In July 2019 Modulisme was born, Bana Haffar and I contributing the very first 2 Sessions. It was very important that my first guest be a woman, and I’d so much like more Ladies to respond to my invitations, for Modulisme to offer more of a female presence… And fully document our Electronic Music community…
Over the years, I’ve heard it said that the platform offers so much information that the newcomer doesn’t know how to take it in, where to start, that there’s too much to read… A simple reply would be « take your time » because Modulisme wants to share information, give composers a voice and make sure they have the opportunity to be well presented. The fuller their message, the better off I am, so here it’s all about transmission, and of course it may take time to digest… For the better !!!
We are celebrating 5 years of activism and offering more than 1 000 exclusive works showcasing the importance of analog electronic music !
For this series I wanted to emphasize the alliance of acoustic and electronic with a collection of works showing that Modulisme isn’t dealing with Modular synthesis only and that what matters is the composition rather than the tools.
ACOUSTRONIQUE features music composed of sounds artificially created using the modular instrument, enriched with natural sounds (field recordings/voices) or acoustic material (instruments).
This is volume 3 which I chose to limit to 2 hours so as to keep it digest…
01. Jocy de Oliveira – Nherana (13:48)
(for reeds, clarinet and bass clarinet, cello, electric guitar, percussion and electro acoustic part)
Composer, pianist, filmmaker, multimídia artist, writer.
Recognized in Brazil and internationally among women pioneers of electroacoustic music and multimedia artists, her production assembles music, theatre, texts, installations, video and cinema. Her works have been presented in theatres and festivals in North and South America, Europe and China.
As a composer and pianist, she recorded more than 30 discs in Brazil, USA, England, Germany, Italy and Mexico. She was soloist under Stravinsky’s baton, premiered piano works by Berio, Cage, Xenakis, Santoro amongst others and recorded Messiaen major piano cycles.
Author of 8 books published in Brazil, USA and France- her Dialogue with letters received the Jabuti Literature Award and was published in France by Honoré Champion. Besides numerous videos, she composed, wrote the script and directed her 10 multimedia operas presented in Brazil and in different countries distributed by Naxos International. Her feature film Liquid Voices – The story of Mathilda Segalescu conceived simultaneously for theatre and cinematic format (2017-2019), was awarded in 11 Film Festivals in London, Nice, Madrid, Warsaw , Antwerp , Nazareth (Israel), New York and Santiago. She was awarded by the Guggenheim and Rockfeller Foundation amongst others and she also received the title of Doctors Honoris Causa by the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
She is a lifetime member of the Academia Brasileira de Música and has a Master of Arts by the Washington University, St Louis, USA.
I started in 1960 a collaboration with Luciano Berio to compose a 70’ music theatre work – Apague meu spot light. It involved a major theatre company with a group of actors/ dancers, renowned actress – Fernanda Montenegro and actor Sergio Britto. It was premiered at the VI Biennial of Contemporary Arts at the opera Houses of S. Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, September 1961. It was the first electronic music composed and performed in Brazil for a large audience. The dramaturgy was written by myself in Rio de Janeiro and sent to Luciano Berio at the Studio di Fonologia de la RAI in Milan, to work on the electronic part based on my script , text and voices of the actors recorded at Radio MEC, Rio de Janeiro. A long process followed with Berio sending me the material he had worked and I would edit . Later I also went to Milan to work on the music with him. This slow procedure went on until 20 days prior of the performance when he came to Rio and we finalized the mixing at Radio MEC in Rio.
From the middle through the end of the sixties’ I lived in St Louis, USA and worked at the Electronic Music Studio of the Washington University while having my masters degree in art with major in music. At Washington University I started to work with a Moog Synthesizer and used recorded and processed voices as a source for my music (Estória I and II).
After that, in the beginning of the seventies I started using also Buchla and Arp. From this point I went on to EMS Synthi AKS which I kept for many years. I was always more attracted to integrate electronics with acoustic instruments and especially voices.
My preference has been to mix electronics with live performers and also live electronics just like in “Nherana” which – in Tupi Guarani ( main indigenous language of Brazil) – means “Unrest”.
