jwilzewske: percussion

Showing posts with label percussion. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Experiencing ‘Map of Rain Hitting Water’ in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy

W   hen at last Justine arrives, he’s at the piano
     the hammers strike and rise
with his fingers, and the pedal’s damp
   shifting carries through the instrument
as waves echo through the frame of a ship...
Now he thinks perhaps the music’s
More like a map of rain hitting water—
He’s moving closer to her without moving;
And how wonderful to be held from her
   at last by nothing but the song's duration—”
  — Wayne Miller, ’What Night says to the Empty Boat’, p. 73.

I ’d first listened to Mara Gibson's new 16:30 work commissioned by Mark Lowry of newEar Contemporary Music Ensemble in July. The DVD has Mark performing vibraphone, log drum, woodblock, gong, tam-tam, songbird whistle, cymbal, and miscellaneous percussion, accompanied by video imagery and film by Caitlin Horsmon. Bob Beck rendered a high level of engineering and production values achieved in this recording.

T he beauty of the chromatic intoning of vibraphone, punctuated by tolling woodblock, drum, and, less frequently, other instruments captured my interest from the first listening. The glisses and pitch-bent post-processed sounds of the vibraphone acoustically paralleled the imagery, the lateral motion of water in the foreground and in the distance; the water droplets in air, falling under gravity in parabolic arcs; the globules of water separating from a stream; the intercalating pastel cloud layers.

B ut now several months later—having just last week returned to the midwest after a period at our home on the East Coast, and having driven through some of the areas of hurricane-caused power outages and natural devastation—these textures and narrative arcs of ‘Map of Rain Hitting Water’ evoke different meanings for me. The watery surfaces now seem ominous and obscure what lies beneath.

T he reflections imply sky and sun, but these seem untrustworthy. The eddies and vortices imply structure and hidden currents, turbulence: the violence and indifference of Nature to humanity.

T he speed of the current makes abundantly clear how rapidly we will be swept away, annihilated, pointlessly. The accelerando/ritardando phrasing imparts a large-scale 2+ minute hypermeter to the piece.

N o animals or other sentient creatures are seen anywhere in Horsmon’s imagery here... bulk matter only, liquid and air. The abruptly changing frame-rate... declares a capriciousness of our frame of perception, together with Nature’s propensity to precipitous, emergent change, against which our human wishes and needs are respectively futile and irrelevant.

T here is midway through the film a montage of stop-action stills, with different transparency/saturation settings, calling into question what is motion. It brings to mind horror film sequences built up out of successions of freeze-frame stills.

T he very high-speed video of the water droplets, together with digitally-stretched contrast and/or edge-sharpening, gives heightened perception of the separateness of the individual [droplets].

W e have here a sort of ‘video-monitor-as-painter’s-canvas’ effect... a palimpsest of successive masks and over-writing of previous images and surfaces.

T he film draws our attention to the very thinness and 2-D nature of our existence in the biosphere, between the sky and the depths of water.

I n fact, most of the film is of deep water: the first 5:45 is sky; second 6:00 is water; third 4:45 is water hurled into sky—with gradual transitions between these segments.

T he piece conveys feelings of loneliness and alienation that arise from our understanding that we are alone in the universe and insignificant in its workings. Underneath the performer’s punctuated observations and soliloquy about fate and the stream of events that occupies our attention while we are alive is a certain forboding, a fear of nothingness.

T hat we are in some inescapable way alienated from Nature is an old concept, going back at least to Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th Century. It is also a notion that coheres with our current environmental problems, insofar as our estrangement from Nature involves a hubris that forecloses upon developing an awareness and regard for how we depend upon Nature, in such a way that we would stop harming Nature.

R elinquishing whatever agency I have in the presence of the bulk matter around me reveals my beholdenness to the agency of other humans who are living now and who will take care of me in my dying days and who will outlive me, and the susceptibility of my remains and the residue of my life’s work to the agency of all creatures and natural processes that persist beyond my tiny lifetime.

T he harsh contrast and unblinking lens of the camera—together with the continuous, unflinching sound of the music—announce the abject hopelessness of our achieving any anonymity in the flesh, or participating in any genuine reciprocity with Nature.

