EMP - Pierre

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Concert Report II - Aural Dystopia

On Sunday, May 18th, I went to Jack to see performances by two ensembles. The first was composed of Chris Pitsiokos, on electronics, saxophone and synthesizer, and Stuart Popejoy on electric bass and electronics. The second ensemble, was composed of Dafna Naphtali on voice live processing and electronics, Hans Tammen on modular synthesizer, Levy Lorenzo on multiple electronic devices and Chuck Bettis on Voice and electronics. The two ensembles did not play any composed pieces, but improvised live each for a little bit less than an hour.

The first ensemble had very interesting sounds. The electric bass was heavily distorted, so that the notes were barely recognizable and seemed to act as a pretext to create white noise-like sound, almost similar to that of a sustained thunderstorm. The use of the pedal modified only the timbre of the sound, so that a rough sonic consistency was maintained throughout the improvisation, and the only ruptures or continuous modulations in the sounds were due to the use of a volume pedal. On the other hand, Chris Pitsiokos had much more freedom in terms of pitch and separates that could be distinguished as he played them. This resulted in two very distinct voices during the improvisation, and I found their dialogue very enjoyable. Stuart provided a dynamic background and Chris added his voice on top of it. Even though he changed instruments several times during the performance, the idea still remained the same, while sometimes creating what seemed like a second continuous layer of music with his own sonorities.

The second ensemble also had differences, even though I found they were less clear in terms of sonorities, but more in terms of how each of the performers behaved. Hans Tammen, with his modular synthesizer, played mostly with long waveshapes, which ended up creating a sort of rhythm, even though it changed radically in timbre. Levy Lorenzo had multiple, custom-made instruments that he played with, so he had a wide array of sonorities at his disposal, and seemed to focus on either accentuating the rhythm present at different parts of the improvisation, or on creating melodies with electronic sounds or by making gestures throughout the performance, especially by using his joystick controllers. Dafna Naphtali and Chuck Bettis, both with voice and electronics, improvised mostly with long or short gesture, reacting to what the two other performers were slowly building.

I really enjoyed this concert, as it gave me the opportunity to witness the variety of uses of electronics in on ensemble and, due to this variety, I could appreciate different ways to improvise and perform between two musicians. There were moments during which all the performers came together in a particular motif or atmosphere, but I feel like the technical aspects was the most fascinating.

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Electronic and Instrumental Music - Karlheinz Stockhausen

What struck me the most in Stockhausen's writing is his distinction between instrumental music and electronic music, with one of the key differences being the 'disappearance' of the interpreter in electronic music, as only the composer and the sound engineers remain.

While I do agree with that overall idea, I think it is not possible to conceive music without an interpreter, and to assume that this interpreter has to be human-like is limiting. Machines are not magic, they have been programmed and built by humans with qualities and flaws, and they reflect their maker's assumptions and beliefs about how a sound signal -and, by extension, how music- should be synthesized. Therefore, even though the "traditional" interpreter is gone from electronic music, it is only because it has been replaced by a new interpreter, the machine, whose role is, I think, as important, and who should be taken into account by the composer. (extra: johnson's article about the sociology of a door-closer, and how our conception of human actors is too narrow, is exactly what I mean here)

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Dancity - a five-city laptop orchestra composition by Eldad Tsabari This is the most interesting piece I've listened to, as it is actually the first time I've heard a full performance of a laptop orchestra from a university. I'm particularly struck by the overall coherence of the sound despite the lack of any apparent tonal harmony. I'm also curious about the fact that the different performers have different controllers (when they have any). Does the choice of controllers rely on them being comfortable with it, or on the actions and sounds that they execute during the performance ? Regarding the piece in itself, I can clearly define different movements, and the interesting dialogue that is established by the different orchestras in the different cities, and how these responses, first dissonant, tend to become oddly consonant.

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Glenn Branca - Light Field (In Consonance)

Compared to Nancarrow's piece, Light Field (In Consonance) seems to use the same concept of automatizing the execution of a piece, but does it through long-term repetition instead of short-term variation. There is a much more distinct build-up in that piece;.almost drone-like, which is achieved by playing at the same time a significant number of instruments.

It's interesting to see the different ends that the same means (automatizing acoustic music) can have, either focusing on melody or, for lack of a better word, importance. I, for one, prefer Branca, for his more visceral approach to what music technology can do.

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Conlon Nancarrow - Study for Piano no. 12

As I started listening to that piece, I could only focus on the "unnatural" part of the music, the fact that it is being executed by a machine rather than a human player. If the execution is so flawless, so surreal, I feel like it is becoming out of touch. Being perfect, it also becomes boring, and the attention shifts to the work  of the composer, his thoughts and ideas before they were fed to a machine.I guess the fact that it is the sound of a piano instead of a synthesizer -whose sounds are immediately associated with technology-, deepens that feeling.

