idea: develop shared gestural language that fosters real-time collaborative composition of electronic music within an ensemble
tentative connections between practices of vocal and electronic improvisation
ideas electronic music shares with trad. vocal painting
- volume
- “break” - mute
- “make”
- loop - totally analogous concept but can be painful to do (requires a loop pedal, requires tons and tons of prep)
. . .with trad. conducting
- relevance of “space” (resonant? dead? long/short decay?)
- potential necessity of phrasing
areas of moderate overlap (i.e. similar gesture but different meaning)
- “filter sweep” - direct correlation to actual filter so much as indirect rhythmic density
- finger on hand (back to key center) - “come back home” is a useful idea, but it needs refining.
ideas for possible electronic parameters
- density
- general frequency range
- ictus/tactus gestures - i.e. make an attack
further refinement of idea
general conceptual concerns
- difficulty of achieving consistency without homogeneity of equipment (everyone shouldn’t need a loopstation, filter, etc) - interesting because most people have the same setup vocally, but improvisation rigs vary WILDLY (modular racks, shoegaze pedalboards, supercollider programs, max patches, contact mic orchestras, no-input mixing rigs, traditional subtractive synthesizers. . . the list goes on)
- question of actual applicability - within niche worlds such as live electronic music improvisation, might it be better for individual ensembles to develop internal languages that are suited to their practice? if so, is it still possible to categorize/assemble a toolbox of broad ideas with opportunity for flexible implementation?
steps moving forward
- maximize time spent in improvisatory contexts (electronic or otherwise)
- internalize foundational scholarship for vocal painting and electronic improvisation
- “intelligent choir”
- “live modular instrument”
- further investigate overlap between vocal and electronic practices (a capella work that references hiphop idioms, use of vocal samples in pop music, ubiquity of vocal processing, and so on)
- consider the relevance of live electroacoustic music- how strong are connections to ideas such as actor-network theory, computer as improviser, and collective determination of space and timbre
- research categorization/parameterization of sound - what are different ways a sound could be described with regard to the frequency domain and the time domain?
- think about connections between gesture and action - if vocal painting gestures are sometimes analogous to physical actions (“break”ing a connection by disconnecting a cable, turning a knob to do a filter sweep) and sometimes purely metaphorical (“V” gesture, looping as if in a DAW, finger on hand for key center), how might electronic gestures fit into this spectrum? this is especially interesting considering that live electronic performance necessitates physical gesture in a way that singing doesn’t— in a way, EVERY knob you turn and button you press is a metaphor for the sound you want to make