S uch existential worries are absent when reciprocal trans-corporeality involves the definitely spiritual, or “more than human”, or involves an ambiguity or reversibility afforded by the hardly-human-at-all, or as-minimally-human-as-possible, as in Wilderness or Zombieness.

O ne can make some sense then of this piece’s assertion that we might be estranged from the flesh without that meaning either that such estrangement puts us really outside the flesh, or that landscapes including sky and water are themselves not fleshy. We are estranged, every bit as much as sky and water are patently fleshy.

T his is a superb composition, an excellent film, a beautiful performance, an excellent recording—sufficient to propel an evening’s meditation and beyond.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Chamber Music Repertoire for Didgeridoo?

T here are a few orchestral works that include didgeridoo (Sean O’Boyle and others), but for conservatory recital or chamber performances there are currently only about 3 dozen chamber music compositions that are readily available. Most of these are indexed at the Australian Music Centre (Duos, Quartets, Quintets, Sextets, Octets; Solo with vocal ensemble). You may also want to consider Peter Sculthorpe’s String Quartet No. 12 with didjeridu, and ‘Lorin’s Piece’ for didjeridu and voice; Neal Corwell’s ‘Aboriginal Voices’ trio for tuba, didgeridoo, and voices; Philip Glass’s ‘Voices’ for organ, didgeridoo, and narrator; and Dubravko Lapaine’s ‘Rescribi’ trio for piano, didgeridoo, and percussion.

[50-sec clip, Dubravko Lapaine, ‘Kosmopterix’, ‘Rescribi’, 1.6MB MP3]

and ‘Putnik’:

[50-sec clip, Dubravko Lapaine, ‘Kosmopterix’, ‘Putnik’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he aboriginal people have a great deal to teach the western world about wind playing in general and lip reeds in particular. The trombone may seem old when compared to western orchestral instruments, but it is only a five hundred year-old baby when compared to the possible forty thousand-year-old tradition of the didjeridu.”
— Stuart Dempster, 1979.

V irtuosic double- and triple-tonguing in the didgeridoo repertoire have parallels to ‘cursus’ in classical Latin oratory and medieval chant (see Eklund, link below), and you might consider that idea in preparing a program. Rhythm—the patterning of accents in speech or singing—establishes expectations; it entrains the listener and the speaker, phase-locking them to the pattern. Accents in Latin fall on at least one out of every three syllables. But in English and other languages the gaps are longer—you can often go for five or six syllables between accents. The didge literature tends to emphasize prosody and oratorical aspects—not only because of your vocalizations into the didge, but also because you have just the fundamental (and pedal), plus a few harmonics (‘toots’, ‘trumpets’) to work with. (Years ago, Juilliard professor Ivan Galamanian famously drew an analogy between instrumental (violin) playing and speech, in which he asserted that attacks are consonants and the sustained notes are vowels, and performers should treat them as such. The analogy is true enough for strings and other instruments, but it’s hardly even an ‘analogy’ in didgeridoo playing: given all of the tongue, jaw, and vocal tract technic involved in didge performance, the vowels-consonants assertion is a self-evident fact of how the didge sounds are produced.)

V ocal and instrumental rhythms are sometimes direct translations of a poetic meter. In other words they may be sung or played, interchangeably. Far more often than not, however, vocal and instrumental rhythms create what we might call ‘rhythmic counterpoint’ when heard with reference to the poetic meter—the interplay among two or more rhythmic threads or voices. By continually altering the durational relationships and varieties of accent in a succession of syllables, musicians can elicit the close attention of listeners.”
— Michael Tenzer, p. 43.

