Context

Research into the use of transducers with percussion instruments is fast developing. A survey of the field includes the work of Rodrigo Constanzo, whose ongoing project “Kazio-snare” (Constanzo 2023) involves building 3D transducers as snare drum preparations, which he uses in conjunction with MAX and other DIY interventions. He focuses on material generated by feedback between transducers and microphones that he moves around on the drum. The electronic-sounding result resembles both the work of Dan Van Hassel in ”fzzl" (VanHassel 2023), for electronically prepared snare drum, as well as the work of Per Bloland in “Shadows of the electric moon" (Bloland 2023), for snare drum and sound exciter. To play the latter challenging work, the performer turns the drum upside-down and applies the strainer as a sounding tool. The exciter transmits the electronics (stemming from a Max patch triggered by a foot pedal) via its contact with the strainer on the snare. Bloland thus highlights the strainer as a vibrating force, creating a continuous buzz with the electronics.

The work and research involved in these three pieces have commonalties with my project, namely in their object preparations and software manipulations, but my work follows different parameters. I myself prefer placing the exciter (transducer) on the skin instead of the strainer, as Bloland does, to access sonorities that the strainer cannot, and, unlike Constanzo's Kazio-snare, my own project excludes the use of feedback. In general, I prefer not to use feedback on account of the inability to control volume and tone quality. My transducers produce sound not via vibrations in the air, but only through contact with the membrane. 

I’ve found a poetic point of departure in Nina C. Young's Heart.throb (Young 2023), for snare drum and electronics, whose program notes indicate a desire to breathe life into the drum via the vibrating membrane. Here I observe a closer connection between the applied techniques by the performer in relation to the electronics, largely because the electronic and acoustic sounds are more integrated. Similar techniques have surprisingly contrasting results.

The obvious core difference between my own work and that of Van Hassel, Bloland, and Young is that they are composers writing scores that depend upon skilled interpreters (of which I am not one) to be experienced, whereas I am making and playing my music in real time on my own. 

My project finds practical and theoretical resonances in the work of Stephan Meidell, particularly his project “Sound~Currents” (2020- )(Meidell 2023), which employs transducer speakers and microphones inside musical instruments played in ensembles. His work instigates new relations between instruments and people in what he calls “relational ecology”—a non-anthropocentric ecology involving both human and nonhuman actors. Meidell’s term, which drives us to consider interrelations between performer, instrument, and surroundings, brings to mind the idea of a hybrid instrument comprising a field far beyond the instrument's own body. For me, such logic is a path towards emancipation: from expectations and from your instrument, and towards new knowledge—some of which might have been there all along. 

I found another colleague in the Italian composer, researcher, and instrument builder Michelangelo Lupone, who has made substantial work with the projects Feed Drum and Skin Act at Centro Ricerche Musicali (CRM) in Rome (Lupone 2023). Feed Drum in particular triggered my attention, as it dealt with the vibrating membrane of the Gran Cassa. Here, Lupone designed a new, augmented drum involving a membrane with a vibrational map, a steel cylinder, and a loudspeaker. His Feed Drum project is based on the principle of feedback from the sound signal. The performer navigates via the nodes on the vibrational map of the membrane, producing pitches and timbres by applying different levels of pressure. The drum offers the ability to change the vibrations’ amplitude and spectrum, and also offers the option to create sustained notes and glissandi.   

Shortly after starting my research project, I contacted Michelangelo Lupone, as I would be in Italy performing as a duo with Michele Rabbia at the festival Musica Scienza in 2020. At the time, I wanted to work with CRM to develop a new transducer for my project—something along the lines of the Feed Drum, but which made sound exclusively through contact with the drum skin and not (as in Feed Drum) through the air via feedback. However, shortly after my correspondence with Lupone, I realized that the costs for developing a custom-made transducer would exceed my budget and my artistic work would be sidelined in favor of assembling the technology. I ultimately decided to postpone the collaboration, though I hope to return to it in the future.

I have always been interested in how percussionists from different fields have scrutinized the expansion of their instruments’ capabilities. In the artistic research project by Norwegian percussionist Håkon Stene, titled “This Is Not a Drum: Towards a Post-instrumental Performance Practice”(Stene 2014), I have found ample points of departure for my own investigation. Stene explores what percussion performance might look like in the 21st century, focusing especially on compositions that employ household implements, electronic devices, and other objects beyond “traditional” percussion instruments as they are usually defined.

