Artistic comments
These comments are meant to inform briefly about my techniques, the musical parameters I use, and roles in the musical interplay. These reflections are a part of my work as artistic researcher in the Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowship Programme, situated at Department of Music, NTNU. The full reflection on my research can be found here , and includes the same music and similar comments, but with a more detailed reflection. There are links to special issues in the full research text from my artistic comments. (Please use your web-browser to get back to this post.)
General info/explanation of terms:
In my artistic research, I have suggested some terms to describe what musical parameters and roles I work with, using live electronics:
Play with zones: playing with grades of naturalness and meaning in voice sound and processed voice sound. (Central zone and peripheral zone representing the two poles of extremes) See Chapter 3, especially 3.1.2
“Text”: Sounds like words, but with no semantic meaning (see 3.3)
I am categorising roughly four different types of processing (see 3.4.1):
– Broadening: adding something to the voice
– Narrowing: filtering the frequencies of the voice
– Placing: putting the voice in different rooms/spaces and distances
– Reconstructing: changing the voice sound more substantially
– Singer, speaker, soundsinger and soundmaker: a rough categorising of four different roles for the vocalist in the interplay. The two latter roles are- compared to the acoustic voice- made easier available within a much broader range, through the use of electronics:
– Soundmaker: Main focus on sound and/or its function, going away from the voice as a bearer of meaning through melody or speech, often in peripheral zone.
– Soundsinger: Between singer/speaker and soundmaker. This role includes the function of melody as commenting or accompanying the musical scenery, not being a traditional lead voice; lyrics as sound more than meaning – “language” without bearing semantics, processed sound creating a distance to the natural voice. It is somewhere in between the central and peripheral zone.
(See Chapter 4, especially 4. 2.)
Example:Numb street cabaret, improvisation with Thomas Strønen,VOXPHERIA (GIGAFON 2012)
I am using a cluster effect to ‘broaden’ the voice, later I am ‘placing’ the voice with compressor and filtering. Both effects are making the voice less natural, but still relatively close to central zone -the spoken text being the closest. I am “looping an accompaniment”, and also “answering the loop”. (The comments in the Soundcloud-player refer to terms explained above. Different instruments and techniques are described and discussed in Chapter 2 and 3.)
Links:
‘Broadening ’ and ‘Placing’: 3.4.1
Lexicon MX 400 Dual stereo/Surround Reverb Effects Processor: 2.2.2
Electrix Repeater Loop based recorder: 2.2.3
Looping and sampling: 3.5 – discussing some challenges in: 3.6