I n thinking about other instrumental repertoire that might be suitable as-is or transcribable for chamber didge recital, you might explore pieces whose articulation and accents entail sound-envelopes that are marcato ‘thrust-followed-by-decay’, an accent that resembles a plucked string instrument like a double-bass. With the didge, the decay is because the outflow of air from the cheeks that occurs while you are inhaling through the nose in circular breathing can’t be as forceful or sustained as the outflow of air when supported by the diaphragm. In general, highly rhythmic, marcato pieces in low register are likely to be feasible and stylistically coherent with didge performance practice, regardless whether they are for winds, strings, or percussion. There are pieces for tympani (for example, Daniel Jenkyn Jone’s ‘Sonata for Unaccompanied Kettledrums’) that could be performed as-is or transcribed for didgeridoo. And there are a number of chamber pieces for bass clarinet or low brass that are plausible. More links that you may find useful follow.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Sangam: Santoor, Bansuri, Tabla, Odissi performance in KC on Saturday

B  eautiful Syām, you have been awake all night;
  your lotus-eyes are drowsy.
Red fingernail marks are etched upon your chest
  like half-moons.
Your turban, once tied, now dangles on your head:
  your clothes are falling off, and your tilak is gone.”
  — Poem K207:P3/146:S832, quoted by A. Whitney Sanford, Singing Krishna: Sound Becomes Sight in Paramānand’s Poetry, p. 46.

T his Saturday there will be a special performance of Indian traditional music, connected with the annual Sangam festival. The 4 performers are renowned both in India and far beyond (see links below).

W hen I have written about Indian classical music several times before in this blog, I’ve mainly focused on long time-scale rhythmic and melodic patterns... some of the features that are maybe most distinctive to a Western listener. But this time when I learned of this special performance and looked forward to the possibility of attending it, I decided to learn a bit about the history and motivations of these musical forms.

W hat great fortune I had!—namely, discovering Whitney Sanford’s excellent 2009 book ‘Singing Krishna: Sound Becomes Sight in Paramānand’s Poetry’ (link below)! It is beautifully written—concise; clear; highly readable—and its detail and insightfulness serve as a tremendous help to the Western reader who wishes to understand performance practice for carnatic and other genres of Indian music, regardless whether it is extemporized or is performed in traditional ritual.

A lso covered at length are the motivations of the structure and orchestration of such music, engineered as it is so as to induce synaesthetic Scriabin-type “audio-visual/sound-heard-as-colors” transcendent experiences in the listener. Besides synaesthetic qualities in the medieval poet Paramānand’s writings and in music that is composed or improvised in a similar manner, Paramānand also propounds the unity of the One and the Many—a mystical oneness of all individuals with the Divine. The infinite and the finite are the same—homeomorphic, according to Paramānand.

T he classical Indian listener is ideally well-familiar with the ritual and with the spiritual context that it is meant to facilitate. Ideally, the listener is also equipped with powerful memories from previous participations in it—and all of those memories are ready to be triggered by the music and ambient sounds, and sights, and scents that are associated with the new year’s festival performance. There is, as Sanford’s book vividly attests, a tremendous physicality to the experience—the entire experience; the music, the dance, the imagery and colors, the scents, everything!—something I had not appreciated before, with my passive, CD/MP3 listening only. Multisensory overload, almost—aiming at achieving spiritual or mystical union.

I f you’re in Kansas City this Saturday afternoon, I hope you will be able to attend the performance and experience something mystical yourself. The performance promises to be deeply enjoyable at the very least! Links below, if you’re interested!

[Note: Praveen's music frequently employs the technique of singing into the flute (gayki style; resembling Judith Shatin's 'Fasting Heart' or George Crumb's 'Vox Balaenae' or Jethro Tull). He is also a master of thanthrakari flute style. Very cool, at least to us who play flute!]

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Kari Johnson & Robert Burke: ‘Unity’ Concert

M any things to be enthused about last night, regarding Kari Johnson’s and Robert Burke’s KCeMA performance at Unity Temple.

Christopher Biggs – The Ends of Histories (piano, electronics, and video, 10-min)
Peter Swendsen – Nothing that is not there and the Nothing that is (instrumented bass drum and electronics, 8.5-min)
Jeff Herriott – Velvet Sink (piano and electronics, 13-min)
João Pedro Oliveira – Liquid Bars (vibraphone and electronics, 12-min)
Scott Blasco – Queen of Heaven (piano and electronics, 23-min)

C hristopher Biggs’s ‘The Ends of Histories’ for piano, digital video and audio represents ideas regarding how history must end—any history, all Histories—including religious ones, socio‐political ones, geological histories, all of them. A primary-color-heavy, apocalyptic video of watery scenes and splotches of color is displayed on a screen adjacent to pianist Kari Johnson. The high-contrast, posterized quality of the video’s color palette adds to the non-human, bichromatic wolf-vision, Terminator-vision, Predator-vision, insect-vision viewpoint of the camera/cameraperson. The piano part is full of sforzando emphases, a hyper-percussive quality that is meant to mate with the punctate, unforgiving synth and cosmically abject waveform-samples on the digital audio tracks. Ms. Johnson provided a spirited, empathetic reading, flawless.