By shifting my attention, I start to hear the intentions of the composer, of pushing the limits of what we, as listeners and executors, were previously used to, and exploring new associations of sounds unique clusters and successions of note.

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Breakthrough Beats: Rhythm and the Aesthetics of Contemporary Electronic Music

So apparently, it is through minimalism that 'high-brow' music, 'art' music, or however the critics have called it throughout the ages, has re-established contact with 'popular' music. Aesthetically speaking, it's probably true -or at least the most likely explanation. However, I'm curious about the other factors that are contributing to the shifting of powers between 'sacred' and 'profane' music. The accessibility of hardware and software, the accessibility of worldwide music through tapes, then CDs, then MP3s, and the lack of formal training from the contemporary producers seem to me as important as how established composers (that is, classically educated) started reconsidering music through the lens of minimalism.

Electronic music, for me, is this point where both established practitioners and willful hobbyists meet, both bringing different experimentations to the table. The rhythm, the pulse, is therefore the meeting ground for these two parties, both by its simple and fascinating nature.

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Advice to Clever Children - Karlheinz Stockhausen

The most interesting part of the article is clearly the part where Stockhausen has to confront his view on music to what is being made currently by those who are considered mainstream, yet thoughtful electronic composers.

The obvious divide lies in the conception that Stockhausen has of the loop, of the repetition. Despite all of what he said previously regarding him breaking out of the musical tradition that he was taught at school, it still seems that he has particular assumptions about music composition. The loop/repetition is a point of contention, and relates to the bigger concept of considering life as a linear or circular experience. Even though none is better than the other, it strikes me how Stockhausen seems to dismiss the fact that he has arbitrary assumptions about music, while the "clever children" openly admit that their assumption in them composing music is DANCE. This whole exchange reminded me of an interview of a techno producer I read a while ago saying that techno was the exact opposite of what Walter Benjamin was describing in the mechanical reproduction of art. Loops don't always diminish the quality of a sound / an image / a word / an experience. It sometimes makes it better. Addendum: while looking up that elusive interview, I came across a paper from Concordia University analyzing sample-based music in light of Benjamin's work !

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Concert proposal

For the concert at the end of the semester, I would be very interested in working with either drones or live sound processing. A particular idea I was toying around with was using the performers natural sounds (especially breathing/heartbeats/hand gestures+finger tapping) and process it in order to add another layer to the piece that they would play. Also, since I heard that Pauline Oliveros is coming to Eyebeam this weekend to perform as a part of TRIPLE POINT, and that it will take place within their work with CAIRA (the Creative Artificially Intuitive and Reasoning Agent project, basically an AI to play music with). So I was wondering if it would be possible to put together a simple program which could act as an AI and respond to performers during a piece, or having a piece performed as improvisation around some sort of artificial intelligence. As I'm typing it, this sounds very interesting but even more complicated. Who knows ?

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Richard Zvonar and Robert Black - Two In The Hand

This is a 7:39 piece with strings and bass and a sustained drone in the background. I wasn't sure at first where the sound processing was happening, until I realized that it was through delay manipulation, with samples of strings being played at in different states (playing with the start points and end points of these 'samples'). This is interesting because it made me realize that sampling and processing aren't fundamentally different from each which, for some unknown reason, I had assumed. This manipulation of the same material over and over again also seems to provide a counterpart to the bass who ends up "discovering known territory"/ "exploring a familiar, yet changing space".

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Pauline Oliveiros, Stuart Dempster - Deep Listening: Ione

The live sound processing in this piece seems to be mainly focused on accentuating on the sound already present, already generated by the acoustics instruments. While sometimes letting their 'natural' timbre pierce through, the piece mainly consists in a dialogue between the sound processings on different levels. I feel like the original instruments act as a canvas where the processing can be deployed and give them a new meaning through both their self-transformation and their interaction with other sounds. Her minimalist use of sound processing makes me focus more on the result on the actual notes rather than the overall effect throughout the piece. Finally, the use of panning accentuates this idea of "back and forth" between instruments in a musical piece.

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CONCERT REPORT - Marco Donnarumma - Experimental Intermedia

Marco Donnarumma was really impressive. He started by setting up his computer and then plugging what I assumed were two MIDI cables into devices in his back pockets, which were then connected to sensors on his forearms.

As he started the performance, he explained that his project was based on biophysically-generated music (by the tensions of the skin), and that he was about to play two pieces for us to compare the sounds used.