The unrest of the waters, of the forgotten people of the rain forests …
Words are not sufficient to express the rich melting pot of Brazilian cultures, which permit us to migrate from a “Berimbau” instrument to a “Tabla” or interweave sources such as the “Cantadores” (popular poets) from the cycle of Paroara in Maranhão evoking the Amazonia, to the legend of the “oboaz”- an instrument causing blows of wind relentlessly over forests…
In this light it is relevant to recall the influence of the 16th century Christian / Syrian communities at the Malabar coast of India to the Portuguese colonization in Goa which later brought to Brazil some oriental traces assimilated by the “cantadores” in the North of Brazil. The variety of these fascinating traces are embodied in the complex cultural tapestry of Brazil.
Some percussion instruments, ethnic “cantadores”, oboe, Xingu flutes playing few intervallic cells were bounded together, crossing bridges and interacting with one another providing the sound material primarily sampled and further processed for the electro acoustic part. The same material developed and enriched by the addition of few other timbres such as cello, bass clarinet, electric guitar and percussion interact with the electro acoustic part in real time.
The“ regard ”of the so called civilized world have usually a stereotyped manner of distinguishing the “other”, the different culture, perceiving only the “exotic” and forgetting the implications of our globalized world which leaves no more space to seriously question these concepts…
02. Phlippe Petit & Friends: Eugénia (03:04)
Raphaelle Rinaudo: Electric Harp
Arnaud Fournier: Trumpet
Hervé Vincenti: Guitar
Philippe Petit: Buchla 200 Analog Synthesizer + Vinyls + Treated Gongs-Vibes + Electronics + Tape manipulation.
Back in 2010 « Eugénia » came as an hommage to my daughter Eugénie, part of a CD named « Cordophony » which was released in 2012 on Homenormal Records.
https://philippepetitamusicaltravel-agent.bandcamp.com/album/philippe-petit-friends-cordophony
Now 14 years later I’d like to double the hommage with a « grown up » version…
“Cordophone” is a French word which refers to musical instruments whose sound comes from the vibrations of one or several strings. I was playing with string parts by many talented friends in order to create an imaginary world of dense mixtures of electro-folk acoustic instrumentation, post-classical orchestral arrangements filled with collected field-recordings, vanguard soundscapes, manipulations of glass and vinyls.
17 « Friends » joined in gracing me with their talent.
Rafaelle rinaudo and Hervé Vincenti had been with me since the very first incarnation of our Strings Of Consciousnss collective. For this revised version I asked Arnaud Fournier (from HINT whose records I used to publish on Pandemonium Rdz. in the 90s) if he’d add his trumpet to the original which I processed + added some spices from my Buchla 200 analog synthesizer…
Originally, I wanted to share the joy of having a daughter in my life, the feeling of this new love that filled me and lifted me up on a daily basis, while changing the way I live, think and build… Today, she’s 17 and a senior in high school, and this new version confirms all the light she can bring to my life.
03. Schema Musicalis (Stelios Giannoulakis) – Word Pop (06:40)
Kleri Doukoumetzaki: vocals
Stelios Giannoulakis: EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer
Composer, sound designer, performer, improvising multi-instrumentalist, engineer, creative music technology researcher and educator.
Specialized in Electroacoustic music composition, soundscape recording, music and sound design for theatre, radio, concert, video, dance, video games. Sound diffusion system design, circuit bending, interactivity. Collaborations with groups and individual artists. Residencies, commissions, and concert performances in festivals around the world. Cross-genre music projects: RSLG Quartet, EleKtroBalKana, SchemaMusicalis. Teaching music technology and composition at CMRC – Athens Conservatory. Founding member of HELMCA (Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association).
Improvised vocal material and electronic manipulation. What started as a study on vocal processing, gradually shifted focus towards utterance connotation, as amplified or perhaps undermined by the sonic landscapes stemming from the voice, within the aesthetic parameters of electroacoustic music.