T he materials represent the following conceptions of the end of history: (1) a polarized religious End Time whereby everyone either ascends into a Pleasant World or descends into Fire—a prophetic, spiritual, transcendent End that has appeared in many forms throughout history and is currently represented by the idea that there will be some kind of cataclysm at the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012; (2) a sociopolitical End in which capitalist democracy supplants all other ideologies...; and (3) ‘scientific’ Ends... mass-extinctions.”
— Christopher Biggs, composer.

P eter Swendsen’s ‘Nothing is not there and the Nothing that is’ for miked/instrumented bass drum and electronics draws its inspiration from violent forces of wind and weather. Forces of Nature are the architects of the sonic space and textures, and humans are compulsory respondents to natural events that are not of their choosing. The majority of the piece consists of canticle-like ‘verse-and-responsory’ segments, each about one minute in length. The human percussionist (Robert Burke) is entrained in Nature’s mesh (electronics, plus waveforms captured by mics—his own playing, digitally processed, delayed, pitch-bent, filtered, and replayed through monitors adjacent to him on-stage). The piece is written in such a way that the performer becomes progressively more mindful of the sonic consequences of each gesture, each mallet stroke, for what the future will become—and we in the audience experience this sense of the long-term impact that we have, on each other, on other species, and on the planet as a whole. Burke’s finesse with extended mallet techniques—including inducing aeroelastic drum-head vibrations with his hypothenar eminence and including wiping a stick fitted with a red silastic scrubber on the drum-head to evoke wild-animal growls and anguished roaring—were ‘Never-heard-anything-like-that-before!’ breathtaking.

A long the coast, this collision is a constant negotiation: the land and sea changing back and forth; the clouds that hover near the shoreline. In the interior, however, wind and weather do not negotiate.”
— Peter Swendsen, composer.

J oão Pedro Oliveira’s ‘Liquid Bars’ delivers sonic textures that marry live marimba/vibraphone with the electronically-processed signals from two large dynamic ribbon mics positioned at approximately mid-resonator-tube height on the left side and right side of the instrument. The electronically-processed sounds mutate spontaneously under software control, modulated by the mallet strikes. The increasingly complex polyphonies and polyrhythms are fascinating and unnerving—almost like interviewing a person whose acute psychiatric problems have landed the person in your Emergency Room in the wee hours of a Saturday night. The notion of ‘self’ is called into question, not only who the self or ‘selves’ are—the one(s) in front of you—but also whether the whole assumption that ‘who’ any of us are is stable and ascertainable is faulty. The composition has ketamine-like psychotropic properties. Gee, should FDA and DEA regulate this music as a Schedule II pharmaceutical? Powerful! Robert Burke’s 4-mallet technique is superb...

L et us imagine a Marimba who can produce sound... Let us imagine that the Performer and the Marimba would each have the possibility of dividing themselves into two or more instruments and performers—and imagine that all of these play against each other.”
— João Pedro Oliveira, composer.

J eff Herriott’s ‘Velvet Sink’ is a piece that explores the possibilities of the piano through both extended performance techniques and the use of digital audio. I worry that technical obsolescence tends to make works like these short-lived. Several works realized on the IRCAM’s realtime audio processor 4X, for example, can no longer be performed, because the equipment and operating-system become obsolete so fast and cannot readily be ‘refactored’ and ported to new configurations that can render the same effects as the old ones. There are maintenance problems even with well-structured software. Pieces for ‘tape’ survive: the process of recording will always be ported to more recent technologies, such as CDs, DVDs, and hard disks. Here, though, Herriott’s Max/MSP scripts and Peak and ProTools elements are fairly portable and are likely to withstand the technology changes of this decade and the next. Kari Johnson gives tactile, delicate treatments of the keyboard passages. Repetitive eighth-note patterns, very insistent, have undulating up-down microtonal bends applied to them, until the patterns feel like waves, a gentle-swell aquatic envelope—the sonic surface is a kind of ‘minimalism-built-out-of-complexity’, sort of oxymoronic jumbo-shrimp. Then she stands up, reaches into the piano and begins plucking strings with fingertips and fingernails; hammering piano strings with percussion mallets; modifying the placements of rubber erasers between strings, prepared-piano-style—at times music-box-like, at times chime-like.

