Feedback Saxophone: Expanding the Microphonic Process in Post-Digital Research-Creation
(2024)
author(s): Greg Bruce
published in: Research Catalogue
The microphonic process is the term I use to encapsulate how microphones, loudspeakers, and related media are used to support, extend, and innovate musical practice. In this research-creation thesis, I contextualize, document, and analyze my own application of the microphonic process – feedback saxophone. My feedback saxophone system combines the unique characteristics of the tenor saxophone with the idiosyncrasies of various microphones and loudspeakers to produce and manipulate acoustic feedback. While there are examples of similar systems, there is no standardization and little documentation exists outside of audio recordings. Furthermore, my work employs feedback in a systematized fashion that challenges its conventional, indeterminate use in performance and composition.
To support this research-creation, I discuss the history of the microphonic process, examine contemporary “microphonic” practices, and use these findings to describe and analyze my own works. For the history of the microphonic process, I discuss how microphone amplification changed popular vocal technique through the work of early-microphone singer Bing Crosby. I then discuss how microphonic instrumentaria were variously employed by avant-garde and popular artists using the examples of Mikrophonie I by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hugh Davies’ feedback work Quintet, and the guitar-feedback practice of Jimi Hendrix.
Following this discussion of instrumentaria, I establish the contemporary context in which my research-creation occurs by examining two present-day microphonic saxophonists, Colin Stetson and John Butcher. I use their distinct electroacoustic practices as a springboard to explain recent musical-technological trends: from the accelerating consumption of digital media in the new paradigm of sound, to the reactionary concepts of post-digitalism and the minimally augmented instrument. Lastly, I describe the creation of three concert etudes for my post-digital, minimally augmented feedback saxophone system, and critically examine the new works’ processes of creation, musical materials, and aesthetics.
How to use feedback, advice and judgement after an exam
(2015)
author(s): Barbara Bekhof
published in: KC Research Portal
Abstract
Name: Barbara Bekhof
Main Subject: Viola
Research Coach: Susan Williams
Title of Research: How to use feedback, advice and judgement after an exam
Research Question: How can feedback, advice and judgement be used in such a way, that it contributes to the learning process of the students?
Summary of Results:
This research paper is to conclude the study at the Royal Conservatory. This paper answers the question of how to use feedback, advice and judgments during an exam, and during the preparation of it. Feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal. Important when giving feedback is that the learner is aware of receiving the feedback, and that the comments are objective. Advice is an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action. Important when giving advice is that the person receiving the advice is willing to receive advice and understands on what feedback the advice is based. A value judgment is a judgment of the rightness or wrongness of something or someone, or of the usefulness of something or someone, based on a comparison or other relativity. Judgement is an important part of an exam. For students it is important to know what the criteria are, and towards what they have to work to. To understand more of the learning process, different aspects of playing a string instrument are discussed in the fifth chapter. These aspects are technical facility, musicality and performance quality. The different phases in a musician’s preparation are discussed in the sixth chapter. From learning the score till mastering a piece. In this research all those aspects are combined to offer a guideline for juries and guideline for teachers during the preparation. Recommended for the examinations of the Royal Conservatoire would be to draw up a set of criteria, which are clear for the students and for the teachers who will grade the students.
Biography: Barbara Bekhof (1991) first started playing the violin at age 6. From age 12 she attended the external preliminary program of the Royal Conservatoire, where she was taught by Koosje van Haeringen and from 2008 viola with Liesbeth Steffens. After graduating from the gymnasium, she went on to study Building Engineering at the TU Delft, while simultaneously continuing the viola. In 2013 she received her bachelor diplomas for both Building Engineering as Viola. Her masters at the Royal Conservatoire enabled her to go on exchange to the Haute Ecole de Musique in Lausanne, where she studied under the renowned violist Alexander Zemtsov. After her return, she continued her master with Michael Zemtsov, as well as the master Urbanism at the TU Delft.
Observatorium (2024)
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Daniele Pozzi
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Site-specific feedback circuit at Palazzo Russo, San Cesario di Lecce, Italy, March-April 2024.
Site-specific feedback circuit at Palazzo Russo, San Cesario di Lecce, Italy, March-April 2024.open exposition comments (0)