04. Michael J. Schumacher & Peter Evans – Untitled (03:25)
Michael J. Schumacher : Serge Analog Synthesizer
Peter Evans : Trumpet
Based in Brooklyn, Michael J. Schumacher has innovated in the areas of spatial sound and algorithmic composition since the 1990s, creating multi-channel, generative “Room Pieces” presented in galleries, museums, concert halls, public and private spaces. XI Records has published a DVD of five sound pieces as “apps”. “Living Room Pieces” is a generative installation designed for home listening. The “PM-cSS” is a complete 8 channel sound system that fits in a suitcase. His interest in the intersections of musical form, architecture and social spaces led to the founding of “Diapason Sound Art”, a gallery devoted to the presentation of multi-channel sound installations, long-duration performances and intermedia artworks.
Schumacher studied music composition with Stanley Applebaum, John Eaton and Vincent Persichetti and piano with Seymour Bernstein and John Ogdon, and has degrees from Indiana University and Juilliard. He also worked with La Monte Young and Milton Babbitt. He has collaborated with choreographers, poets, architects, musicians and filmmakers.
His recordings are available on Superpang, XI Records, Entr’acte and Sub Rosa, among others.
Peter Evans is a composer, trumpet player, improvisor and bandleader based in New York City since 2003. Evans is part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation, and his work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions. Evans is committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool, and works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music.
In 2020 I asked Peter to record, remotely, a trumpet part for a piece I was working on. His part didn’t make it into the piece because I cut the section that it was in. Recently, thinking about this project, I revisited his recording, set up the Serge, and recorded it while listening to Peter’s trumpet.
Then I split apart the Serge recordings and created an algorithm that re-performed the Serge material. I put this together with Peter’s recording, editing both parts a bit. I decided to go mono with the recording to merge the two parts into one.
05. Tom Djll – Zorba the Geek (02:59)
Tom Djll studied electronic music with Stephen Scott at the Colorado College, working with the EMS Synthi 100. He spent 1981-1993 working with the Serge Modular Music System (SERGE WORKS published by Other Minds’ Modern Hits netlabel, 2018) before enrolling in Mills College Contemporary Music Program, where he extended his quest to develop and integrate an idiosyncratic trumpet language into electronic sound worlds. He resides in California.
When I put power into my instruments, whether that be breath or electricity, what begins happening in that moment informs my approach. The conditions are set, as in any greater or lesser chaotic system, as I begin to react to what I’m listening to and change parameters or add notes and so forth. There’s no goal in sight. Other approaches and resulting sound-worlds are employed in these pieces, reflecting succeeding moments in my life and different conditions obtaining inside and outside the studio at the time they were made. I don’t ask any more of the world. I don’t ask more of the listener other than to take in each piece on its own terms, as they each unfold in time.
“Zorba the Geek” mates trumpet sampled and mangled by a convolution process with chaotic Rungler-driven oscillator and filter. I really like the convolution process because it crudely mimics what a living improvising musician does: it listens to what is happening and tries to match what it hears with what it has ‘memorized’ in its buffer, and plays bits of that when the dynamic threshold is strong enough to trigger its response.
06. Raoul van Herpen – Genetic Modification (05:03)
Raoul Van Herpen is an electro-acoustic music composer and improvising musician from the Netherlands. In writing music he draws heavily on modern composition + improvisation techniques and loves to explore new “territories” and play with noise, electronics, textures, (Wurlitzer) piano, clarinet, saxophone + flutes and DIY Synhtesizers. Combining electronics, acoustics and silence…
This piece is all about conversation and improvisation in layers.
Ciat-Lonbarde “Plumbutter” in two iterations. First with noise as sound source, second with flute as sound source in the same patch configuration both to be played and improvised with gestures and moving faders.
Next to that I used a western flute. (the one that also acts as a sound source in the Plumbutter) And finally a Bansuri (bamboo side-flute from India).
The Plumbutter (and most Ciat Lonbarde synths) sound very raw, and there for natural or organic to me. Because it’s inner patchable structure it’s almost always responding and moving in a coherent yet chaotic manner. This way you can let it be it’s own ‘beast’ or try to tame it. (if you can) That makes a perfect combination with acoustic instruments, especially for improvising.