S amples were recorded using both a baby grand and an out-of-tune piano-harp from a destroyed upright piano. Some of these sound snippets were then processed and patched to generate longer sound files that were, in turn, reconfigured with ProTools. Others, notably the plucked gestures in the third movement, sound in performance much as they did during the recording. Ultimately, a unique Max/MSP patch is used in performance to control the playback of the recorded material.”
— Jeff Herriott, composer.

S cott Blasco’s (b'79) Queen of Heaven, composed for Ms. Johnson and premiered last night, consists of five movements, each conceived as [a religious—] icon, concerning itself with a single idea, turning it over and over, meditating on it from different angles. ‘Queen of Heaven’ is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, “a source of comfort and inspiration to Christians from the earliest years of their history,” in the composer’s words. Blasco’s composition, informed by his Master’s degree in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and degree in Composition and Music Theory from Calvin College, is a highly personal exegesis. The angels’ ‘greeting’ the Mother of God in the first movement conveys more of a confrontation—as in Awed and Struck Dumb—than a ‘greeting’. Sonority and terror appear linked in other of the movements as well, enough to cause most to have second-thoughts about the appeal of the Pearly Gates.

W hen I write music, I’m not writing it ‘for me’ per se. I see it as holding out an olive branch to my audience, and offering praise by mirroring the Creator.”
— Scott Blasco, composer.

K ari Johnson is a DMA student at UMKC Conservatory where she studies with John McIntyre. She holds bachelor’s degrees in Piano Performance and Piano Pedagogy from the University of Central Missouri, a master’s degree in Piano Performance from Bowling Green State University, and a master’s degree in Piano Pedagogy from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Ms. Johnson has won or placed in competitions throughout the Midwest, including the MTNA Steinway Young Artist Competitions in Missouri and Illinois and the Venetia Hall Concerto Competition. An active performer of new music and chamber music, Ms. Johnson’s recent performances include collaborative concerts at the University of Central Missouri and Pittsburg State University, UMKC’s “Carter and Messiaen at 100” festival, and the CMS Great Plains Chapter 2009 Regional Conference. In the coming year she will perform at the 2010 UCM New Music Festival and the 2010 SEAMUS National Conference.

R obert Burke is also a DMA student at UMKC Conservatory. He has enjoyed an eclectic carrier performing, studying and teaching throughout Canada, The United States, Japan and Europe. He is originally from Alberta, Canada although for the last decade has hailed New Orleans as home. A strong advocate of new music, Mr. Burke has commissioned and performed countless solo percussion works in recital and held member ship in New Works Calgary, Syncronia (St. Louis) and Conundrum New Music Ensemble. He has also been a regular member of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, The Calgary Philharmonic and The Louisianna Philharmonic. As a drumset player, Mr. Burke has performed and toured with a remarkable number of recording artists in clubs and festivals throughout the United States and Europe, including Brian Lee, Johnny Sansone, Preston Hubbard, Frankie Ford, Cyril Neville, Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Peter Nero, Marvin Hamlish, and Robert Goulet. He holds degrees from University of Alberta and the University of Calgary and has served on the faculty of the University of Calgary, Mount Royal College, the University of Missouri-Columbia and Central Methodist College.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Memory of the Future: Joan Grossman’s Video and David McIntire’s Music

H istory is marked by catastrophic events that defy meaning and understanding. The 20th century was a century of prosperity and progress; it was also history’s bloodiest. The death toll from war and genocide reached 140 million people. Trauma of this magnitude poses grave challenges to memory and thought. This work explores failures of memory and cognition—The Blackout—as a condition that plagues history, and is particularly problematic in an era of mass media, in which memory is increasingly disembodied and virtualized, undermined by [what might be called] a ‘Generalized Media Disorder’. Technologies of media and war are creating a condition in which the virtual world is displacing the ethical world. The Blackout is a space of memory and thinking that collapses with Catastrophe and falls into a stupor. Humanity has been nearly extinguished by the tremendous violence it has enacted, pushing philosophy, language and ethics to their limits.”
— BLACKOUT, jacket blurb.

