[Activity 2]

Centering the field of experimental exploration

Having gained a theoretical grasp of various spectral methods and techniques, we leverage them to design a field of practical experimentation. We center this field on a limited number of techniques, and to help select them we employ a strategy we call “mismatching praxes.” Artists “mismatch” praxes when they seek to incorporate—in the same work of art—two paradigms that contain elements of mutual irreconcilability. Such mismatches open new grounds for exploration because they disregard consolidated boundaries within which methods of a given praxis are traditionally applied.

In this particular experiment, the reason behind choosing stretched spectra as the main spectral-inspired technique is that it creates a mismatch with established practices typical of jazz, and especially with playing over chord changes.1 Pirro replaced chord changes with the different deformations of the spectrum (0%, 4%, … 17%), and designed a composition that features gradual increases from harmonicity to inharmonicity. This creates a mismatch that confronts the jazz practice of playing over changes on the one hand, with structures based on the continuous processes found in spectral music on the other hand.

Another mismatch that Stretch exploits comes from confronting highly controlled instrumental syntheses of spectral models, with a practice that is highly reliant on improvisation. George E. Lewis observed that the preoccupation with the assertion of the individual agency and personality of musicians is an essential trait to much of jazz practice.2 As Jacob Wiens points out, this is in direct contrast with the typical spectral way of composing music, which uses the instruments as additive constituents of a synthesized sound.3 In other words, there is the goal of achieving “spectral fusion” by using instruments as elementary building blocks to synthesize complex timbres. And this clashes, or mismatches, with the aforementioned ubiquitous jazz motto “Play who you are.”

Identifying these two mismatches between jazz and spectral music centered our field of exploration. It was instrumental in giving Pirro artistic direction, and he exploited them to develop his actual musical ideas.