Flute and Electronics: practise, preparation, peforrmance (original) (raw)
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Percussion and computer in live performance
2009
This thesis seeks to articulate a performer's perspective of the interactions between percussion and computer in performance. A selection of compositions for percussion and computer will be used to explain how understanding the role of the computer can inform the player's technical and musical choices and is vital to convey a cohesive performance. Two of the compositions are the author's own work. Discussion of both the creation and performance of these works will suggest how using the computer with percussion extends the musical possibilities in a solo performance and allows implicit connections with practitioners of other art-forms.
Interfacing Instrumental Music and Acousmatic Art: Aesthetics and Tools
Mixed pieces combining instruments and electronics call for extending the conventional concepts of pitch, duration, dynamics and timbre. A preoccupation with pitch in the instrumental domain is opposed to a predominance of timbral thinking in the acousmatic domain. Composers need to find links between these prevailing notions. Smalley's continua between note and noise/gesture and texture embrace a wide range of possible transformations. Applying these continua to the instrumental and the electronic domain dissolves the fixation of lattice-based with instrumental, and sound-object with electronic music. In mixed pieces, the play with expectations of what each medium should be doing leads to intricate relationships. This paper will explain aesthetic ideas and compositional techniques evolving from pieces that equally draw on acousmatic and instrumental idioms. For my piece Atmungsaktiv I developed a set of generative tools on the basis of spectral transformations. The paper will describe their technical implications and the way they enable a structurally cohesive approach – which is equally applicable to electronic and instrumental writing. A less stringent separation of instrumental and electronic music combines a variety of characteristics; it also demands compositional solutions which penetrate both domains. Introduction From the perspective of the composer, acousmatic art and instrumental music can seem like two entirely different media. In the acousmatic domain the composer directly crafts sound as it will be performed in the concert hall. In instrumental music the composer relies on performers to interpret the written score. While in acousmatic art recordings taken from the environment may be employed to evoke associations with real situations, the sounds produced by musical instruments are rendered solely for the purpose of music making. The physical foundations of the two media exhibit distinct features. Sound projected over loudspeakers is marked by directionality and clear definition – both in terms of its spatial field and its covered frequency range. Instrumental sound features a spatial and timbral complexity which can vary dramatically between individual instruments and players. Acousmatic art is advantaged by the fact that sound events can be fixed at any point on a continuous time-line. Rhythmic complexity is achieved by exploiting complex inner rhythm structures of sounds. In instrumental music the tempo differs from one performance to the next. Written tempo markings result in sometimes drastically different interpretations. In acousmatic art, the continuum of the frequency spectrum, with upper and lower bounds determined only by the human hearing, serves as starting point for pitch organisation – but pitch is only one parameter, without priority, sometimes even absent, within organisational strategies. Instrumental music deals with tuning systems, and composers are given the choice to accept, avoid or modify the existing possibilities. A more in depth consideration of the tools used for realising instrumental music and acousmatic art will illuminate further differences. However, the comparison also reveals contact points between the two domains.
Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australasian Computer Music Association, 2015
In this paper I aim to demonstrate a set of considerations and influences on a type of score designed for and specific to the 8x8 grid controller commonly associated with software such as Ableton Live. The grid controller offers a unique method of control that is unlike other MIDI controller systems, and the problem of scoring for it comes primarily from the flexibility of functionality that the controller offers: from mapping to a grid layout of ‘clips’ within Ableton Live, to conventional MIDI-note systems. The deficiency with this latter mode is the requirement to learn a functionally non-linear map of pitch that is somewhat unintuitive in relation to the traditional staff- based hierarchy. Through the performance and discussion of the score itself, this paper will show some of the idiosyncratic characteristics of an 8x8 grid controller, possible scoring paradigms, limitations shown thus far and potential limitations moving forward, and further considerations for new methods of working with this grid system.
Hoppsa Universum–An interactive dance installation for children
2008
ABSTRACT It started with an idea to create an empty space in which you activated music and light as you moved around. In responding to the music and lighting you would activate more or different sounds and thereby communicate with the space through your body. This led to an artistic research project in which children's spontaneous movement was observed, a choreography made based on the children's movements and music written and recorded for the choreography.