Research questions and artistic goals

The research questions are closely intertwined with the aesthetic and artistic goals of this project.  As the questions, together with their following elaborations, all lie somewhere between a claim, an hypothesis and a question, they also already point to some strategies for answering them. After all, now I have some idea where I am going with this project. Therefore they have also been sharpened and expanded upon after some time in the fellowship program. These questions serve more to set in motion a process than to find definitive answers. This process is explorative in its nature and the answers I may find provides feedback for further investigation of the original questions.  I want to underline that they are not intended to be universally applicable, hence the explicit use of ‘I’ and ‘my’ in the questions. 

Although I have some thoughts on answers to these questions here and elsewhere in my reflection, the main proposals for tentative answers should be considered to be the projects artistic outcome itself. 

I see my project existing on a continuum between interpretation and stretching. At one end of it (interpretation) I aim to play close to the source material and at the other end (stretching) I explore qualities intrinsic to folk music in a way where the musical foundation and inspiration is felt rather than explicitly heard.

1. How can I use the performative possibilities granted by an instrument whose input structures are decoupled from its sonic response, for an expanded interpretation of folk music?

There are two big differences between acoustic and electronic instruments. The most obvious is perhaps the sound, but even more radical, in my opinion, is the difference that comes from the non-stable mapping of player input and sounding output. The groundbreaking designer of electronic instruments, Don Buchla put it like this: 

«We’re dealing with a class of instruments that has one very salient feature that's different from anything found in the acoustic instrument realm. That is that the input structure and the resulting sonic responses are no longer tied together in fixed and predictable ways. Information from the input structures can be used to control the tone-generating structure in a variety of potentially complex ways, using a computer to establish the moment-to-moment relationships, or mapping. This mapping is essentially a third part of an instrument that up to now we have never had access to, other than by pulling out stops on an organ. So we have to learn to deal with that effectively».

In this project, I attempt to use these abilities as means for alternative approaches to playing folk music, whichin turn, may contribute to new perspectives on the source material itself.

Inherent in this disconnect between player input and instrument output is also a loss of resolution in expressiveness compared to an acoustic instrument. The gestures one can make on an electronic instrument are much more crude, so a sub-question that arises as a consequence of this is: 

How can I use this non-responsive nature of my instrument to bring forth elements in the music that are otherwise shrouded by the detailed expressive quality of acoustic instruments?

In other words using this plain response to reveal different qualities in the music that may be not be heard when it is played with a lot of detailed ornamentation and expressivity (which is how folk music is usually performed). A working method inherited from the reductionism school of improvised music that can serve to distill the music in to more elemental forms.

I approach these affordances of my instrument from my perspective as an improviser and performer of live music. These input/output mappings (or self-playing relations) that I patch/program are interacted with in real time in a sort of call and response feedback loop. Furthermore I have also inherited, from my background playing acoustic music, a dogma of not using any pre-recorded sounds or sequences. 

Combining these performative possibilities of my instrument with the improvised forms and phrasing of folk music, it is my aim to heighten a sense of presence in the music, which to me corresponds to how I experience presence in a great folk music performance.  

2. How can I use the elemental, ever-lasting sounds of electricity to amplify the inherent time dissolving qualities of folk music?

Certain electronically produced sounds can at times convey an elemental or ever-lasting quality, and in doing so they dissolve and alter my experience of time. This in turn gives rise to an indescribable feeling of sublime character, for which I am searching in this project. 

Sometimes I can get a similar sensation when listening to, or playing folk music. Although I have my own experiences as a point of departure for my investigation, it is not only me that gets this kind of feeling. Legendary fiddler in the Setesdal tradition Torleiv Bjørgum, tells a story which bears witness of such effects by the music:

…Most players (of this music) have experienced that they at one point or several, enter a state where they’ve been able to play stronger than they normally would be able to. It is told in old tales, that if fiddlers entered this state called ‘rammeslåtten’, then it was impossible for them to stop playing. And that their instruments then had to be taken away, and sometimes they would also cut the strings. But the fiddle would continue to play just as well… 

-  Interviewer (Morten Levy) Have you yourself experienced something like this?