Stene, who is classically trained, has considerable experience collaborating with composers and performing notated works. He offers a valuable contribution to the open quest of what performing percussion might imply today, outlining a practice that he labels “post-instrumental.” It is precisely in this “post-instrumental” practice that I place my current research, which highlights the potential of vibrating speakers in contact with the membrane of a drum. My work as a whole, however, can be said to have been post-instrumental for a long time. Since the end of the ‘90s, I have devoted my professional career to exploring and investigating alternative techniques, preparations, and manipulations of percussion instruments. Being eclectic is part of any percussionist's DNA: we are curious about everything that can make sound, no matter the provenance. The drive to build new instruments and pursue alternative techniques on traditional instruments has motivated soundmakers like myself throughout contemporary music history.

have i misunderstood?

where did it all start?

can it be that it’s been staring me in the face all this time?

when did i realize myself for the first time?

why was it so hard to see coming?

have i repressed it?

why hasn’t anyone told me?

is it too late to do something about it?

or am I already doing something about it?

is it so hard to admit?

that i am not a drummer anymore 

Other examples of influential projects by classically-trained musicians include Jennifer Torrence's "Percussion Theatre: a body in between" (Torrence 2019). Her work addresses the complex matter of how composers and performers can explore the physical body as an extension of percussion practice, and how such an approach can flatten hierarchical structures and re-design relationships in the contemporary music field. Torrence reflects on the entanglement of the body of the musician with her instrument, the physicality of playing an instrument, and how the physical body has historically been perceived in the classical contemporary world. She delivers an articulate exposition of many of the implications of a body on stage, from its symbolism to how it might function as a source of sound and/or a part of instrumentation. She also speaks about the voice as a natural extension of the physicality of the interpreter, describing it as the “fifth limb” of the percussionist. This perspective has helped me shape my own understanding of what I am doing in my own vocal experiments, where I have sought to mold my voice in concordance with the vibrating sine waves on the drum skin. My notion of embodiment takes the form of a circular connection between membranes: the vocal cord membrane, microphone membrane, drum membrane, and ear membrane.

Torrence describes a shift in the relation between agents of the music creation, pointing out how musicians are increasingly becoming (or can become) co-creators of a work. It is evident to me that we are witnessing a convergence in how classical and experimental musicians perceive their roles within collaborations. Interpreters are more likely to advise or be equal partners in compositional processes, while those from the experimental field, or who otherwise don’t work with notation, have taken an interest in formalizing structural and timbral aspects of their work. Within my community at the Norwegian Academy of Music, the pianist Ellen K. Ugelvik (Ugelvik 2018), the violinist Karin Hellqvist (Hellqvist 2022), and the flutist Bjørnar Habbestad (Habbestad 2022) have all produced examples examples of research projects that raise the subject of co-creation/collaboration in contemporary music. The ensemble The Pitch’s Frozen Orchestra project (Pitch 2023), the guitarist and composer Fredrik Rasten (Rasten 2023), and Rhodri Davies (Saunders 2017) are examples from the experimental scene that are actively incorporating structures and specific timbral parameters in their work.

I would like to single out the American percussionist Max Neuhaus, who also functioned as a co-creator, in a sense, in his preparations for Electronics & Percussion - Five Realizations By Max Neuhaus, from 1968. This is an album to which I often return, and for me one of the most inspiring solo percussion albums ever recorded. Especially groundbreaking on that album, for me, is Neuhaus’s version of John Cage’s “Fontana Mix - Feed” (Neuhaus 2023), with its beautiful, sustained feedback generated by placing contact mics on percussion instruments and interconnecting the mics with speakers that face the instruments. Already then, Neuhaus, who had a classical background, was creating complex noise music with controlled feedback loops resonating in the bodies of the percussion instruments. Neuhaus functions within the piece almost as a collaborator in direct communication with Cage with his personal approach to the score, which pointed towards a future in which experimental percussionists would expand their setup with electronic devices and manipulations. This album can be understood as the culmination of his career as a classical percussionist, as, from 1968 onwards, Neuhaus worked more as a contemporary artist, focusing on electroacoustic sound installations. He is bringing something to the experimental field that I feel is missing, and thus has helped me figure out new ways of shaping my own work based on structural ideas and carefully selected sound material. in parallel to my interest in Neuhaus’ work is my appreciation for the English percussionist Tony Oxley’s (Oxley 2023) incorporation of electronics into his augmented drum kit is for me one of the most interesting and organic achievements in experimental percussion. Oxley began his training in jazz, but later became interested in electronics. Eventually he began to explore the potential of a metal frame to which he attached metal objects, strings and springs, inverted cymbals and a giant cowbell, all of which became a resonance conduit for his expanded electro-acoustic percussion setup. He also attached contact mics to the frame and connected them to one channel that was fed into a series of hand built electric devices. Over the years, I have been influenced by Oxley's unique style, characterized by his signature gestural sweep across the drum kit as if he is trying to paint with sound, resulting in complex orchestrated layers. 

