4.3 Post-Digitalism and Minimally Augmented Instruments
The microphonic instrumentaria employed by Crosby, Stockhausen, Davies, and Hendrix, were made up of cutting-edge technologies. While Stetson and Butcher continue the lineage of the microphonic process in 2023, their novel approaches are facilitated by rudimentary devices that their microphonic forebears would have recognized and understood. Technological development has greatly accelerated in recent decades, so why does Stetson’s and Butcher’s work break the long-standing relationship between advancing technology and musical practice? These two saxophonists are engaged in post-digitalism, a movement that has emerged in reaction to the growing prevalence of digital media in the 21st century. To explain this, I discuss some of the musical-technological developments of the late 20th and early 21st century.
In Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music / Consuming Technology,1 Paul Théberge explains how the relationship between musicians and technology evolved over the latter part of the 20th century. He notes that during the 1960s and early 70s, new technological innovations were taken up by artists to create a diversity of musical experiences, including Hendrix’s distorted feedback, The Beatles’ elaborate multitrack studio albums, and Stevie Wonder’s Moog synthesizer basslines.2 He refers to this technique-centred musical-technological relationship, which includes the discussed microphonic innovators, as the “sound” paradigm. Dominating until the digital revolution, at least in popular music, in the style paradigm a genre’s conventions are challenged and innovated through new techniques in “performance, recording, and/or original programming.”3 However, as digital software and instruments became more widely adopted by pop artists, the musicians became enmeshed in a consumerist relationship with their musical tools, both driving, and being driven by, the market forces that produced them. Focusing on pop artists in the 80s and 90s, Théberge describes this new relationship as one characterized by the paradigm of “sound.” In this paradigm, artists do not pursue innovation through new techniques, but instead seek the “acquisition and technical modification of pre-existing sounds”4 which are housed in a variety of physical and virtual digital instruments, such as samplers, drum machines, and synthesizers.
The distinction between the style and sound paradigms is useful, in that it separates two fundamental approaches to music performance. At the core of the style paradigm is how artists employ a technical approach towards their instrumentarium. Hendrix, for example, used his amplifier as part of the microphonic process to develop new techniques for electric guitar, expanding the sounds it could produce through distinct and explicit interactions. In contrast to Hendrix, what Théberge suggests is that popular guitarists who engage in the sound paradigm are more likely to incorporate new musical materials by buying them, rather than develop them through technical means. This plays out in popular electric guitar practice today where it is common for electric guitarists to own a plethora of effects pedals that are not intended to fundamentally change their playing technique, but nevertheless gives them access to sought-after sounds.
For classical music, however, moving towards the sound paradigm did not mean shifting away from novel recording methods or original programming. The growing relevance of coding in Max, a visual programming language for music, and the continued importance of sophisticated electronic music studios housed in universities, signal that new approaches to production are still valued. Yet, like in pop music, computer music performance of the 1990s and early 2000s emphasized these programming and production methods over live performance and instrumental technique, leading scholars to criticize the increasing presence of “knob twiddling” and electronic “baby-sitting” in the genre.5 Julio d’Escriván questioned the lack of visible effort in electronic music performance of the time, suggesting, “It seems that the newer the technology applied to music, the less effort is apparent on the part of the performer.”6 Such a statement mirrors van Eck’s instrumental frameworks: without visible performer effort, which often relates to explicit interactions with an instrument, it is difficult to perceive the instrumental qualities of digital devices. To address the shortcomings of the seemingly effortless and transparent qualities of the sound paradigm, “interactive” computer music intended to recentre human performers in what could be considered an updated style paradigm within classical electronic music. Unsurprisingly, Guy Garnett suggests that including human performers in a work allows for more gestural nuance, varied interpretations, and an extended performance life, when compared to purely electronic works.x He also believed that “the use of the computer conjoined with a human performer brings with it the possibility for certain new extensions to performance brought about by the technology itself,”7 while also extending “the performer’s ability based on skills the performer already has.”8
One outcome of this desire for a more balanced human-technological relationship was the development of augmented instruments – acoustic instruments equipped with electronic media such as MIDI controllers, microphones, and finger-pressure sensors. Augmented instruments most frequently interface with digital software run by an external computer that controls any number of musical parameters and events, such as modifying the instrument’s signal, triggering pre-recorded sounds, and even generating visual material. There have been numerous augmented instruments developed, but augmented wind instruments are the most pertinent to this discussion. The accelerating power and availability of computer software along with decreased costs of fabrication and design leads many augmented instruments to have a maximal approach to electronic additions. For example, the “hyper-flute” developed by Cléo Palacio-Quintin has the following augmentations: an ultrasound sensor, two magnetic field sensors, an accelerometer, three pressure sensors, six buttons, a light sensor, and a gyroscope.9 Similarly, Matthew Burtner used the 15 sensors on his “metasaxophone” to create MIDI data that controlled nearly two dozen parameters on a software-based virtual violin.10 Augmented instruments such as the hyper flute and metasaxophone are examples of digital technology being used to expand woodwind performance practice. Palacio-Quintin herself, however, recognizes their limitations:
there are very few performers who have played consistently on the same augmented instrument for as many years as I have, and there have been almost no publications concerning performance skills on such new instruments…The instruments themselves have not changed much (the hardware is mainly the same), even if the software developed to play with them evolves with each new work. This long-term dedication to interactive performance on stable interfaces gave me the opportunity to develop a real professional practice. Such a level of virtuosity – like any professional instrumentalist would have on an acoustic instrument – is unfortunately rarely achieved on new interfaces, due both to a lack of dedication over time, and to changes in technology that make interfaces obsolete before even being mastered by any performer.x
This statement points to why augmented instruments have not made a lasting impact on instrumental performance practice. Augmented instruments may have helped refocus human performers in electroacoustic classical music, perhaps nearing a balance between the style and sound paradigms, yet software remains the most potent part of the instrument. Augmented instruments rarely produce performances that convincingly combine the acoustic qualities of the “base” instrument with digital extensions, as the acoustic instrumental technique is frequently overshadowed and overpowered by the software it is purportedly controlling. Furthermore, traces of the consumerist sound paradigm present in augmented instruments means that by the time a particular instrument has been fully developed, the electronic sounds it is controlling are no longer fashionable.
The power balance between electronic and acoustic sound, rapidly changing technology, heightened complexity, and other negative impacts of the sound paradigm, are all reasons to question the merits of the digital revolution for music performance. Various schools of thought have spung up to address the shortcomings of, and provide meaningful alternatives to, digital hegemony. D.I.Y. electronic musician and theorist John Richards explains how many are dissatisfied with “the vestiges of the digital world: the virtual, wireless, pseudo-modernist design, utilitarianism and seemingly endless possibilities.” This critique, Richards continues, “is not born of nostalgia nor an attempt to re-create the past but is a way of trying to dislodge the ubiquity of digital technology.”11
These sentiments and desires are manifested in post-digitalism, a movement or aesthetic which involves “an approach to creative work that embraces technologies, be they digital or analogue, software or hardware – including their faults” and whereby the “accidental, the outcast, the ‘noise’ of machines and the ‘idiosyncrasy’ of software processes are brought to the centre of creative practice.”x Unlike the consumerist sound paradigm whereby new material is ready-made for purchase, post-digitalism brings into focus the limitations and particularities of technology, including acoustic musical instruments. The failure of augmented instruments to impact instrumental practice is a result of their reliance on digital modes of production which do not convincingly integrate these idiosyncrasies.
Could post-digital augmented instruments accomplish this integration? “Infra-instruments,” as proposed by John Bowers and Phil Archer, is one model that does. These are augmented instruments in line with post-digital thinking that are “of restricted interactive potential, with little sensor enhancement, which engender simple musics with scarce opportunity for conventional virtuosity.”12 One of their examples is the “strandline guitar” whereby the pickup, strings, and whammy bar of a guitar are removed from the body and affixed with, and to, various beach detritus.13 Such instruments certainly provide a model for post-digital augmentation but do little to further conventional instrumental practice. How then can post-digitalism be used as a core aesthetic in augmented instruments that may also engage in and even advance instrumental technique?
The strandline guitar.14
I propose minimally augmented instruments as a model for integrating the technique-centred style paradigm with the guiding principles of post-digitalism. Exchanging the term instrumentarium for augmented instrument, forerunners of the microphonic process such as Crosby and Hendrix become pioneers of augmented instruments as well. Naturally, pre-digital artists could not have engaged with post-digitalism, so Stetson and Butcher become the exemplars. Stetson makes his post-digital attitudes explicit in his liner notes concerning his intentional use of noise (as explained above) and by bringing attention to his live performance virtuosity: “all songs recorded live in single takes with no overdubs or loops.”15 Similarly, for a time Butcher used a laptop to control his feedback but stopped because it “made it seem more complex than it really was.”16
Through minimally augmenting their instruments using the microphonic process, Stetson and Butcher harness the noise of their instrumentaria, be it key percussion or acoustic feedback, which they mediate through distinct instrumental techniques. The minimal augmentations and instrumental primacy of their practices combat the consumerist tendencies inherent in the sound paradigm, future-proofing their instrumentaria from obsolescence and ensuring their equipment can be easily found, repurposed, and repaired. As their musical grammar stem from their physical instrumentaria, no digital sounds may overshadow their instrumental technique, and they, as human performers effortfully interacting with augmented instruments, remain at the centre of the music. To expand on their work and contribute to post-digitalism and the concept of the minimally augmented instrument, I now present my work with the microphonic process in an original approach to feedback saxophone.