- Yes. (Bjørgum 1977)

Using this connection between the self-playing fiddle and the unending drone of oscillators, this project attempts to amplify these transcendental qualities in the music.

One such quality is that of tuning. The folk music that I work with in this project, comprises of pitches outside of the common 12-tet tuning system and can, in my opinion, be better approximated using simple whole number ratios (just intonation). These kind of pitch relations, with their recurring interference patterns, create for me a certain texture of ever-lasting quality. Using the plain and stable sound that electronic oscillators produce, I wish to place these in-tune sounds in the foreground. 

Another aspect of electronically produced sound that this project explores is soundwhich I perceive to have an elemental quality. By this I mean sounds that are experienced as plausible in the sense that they sound as though they would emanate from a tangible physical source. Although these sounds may exist in alternate dimensions which may have radically different laws of nature than the one we inhabit. After all a sound source of electric origin is as primal as an acoustic one. Thunder has been around for a long time. The seminal musician Björk expressed it this way:

«Instead of wood or leather, metal and all these things that we’ve so far made music out of… stroking a string…  we are using electricity… to make for the air.» (Björk 1997)

highlighting the fact that since some time back, we now have the possibility of working with electricity in a malleable way to produce sound, which compared to the history of music and folk music is a relatively new development. Byusing these types of sounds it is my intention to let the folk music be heard in a different sonic environment, which may alter our experience of it. 

In using electronically produced sound, this research project also investigates how folk music may be perceived when played by an instrument which lacks a sound signature that has been ingrained in public consciousness to be connected to folk music (as is the case with the hardanger-fiddle or nyckelharpa for instance). Can I make these effects that I’m after in the music to be experienced stronger by  doing away with the connection to particular instruments associated with folk music?  

3. Overarching exploration of (my and my co-players) aesthetics in interpreting folk music, and stretching material from folk music using techniques from electronic and minimalist music. 

No matter where the music is happening on this aforementioned continuum there is a constant consideration to satisfy certain aesthetic qualities in the music, most important of which is an experience of the music as somehow being ever-lasting or one could also say, slow motion.

On the stretching part of the continuum, I make music by a process of breaking folk music down to its constituent parts. To then put these parts together in different ways, using techniques borrowed from electronic and minimalist music, adopted for an improvisatory performance setting. When ‘putting the parts together’ I imagine them as objects in an existing space, generating plausible sounds. This space can for instance, be a biome populated by various crickets and critters, or it could be a multidimensional cosmos with stars twinkling abstract sonics. Other tools for ‘putting the parts together’ include compositional and performative techniques pioneered by composers such as Terry Riley, Arvo Pärt and La Monte Young My own takes on ‘time lag accumulation’ (long delay lines LINK), ‘tintinnanbuli’ (harmonizing algorithms) and drones in just intonation etc. are employed in this project. 

At the interpretative end of the continuum, I find that when adapting source material, with the depth from a long tradition, for a different instrument, as I’m doing in this project, it can easily happen that it sounds like a pastiche of the original. This is opposite to my intention. I am after a sincere expression where I  play folk music using the aesthetic possibilities that the affordances of my instrument provideme. I like to see it as a diffraction of the source material through the lens of my instrument and my aesthetics, rather than using direct translation as a method and metaphor. 

Furthermore, I wish for the music to have a virtuosic quality to it, stemming from the technical difficulty of performing this music. This is especially relevant for concerts as I hope that this quality, will add to a greater sense presence in the music, bringing me and the audience deeper into the moment. I find this important because, for me this experience of presence is like the other side of the coin to the sensation of the music being ever-lasting. 

Finally, I aspire for all the music combined to coalesce in a an expression which, although containing many disparate ideas, still appear as a solid and coherent, with a great sense of depth. It is a delicate and subjective matter whether or not this is achieved. This is an essential part of the research, wherein my main challenge lies.

Thus, this project is about the discovery of possible musics when traversing the space between these two outer borders of the previously described continuum. Both alone as well as with co-musicians.

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