Morten Qvenild – The HyPer(sonal) Piano Project
(2024)
author(s): Morten Qvenild
published in: Norwegian Academy of Music
Towards a (per)sonal topography of
grand piano and electronics
How can I develop a grand piano with live electronics through iterated development loops in the cognitive technological environment of instrument, music, performance and my poetics?
The instrument I am developing, a grand piano with electronic augmentations, is adapted to cater my poetics. This adaptation of the instrument will change the way I compose. The change of composition will change the music. The change of music will change my performances. The change in performative needs will change the instrument, because it needs to do different things. This change in the instrument will show me other poetics and change my ideas. The change of ideas demands another music and another instrument, because the instrument should cater to my poetics. And so it goes… These are the development loops I am talking about.
I have made an augmented grand piano using various music technologies. I call the instrument the HyPer(sonal) Piano, a name derived from the suspected interagency between the extended instrument (HyPer), the personal (my poetics) and the sonal result (music and sound). I use old analogue guitar pedals and my own computer programming side by side, processing the original piano sound. I also take out control signals from the piano keys to drive different sound processes. The sound output of the instrument is deciding colors, patterns and density on a 1x3 meter LED light carpet attached to the grand piano. I sing, yet the sound of my voice is heavily processed, a processing decided by what I am playing on the keys. All sound sources and control signal sources are interconnected, allowing for complex and sometimes incomprehensible situations in the instrument´s mechanisms.
Credits:
First supervisor: Henrik Hellstenius
Second Supervisors: Øyvind Brandtsegg and Eivind Buene
Cover photo by Jørn Stenersen, www.anamorphiclofi.com
All other photo, audio and video recording/editing by Morten Qvenild, unless stated.
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.
Double Bass Home Recordings
(2017)
author(s): João Lucas
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: João Pedro Almeida Lucas
Main Subject: Classical Double Bass
Research Supervisor: Margaret Urquhart
Title of Research: Double bass homemade recordings
Research Question: How to get the pure sound of the double bass in a homemade recording?
Summary of Results:
Often, musicians are required to send out a recording for a competition, an audition or simply for self-promotion. Unfortunately, not everybody can afford a studio and qualified technicians to have a good final result. However, nowadays, there is low budget equipment (microphones, sound cards, hand recorders, among others) that, when used in a proper way, can provide good results. Being fascinated by the recording and studio worlds, I began to take interest in this particular matter.
During the past year and a half, I have focused on recording bass players, with different approaches to the instrument and repertoire. There are some factors to take into consideration regarding my experiences: each player was using their own instrument; the recordings were made in different environments (except the ones used for comparison); the same mic settings were used, in order to make a more precise comparison between two different instruments; and all the recordings were made in solo context, with no other instruments involved. The focus was only on capturing the sound (without editing).
In conclusion, I believe that a double bass recording can improve significantly even with low cost equipment, when used in a proper way.
My main goal with this research was to gather my experiences and recommendations into an accessible guide for double bass home recordings.
Biography:
João Pedro Almeida Lucas began his double bass studies in 2006 with Romeu Santos at EPABI (Professional Music School of Beira Interior), Covilhã, Portugal. In 2011, João was invited by his current teacher, Quirijn van Regteren Altena to become his student at the Koninklijk Conservatorium. On 2013, João Participated in “KarrKamp”, a summer camp with the world leading soloist Gary Karr in Victoria, Canada. He is a member of Ciconia Consort Orkest, a string orchestra in The Hague; Salad Ensemble, improvised music project, in Portugal; João is a regular guest in The Residentie BachOrkest and in the Rietveld Ensemble.
Between air and electricity : microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Cathy van Eck
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This research of Cathy van Eck takes the artistic use of the devices that bring sound waves into electricity and back as its central focus point; they are commonly called microphones and loudspeakers. These devices have become essential for many forms of music making. Through the same pair of loudspeakers, people listen to diverse music and sound, such as violin sonatas, rock songs or simply the latest news. Accordingly, microphones and loudspeakers are often designed to remain transparent; that is, "inaudible" in the final sound result. From the 1950s on, microphones and loudspeakers started to play a crucial role not only in the mere reproduction of sound, but also in the creation of music. Composers and musicians often described these new possibilities of using microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments.
This resulted not only in many pieces and performances that used microphones and loudspeakers in unusual ways but also in many new possibilities for musical composition. Confronted with microphones and loudspeakers through my own practice as a composer using electro-acoustic media, Van Eck investigated how microphones and loudspeakers could become musical instruments. This resulted in 28 compositions and a text about historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of the subject. To obtain a clear picture of the possibilities of microphones and loudspeakers in music, Van Ec develops four approaches in my dissertation. Three of them focus on the transparent use (reproducing, supporting and generating). The fourth approach focuses on the use of microphone and loudspeakers in an opaque way; that is, as musical instruments. Van Eck calls this the interacting approach, since the music should, in contrast to the other approaches, not be transmitted through microphones and loudspeakers, but formed, coloured, and changed by these devices. The fourth approach was the starting point for 28 compositions, in which Van Eck investigates in what ways one could interact or "play" microphones and loudspeakers. This resulted in a categorisation of three interaction parameters: movement, material and space. Van Eck looked at how these interaction parameters might be recognised in the work of other musicians and composers, as well as how the interaction with microphones and loudspeakers influenced compositional form, the performance situation, and the relationship between musician and musical instrument. This resulted in a theory and praxis in which Van Eck elaborates upon unique features of music, composed with microphones and loudspeakers.
Several chapters of this dissertation have been adapted and made into the book ‘Between Air and Electricity : Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments’ which has been published at Bloomsbury Open Access DOI 10.5040/9781501327636