In my solo practice, I seek to enter into a non-hierarchical dialogue with the instrument, the space, and the space’s sounding properties. I have always preferred collective music making, and I am used to working in democratic, non-hierarchical processes within my groups. I usually avoid projects where I must interpret a score or a specific idea of a composer. 

Outside of academic artistic research, my project has benefitted additionally from my association with the  Australian ensemble Speak Percussion (SP), whose founders Eugene Ughetti and Matthias Schack-Arnott have invented instruments for many groundbreaking multidisciplinary collaborations. Their work “Transducer," from 2013, re-envisions microphones and loudspeakers as transducers, resulting in beautiful kinetic movements, pulsations, and drones of controlled feedback. 

I have worked with SP on several occasions. During one project, we used transducers attached to a veneer sheet. Each of us sent electrical inputs to the sheet, which would cause rhythmical pulsations in various speeds. By placing different objects on the surface of the veneer sheet, we were able to generate a variety of different sonic colors. 

The work that Schack-Arnott has produced in his time since concluding his work with SP has offered particular inspiration for my own artistic research, as it bears great relevance to my own musical concerns. In his interactive installation “Groundswell,” he invites individuals to move across a circular platform that tilts under the weight of the participants. Thousands of metal balls begin to move, producing waves of sound as a result. Occasionally their motion is disturbed by periodic swells of powerful low vibration. Another work, “Anicca,” entails a large spinning table covered with assorted percussion instruments—an instrument, essentially, that rotates at various speeds and can be played by several performers simultaneously. From both of these works, I’ve taken cues about how to use circularity as a factor in determining the shape and production with sound, as well as in how I structure repeating events in time. 

In the Danish reed player and composer Lars Greve's artistic research project “Rooms of resonance” (Greve 2022), he examines the artistic potential of live acoustic performances in combination what he calls “drivers”: transducers, exciters, or vibrating speakers. These are audio amplifiers that transform electrical signals into mechanical signals—in this case, vibration—where the structure and the material of the object defines the timbre of the sound. In "En verden, der melder sig,” Greve describes the process of interplay between himself on clarinet and a resonating amplified ventilation system in a large hall in Copenhagen that comprised eight drivers. As I understand Greve, he experiences a continuous feedback system when the ventilation system resonates in dialogue with the continuous sounds he is producing on the clarinet—what he calls an interplay between “imagined” and “unimagined” sound.

My relationship with the haptic system and the resonance with objects and the space are similar to what Greve describes. The difference is that I am not amplifying an external object outside of my instrument. Rather, I am amplifying the instrument itself, allowing it to vibrate and resonate in the room. In a way, I have created a smaller feedback system with vibrations and resonance.   

I have been following the pianist Magda Mayas's music and research (Mayas 2019) for the last ten years. Her work, which often lies in the realm of improvised music, often involves preparations and objects as extensions of the instrument. In Mayas’s doctoral research, she explores timbre as a sonic perceptual phenomenon, as well as its relation to specific acoustic spaces, quality and response of the instruments, and the performer’s movements and gestures. Mayas maps her own sound palette and idiosyncratic vocabulary, cataloguing and orchestrating sounds by timbre. Through her practice, Mayas reaches a profound awareness of the compositional possibilities of timbre in improvised music, a deep understanding of technical resources, and the transformative effect on her artistic practice.

I feel in many ways related to Magda Mayas’s detailed analysis of her wide range of musical material, especially as it concerns timbre. However, I have based my own investigation of timbre and its orchestrating potential on my  own performance practice. Both my live performances and recordings have served as the source of material for my analysis. By listening to recordings, I build an awareness of the sonic possibilities of the haptic system, which I can then use to widen timbral interplay and orchestration.