The first one was very much about spatiality, especially since his performance needed very ample, expressive movements, as well as torsions of the limbs that one doesn't usually see in a music performer. The sound processing was also set up so that fast movements and slow movements would trigger sounds with proportional velocity and volume, and that small movements (e.g. with his fingers) would trigger high-pitched sounds, where as ample movements would result in lower-pitched sounds.

The result was a musical piece where several different sounds were used to build a sort of dialogue, creating a musical theme by exploring the contradictions resulting from him moving his arms, hands and fingers, escalating from low volume, low density, to an explosive ensemble of gestures.

The second piece, in contrast, was very interesting. It used fewer sounds, but the movements were more focused on changing the texture and the envelope of these sounds. This was geared more towards the exploration of a sustained note, of stretching it, compressing it, without fundamentally changing its nature.

The last part of the show was an improvisation between Marco and an other musician, who had a custom-made device similar to a tablet, where he generated sounds by letting his hands hover over it at different heights. The improvisation was great because the way the performers responded to each other wasn't only perceivable in their music, but also in their body language. As one made quick, powerful gestures, the other responded with only using the tip of his fingers, resulting in contrasting, almost opposite sounds. On the other hand, both would make ample movements and have a unison of powerful music.

Sometimes, though, it felt like they lacked an absolute control of their tool/instrument, and overlapped each other at some moments during the improvisations.

All in all, it was still a very impressive, thought-provoking performance about the different ways to approach music and sounds in terms of space, and the physical implications of improvising, or just performing with some one else.

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Matthew Ostrowski - Patterns of Changing Lights

In this piece it is much more obvious that the composer is dealing with samples that he then processes. As it goes on, the sounds start to fit together. As the sound processing changes, the use of the samples changes as well: reverb fits with a more twitchy, hased way of playing the samples.

I definitely like the different ambiances created by using the immediate performance, and then the sound processing to give it another level of depth.

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John Oswald - Pretender If at first I thought this was a traditional pop-song, I realized that there are slight changes being operated on the voice track as well as the instrumentals tracks, so parts of the song are manipulated differently from other parts.

The fact that these changes were not obvious to me during a first listen are very interesting, and make them even more satisfying and enjoyable when you are looking attentively for them.

The final of the song becomes more radical with this approach and accentuates the relationship (resembling as well as differing) between a traditional piece of pop music and its processed version.

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Bob Ostertag - Pointillism

This pieces manages to use apparently similar sounds but I can differentiate them quite clearly. The spatialization between left and right (i'm listening to it on headphones) of each sound also helps the clarity of the piece.

I can hear slight variations in terms of how frequently is a sound repeated, which seems to randomized. I would assume Bob Ostertag would have pre-designed some sort of algorithm or process to have given sounds fluctuate in their respective ranges and envelopes, and change theses ranges and envelopes at specific times, as well as adding or substracting sounds

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Role of a Performer - Vinko Globokar

The relationship between composer is indeed an interesting one, and it seems that Globokar only focuses on the composer having to control the performer, in order not to break the aesthetic of the composed piece.

In his vision, the performer has to adapt to the piece, and everything he does is in response to the piece. Even though the performer has some freedom, it is still some limited freedom, and the performer still reacts to the directions and defines his actions relative to the piece.

However, it would be interesting for a composer to work in a way such that it could actually foster the musical development and exploration of the performer.

The idea of having performers interact with each other is however an interesting one, and I would tend to agree with it, since I strongly believe in evolving (for the better) at the contact of other people, and especially people with skills you respect and admire.

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John Duncan - Hungry/Last Words/Yoinka

This pieces has a really cool use of samples. They're sustained over long periods of time, turning them from snippets of reality to drone-like sounds. It's great how he makes almost seamless transitions using recordings that, by definition, have no relation to one another.

To me, this piece is a link between a soundscape and a musical composition, with rhythmic cues that are subtle enough that they almost feel as they were recorded as such.

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Philip Sherburne - Digital Discipline: Minimalism in House and Techno

House and Techno clearly don't rely only on hardware, but also on musical traditions. Because these genres were pioneered by members of subcultures, relating to african music. The emergence of minimalism also comes from a political statement, a rebellion against rock and pop music invading the public, commercial space.

The result was a repeating sound, stripped down of any "superficial" additions, leaning more towards the drum-based pieces of African music. This seems to be the other pendant of minimalism, the hypnotic repetition of rhythm makes the drum sequence a bit more intense at each loop.

Starting from a statement, minimalist techno and house became a necessity when it started to put the listeners (often dancers) into some sort of trance. Minimalism then dives into a search for the most skeletal sound that would still be playable in clubs, walking the thin line of sobriety against mass appeal and crowd-pleasing.