More on pMix from Stuart
One of the first things I discovered when I started messing around with pMix was that with just a few plugins it's very easy to end up with results that are a long, long way from the sounds you put in! Some of these results sounded amazing, but had, for me, two negative effects:
1) they could all too easily render the live acoustic instruments redundant, or at the very least undermine any subtlety of playing.
2) there was a danger of my being 'led' into accepting sounds that were not composed, but accidental - nothing terribly wrong with that, and I might explore such routes in future - but for this piece, since part of the idea is to learn productive ways of incorporating electronics into my music, I wanted to stay firmly in the driving seat, and make (most of) my own compositional decisions in the electronic instrument, pMix, as well as the three live instruments.
Another pitfall that I think 'classical' composers would do well to avoid is the obvious use of delay-loops as a kind of counterpoint to the live instruments: at its best this can be an effective, playful and clever idea; but often it reveals a lack of awareness of just how obvious a solution this is.
So, I resolved to use pMix quite simply, and hopefully sparingly - as a modifier of the acoustic instruments' sounds, and ideally one that could be manipulated live, and respond to the performance 'moment'.
But I also wanted the piece to be one that couldn't exist without pMix, and in order to hear the subtle changes to the live instruments' music that pMix will be making, that music has to be simple also. In other words, I'm simplifying both my approach to notated, acoustic music, and the use of electronics, in order, hopefully, to create something that's greater than the sum of its parts; a heightened, expressive simplicity, which contrasts not just with much of my own usual music (which can be quite driven and restless) but also with quite a lot of pieces I've heard with live electronics (the worst of these have frustrated me as a listener by employing complex technology, dozens of loudspeakers and frenetic performances to limited or even banal expressive and musical effect; at the other extreme, I've heard pieces that were so materially limited and obsessively technological that they've disappeared up their own concepts - of course, composers for acoustic instruments are also guilty of such conceits from time to time!)
So, simple material and simple processing…at least as a place to begin!