The piece entirely comprises voice samples that I recorded during my daily vocal warmup exercises. It includes breathing exercises, humming, buzzing on the /z/ consonant, lip trills, and descending octave yawn-sighs. The aesthetic goal was to create a musical piece out of this everyday routine to prepare my voice from an “incomplete” or “raw” state to a full performance voice.
I was also inspired by Jan Jelinek’s​ John Cage, I've Been Told To Ask You The Following Question, where I wanted to incorporate an element of non-semantic sound particles as he collected from an interview. In this piece, I recorded myself singing through a piece of classical repertoire and cut out all the singing parts to be left with the abrupt sound of inhales between musical phrases. I specifically chose ones that are rapid breaths over a short period of time so that I could create a rhythmic beat. Then, I manipulated EQ to create a timbre that is barely recognizable as human breaths and transformed into a percussive musical timbre.
I also used the application, SPEAR, to transpose my scale exercises up to ranges that are physically impossible to sing for me, but still kept the timbre from the original lower range.