First playing and recording an improvised synth with noise as basic sound source. Then respond to that with an improvised flute. Run that flute recording through the same synth patch only now with the flute as sound source. Lastly improvising over that with the Bansuri flute. All synth recordings are played/improvised with hand gestures and some knob twiddling, this makes very responsive yet still unpredictable, which is perfect to improvise further on.
07. Sonny Downs Qt. – Silent Sea Snake (04:34)
The Sonny Downs Quartet makes microtonal and electroacoustic music using the Buchla 200e modular synthesizer, on the lush green coast of Eastern Australia surrounded by subtropical rainforest.
A few years ago, I was searching for an acoustic instrument to take up, preferably a stringed instrument from the Middle East. I met a master of the Persian Tanbour and luthier from Isfahan at a rock climbing gym in Brisbane and asked her to teach me, which is how I came to play the tanbour.
The Persian tanbour and Buchla 200e are the only instruments I play, so to marry them to create something original seemed obvious.
The Buchla percussion sound is well known, but generally uses electronic sources to create the percussive elements. I wondered about driving an acoustic source through the low-pass gates to make a more “acoustic” sounding bongo. The low-pass gates really want a lot of high order harmonics, so overdriven tanbour was used. The tanbour is sampled into the Keen Association 287e to give the hard, driving percussion. The heavily processed tanbour is played over that.
08.Twine (Chad Mossholder & Greg Malcolm) – OHM (06:07)
Chad Mossholder is a BAFTA-nominated composer and sound artist renowned for his ability to seamlessly bridge the worlds of art and commercial creative endeavors. With a career spanning over two decades, his diverse portfolio encompasses experimental electronic music composition, audio/visual art installations, and the dynamic realm of video game music and sound design.
Along with Greg Malcolm he had initated the critically acclaimed and experimental electronic music project “Twine” which performed all over the world and released six full length albums as well as numerous mini-albums and EP’s on such labels as Schematic, Hefty, Bip-Hop music and Ghostly Records.
OHM dates back from December 1999 and is a product of the sound Twine developed both in live performances and in the studio. The track utilizes compelling vocal samples, organic electronic sounds, field recordings and obtuse rhythms that the group would become known for.
Injecting a feeling of soul into the electronic medium.
09. Thierry Holweck – Daydream (04:05)
Thierry creates some ambient/electronica musics playing a Serge modular system, Morphagene and Moog.
He is a part of NA+TH, a collaborative experimental music project with JM Lusinchi.
He was trained as a classical pianist, with a penchant for contemporary classical music, particularly Satie and Debussy.
He soon turned to guitar and synthesizers, playing in Les Plaies Mobiles with Jean-Marie, then Garlic Frog Diet, before moving into electronic music under the pseudonym Severin24, which led him to the USA. In 2005, he met Kathy Compton, with whom he formed the electro-pop group Panda Transport. The group’s music has been used in TV shows and documentaries, including Grey’s Anatomy and BH90210.
Thierry s also a theremin player and teaches guitar and M.A.O., and regularly gives concerts and residences with others artists in psychiatric institutes.
In the metro, « lost in my bubble » in my thoughts amid the chaos of people entering, leaving and jostling each other, I watch, observe this kind of perpetual movement while I’m half-dreaming, and a melody is starting to form in my head. I concentrate so as not to forget it. Little by little, it takes its place, blending in with the ambient noise, the sound of people, doors, rubbing rails, metal noises, and I escape with it.
To materialize this creative thought, I chose to play my Serge modular system, mixed with a sample processed in Morphagene, classical guitar and violin bow.
Once my notes had been recorded in my sequencer, I prepared my patch. In this particular case, the PCO oscillator went through NCOM, then the VQCF filter modulated by NCOM, the idea being to find a sound that was close to the harmonics of a string instrument. I recorded live, instinctively, with no synchronicity in the movement of filters, envelopes etc…the play on the instrument being primodial to create an impression, sometimes of chaos, in all cases to break the mechanical and automatic side of the melodic sequences, a game of construction and deconstruction.
