada Takara

Music Concept:

Piggy Back Ride is a collage of found sounds representing fragmented childhood memories of Hawaii. The sounds used are recordings of Corinne Okada Takara's family set in a home environment. Her two children were recorded playing and laughing. The ukulele sounds come from her husband casually practicing on the instrument. Recordings of a metal rake were electronically processed to emulate sounds of insects. The sounds of fireworks are the only sounds not found in the artist's home. The collage is pieced together by fragmenting the sound clips and processing them in a variety of ways. Voices were altered by changing their pitch to higher and lower frequencies. All sounds were processed in reverse and coincide with the original recordings. Sound clips are repeated and use delay and ring tone modulation effects. Two different and distinguishing sets of sounds are used to define the piece. One set of sounds are the moths and insects that constantly beat their wings against porch netting. They provide a constant undercurrent to remind anyone who was reared in Hawaii of the fertile seething of life inside and outside of the home. The other set of sounds are the ukulele practice and children's voices that serve as memories of sounds from a typical Hawaiin home. The setting is meant to be of one that is sitting on the back porch in the evening collecting random sounds from inside and outside the home as they sit and listen. Firework sounds add to the fragmented memories of the goings-ons in Hawaii. They are meant to be nostalgic of happy and exciting memories of childhood. The main theme of the piece is a collage of spoken phrases by Corinne's two children. It is first stated as a broken sentence. Then, each phrase takes focus and is emphasized one at a time until each phrase has been used. The climax occurs at the end of the piece when all the thematic material is coalesced to coincide at once. The chaos that it creates is resolved by removing the sound layers until there is only one left of a child stating: Piggy Back Ride!