The daydream side is symbolized by the sample : a percussive sound that forms my bubble.
10. David Lee Myers – Kalimba Piece 1 (10:01)
David Lee Myers is a composer and musician working in New York City since 1977. Over the past forty years he has released more than 70 albums both solo and in collaboration with artists such as Tod Dockstader, Asmus Tietchens, Dirk Serries, Merzbow, and many others. Known for his championing of feedback techniques, recent years have seen him delving more and more into Eurorack modular systems.
This is not the first time I have used the kalimba, or mbira, in my electronic music. The 2021 album Room in a Moon House employed it on several tracks. The instrument is very simple—one might say limited—but the sounds it produces can be quite complex and rich in overtones. I appreciate using it for both these reasons.
I see my music as a whole being largely about processing and transformation rather than instruments, synth voicings, notes and melodies, etc. This has always been true, even with my Feedback Music which indeed is all processing, not even having an originating sound source. For Kalimba Piece 1 all sounds are derived from the kalimba—but they are multiplied, stretched, overlaid through my Makenoise Morphagene and Mimeophon, 4MS Dual Looping Delay, Eventide H9, and other processors. To achieve the deepest tones in the piece I also used the IRCAM TS2 software.
11. Warren Burt – From My Window (18:41)
Experimental music pioneer Warren Burt has been composing and performing since 1968. In the more than 4 decades of his career, he has travelled through just about every style, movement and music technology of the period. A regular performer on overseas new music tours, he has been actively involved in promoting new music as well as composing and performing it, and has founded or helped found a number of historically important institutions such as the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre (1975-82), the New and Experimental Music show on 3CR (1977-80), and later on 3PBS (1986- 92), and the Linden St. Kilda New Music Series (1986-94). His stylistic range is enormous, and his curiosity virtuosic. Unwilling to be hemmed in by any one musical or theoretical approach, he has ranged across the whole span of contemporary ideas, often with a sense of wit and humour.
« From My Window » is a studio recording of a piece intended for live performance which, alas, was never performed live. It’s a piece for breath controlled Serge synthesizer and samplers – a combination of European electroacoustics and Australian free improv in which a live Casio Midi Horn, played by me, controls a Serge analog synthesizer, to the accompaniment of a computer controlled orchestra of concrete and electronic samples. The samples have many sources, including greatly slowed-down recordings of cicadas (the “choral” sounds), disks of metal being slid down long thin contact miked sheets of copper foil, and environmental sounds recorded from the window of the flat in West St. Kilda where I lived at the time.
12. Allen Ravenstine – Isla Perla (05:16)
The instruments used are a Moog Theremini, a Doepfer system, and a Korg MS-20. There are 14 Tracks in the recording, 6 are natural sounds.
Allen Ravenstine was a key figure in the developing art and music scene in Cleveland in the early 70s. Working alone with an early analogue synthesizer, sans keyboard, and a four track tape recorder, he made a series of compositions.
In 1975, one of those compositions titled Terminal Drive got him invited to join a group that was forming called Pere Ubu, the rest is history…
I made the recordings using a Tascam digital recorder. The howler monkeys were recorded on an island in the Panama canal. The birds were recorded in Costa Rica.
I have coupled recordings of natural sounds with electronics since I began making recordings in the early ‘70s. For this recording, I combined the tracks of the monkeys and the birds and then enhanced the atmosphere with electronics. The scene has the theremin moving through it like something beautiful that is not of the world it moves through. A haunting sort of presence I hope.
13. Innovative Landscapes Laboratory – A Garden From Synthetic Dream (06:52)
Innovative Landscapes Laboratory is a project of Taras Opanasiuk, curator of the Sublime Retreat label.
In both the label’s releases and his own works, Taras explores sound as a vehicle for imaginative travel, looking for ways to push the boundaries of auditory experience. Of particular interest to him are hybrid, immersive soundscapes with a cinematic feel.
More recently, Taras finds inspiration in the legacy of early electroacoustic music of the 20th century, both musique concrete and electronics. He does not seek to imitate, but rather to be inspired by the approaches of working with sound and transfer them to a contemporary context. Taras is an enthusiast of modular synthesizers, which have given him creative freedom in many aspects. Most particularly, performing on modular synthesizers provides the majority of material and has a big influence on his compositions.
Innovative Landscapes Laboratory’s album “Spontaneous Dimensions” was released in June 2024 by Sublime Retreat and received critical acclaim.
The sketch for the song was born when I was working on the Spontaneous Dimensions album. I felt that it could be a stand-alone piece, and it also contained some ideas that I wanted to develop separately, so I put it aside.
I returned to this piece at Philippe’s invitation to participate in the compilation.
First, in this work I explored the interaction between synthetic and concrete, real sounds. Not in any specific technical aspect, but rather from a psychoacoustic perspective, to let them harmoniously create an environment that feels organic. I was also interested in transforming concrete sounds into abstract, unreal ones and combining them to create interesting virtual spaces that blur the line between reality and imagination. For this purpose, I used the voices of birds as a base material to transform them in various ways. With such concepts as a reference, I still followed my intuition, throwing sounds here and there and creating the structure of the piece.
All synthetic percussive sounds were produced by the MI Plaits module, sometimes processed by one of my favorite modules – Mimeophone from Make Noise. The birds’ voices were loaded into Morphagene and Assimil8tor samplers and played back in an improvised way, while being transformed through a QPAS filter and Mimeophone. In the last part of the piece, the MI Beads module created a mutating texture from bird voices. Everything was recorded and edited later in the DAW.
14. François Parra – Aspirl (06:54)
I dedicate this piece to my friend Loreto and my daughter Lili + warm thanks to Pascal Gobin for his listening and advice.
François Parra trained as a visual artist and works with sound in relation to space. At first, he created sound production interfaces linked to some oh his movements, until these gradually came to occupy space autonomously. For him, sound is above all a material that indefinitely redefines space, and thus modifies our social relationships.
He’s or has been a member of several artists’ collectives, including Daisychain, NøDJ/NøVJ, Cap15, Choeur Tactil and PACE (w/ Fa Cesario).
He teaches digital audio at ESAAix and works regularly for live performance, radio and video. He has been studying electroacoustic composition at Marseille’s Cité de la Musique since 2019.
« Aspirl » Is one of two hundred and ten anagrams of « spiral ».
A figure that inspired me to let certain heterogeneous materials rub against each other. The difficulty of making this figure heard led me to replace it with that of the black hole. A point of space that rotates the materials around it, then swallows them to spit them out into an elsewhere to which we have no access.
Some of the materials and objects used in this piece gravitate around a central point, eventually becoming engulfed in it and disappearing, without the overall density diminishing. At least, that’s what I think emerges from listening to it.
This piece contains a limited number of sound sources. Those made with modular synthesizers (of various designs and brands) and rare sound objects (or concrete sounds, if we refer to Schaeffer’s vocabulary) chosen for their capacity to solicit listening, and the memory of listening.
It begins with a series of slow beats around the whole of C and an ostinato with a random cadence, whose variations reappear throughout the piece. By means of a filtering logic, the projection screens generated by the frequencies veil or reveal the sound objects, which give the impression of circulating in trajectories or dynamics close to a spiral, until they disappear. As if sucked in by gravitational frequencies. During composition, a dimension of planes and space appears, which I have tried to reinforce.
The link between these two sound fields, synthetic sounds and concrete sounds, was made possible by the fact that some of the objects, frequencies and then the mix were sent to an envelope tracking module (a Doepfer A-119) which modulated some of the sounds, but also drove the envelopes generated by a Makenoise Maths. Playing with the slope and type of envelope by hand, I slowly thickened the frames and frequencies until this cohabitation of synthesized and concrete sounds formed a dense but coherent listening space, where the provenance of the sounds posed less of a question than the appropriateness of their interaction in a musical context.
Having neither the configuration nor the mastery of modular synthesizers to play them as an instrument, I’ve so far only been able to use them as tools for transforming and creating sounds that I particularly like for their tendency towards abstraction.
The complexity of recorded sounds, which I like just as much, enables me to confront less circular timbres, dynamics and temporalities.
It’s in the tension between these two modes of sound production that I find musical freedom.
Perhaps it’s linked to my memories of certain types of music from my teenage years, or of SF films that have largely contributed to the spread of these heterogeneous sounds?
15. W.Ravenveer – Mental Matters (12:34)
W.Ravenveer aka woo linn ravenveer aka Erwin Van Looveren is an Antwerp, Belgium based multi headed monster doing electronic improvisations with modular synths and other devices, tools, guitars, voice, drawings, etc…
Mental Matters refers to overcoming mental states through sound and music, using them as inspiration or direct action. myself has a past of mental up and downs, I think someway the intensity of my piece and music reflects this.
The track is fully improvised with the exception of using some looped acoustics
For acoustics, i use the Leaf Audio Microphonic Soundbox MK2, which is a device especially made for electro acoustic stuff, containing contact microphones and preamp in a wooden box, with springs, a sort Kalimba, metal rods and so on… Great device to improvise with. I recently started to use it live, in combo with electronics at a friend’s expo of paintings and sculptures, since i thought electro acoustic sounds would fit with the the expo. Besides improvising with it, I also record pieces in a looper so it is easier to focus on the processing or to interact.
For Electronics in this piece, i chose mostly for audio precession tools in the Eurorack modular, like the WMD Synchrodyne and expander, here used to process the electro acoustic sound through phase lock loop and controlled filter, the Industrial music instruments bionic lester filter, here used as morphing filter going from lowpass, hp, bp, to comb filtering delay madness. I also use the Rosumm Electro Panharmonium here to add a layer of unusual sometimes vocal like resynthesized reactions to the electro acoustic stuff, and a little bit of feedback created with the Bastl/Casper dark matter, and a mixer to mix all it and a bit of reverb.
I think acoustic sounds add another dimension and depth + open an other world to the listener and creator and go well together with more electronic sounds, If you look in the past a lot of music which was labelled “electronic music”, is actually electro acoustic music, or uses electro acoustic stuff as base material.
Think Xenakis, Roland Kayn, Andre Almuro… In addition to Eurorack modular, i like to use the Syntrx2 (Erica Synths) to add some electronic sounds, it forms a great combo with the Leafaudio microphonic soundbox to play live and improvise.
16. Palle Dahlstedt – Finger Breath (11:06)
Palle Dahlstedt is a composer, sound artist, improviser and researcher from Sweden.
He studied piano, instrumental and electronic composition at the music academies of Malmö and Gothenburg, and has a PhD (2004) in advanced AI algorithms for composition.
His music, ranging from piano solos and orchestral works to interactive software installations and modular performances, has been performed on six continents, and been awarded several international prizes.
In this live-recorded performance, two sound sources are used as material and as interface for a modular setup: My breathing, and a 100-year old broken 64-string zither, untuned by time.
Every sound made is a source material, captured by various sound engines to be used as audio during the performance, and at the same time the contours of the sound are used to control the very same sound engines. So I cannot feed new sounds into the engines without also “playing” them, in what I call entangled musicianship. Each sonic action has multiple consequences as well as future implications. Hence, the piece unfolds as a time-braid. In the piece I use granular synthesis, reel-tape emulations, and real-time additive spectral analysis, with chaotic pattern generators from iterated folding functions controlling different replay mechanisms, and multi-band envelope following used for gestural control. Throughout the piece I maintain a breathing frequency of around three breaths per minute. In the beginning and end the actual breathing sounds are heard, but in the middle sections we only hear their implications, resulting in an organic, slowly oscillating texture.
Finger Breath was commissioned by Frontside International Chamber Music Festival, funded by the Swedish Arts Council, and performed and recorded in an intimate headphone concert at the lower deck of the ship Kungsö in Gothenburg, Sweden, January 15th, 2023.