A nd music can be both a political act and powerful antidote to the collapse of social memory and the erosion of community... the withdrawal into passive, vegetative isolation, each at home, continually surfing Netflix, surfing the web.

McIntire – ‘Revenants’ (electroacoustic recording, live percussion, 20-min)
McIntire & Grossman – ‘Singing Bowl’ (video, electroacoustic, live percussion, 47-min)

T he combination of the video imagery and the live and the electroacoustic music was imaginative and highly listenable and watchable. Joan Grossman’s video was elegant... with a simple beauty that leveraged symmetries across the vertical and/or horizontal axes in the center of the 8 x 6-meter projection screen in Epperson Auditorium. The video involved replication and reflection of imagery in kaleidoscope fashion, at times with superimposed additional imagery blended into the central part of the visual field.

U nlike certain computer music / media compositions where the composer-artists ‘try too hard’ or succumb to temptation and use too many of the diverse array of techniques and patches available to them (resulting in sensory overload for the audience, hindering our grasping a memorable meaning or narrative arc), McIntire and Grossman achieved a satisfying, deliciously cohesive, coherent effect.

P ercussionists Jennifer Wagner and Christopher Howard performed at percussion tables on the right- and left-hand sides of the auditorium, while the recorded electroacoustic tracks were played through Mackie SRS 450® powered monitors and SRS 1500® subwoofer at the front of house. Seated as I was front-and-center, the antiphonal bells and gongs and cymbals, and glass wine goblets bowed across their rims with violin bows, and hammered and brushed brass bowls, and Equilibrium® tuned-box slit-drums, and Daisy® BBs rolling on the underside of a tom-tom drum head—all of this was wonderfully ‘immersive’ with the house lights dimmed. Great sibilance of the live percussion sounds, creating a rich contrast to the electronically-filtered and distorted sampled-voice and other sound content in the digital-recording tracks. [The ‘live’ elements might be better still if yet another pair of percussionists were added, positioning them toward the rear of the auditorium/performancespace so that the entire audience could experience the intense immersive effects that we did at the front.]

T he electroacoustic recording and reproduction/sound-reinforcement EQ was expertly done by McIntire. Both of the pieces have a low-pitch ‘red-spectrum’ rumble—almost boilerroom-like, or intrauterine—that imparts a subtle but pervasive ‘interiority’ to the music, very chesty, very warm.

G etting the pre-recorded digital tracks to ‘sit’ well amongst live performers relies on the tracks having an even level, a congenial tonal and level balance, and the right reverberant ambience. McIntire does this superbly, gracefully executing minor adjustments at the workstation control-surface in response to moment-to-moment performance decisions made by Wagner and Howard. Compressor and gain automation settings were spot-on, so that the percussion sounds sat happily in-track, with none of the live percussion effects sounding too loud or too quiet or clashing with the pre-recorded sonic material and synthesizer tracks.

F or some of the voice content (e.g., DECtalk Hawking-esque recitations of NOAA National Weather Service Marine Forecasts; alpha-bravo-charlie...romeo-sierra-tango...zulu), McIntire adds density to the voice sample by upping the compression ratio to maybe around 6:1 or 8:1 and then adjusts the threshold to a couple of dB on average-level parts. This means quieter sections are left alone and anything louder is jumped-on hard, bringing it closer to the average level. The coherence or cohesiveness of these two compositions, each with its volume level and acoustic complexity ascending to a climax about two-thirds of the way through and then tapering to a quiet conclusion, is nicely enhanced by this approach.

M cIntire’s EQ and engineering are commendable as noted above, and he does not go overboard on special effects. His EQ cuts are made over quite narrow bands, and his boosting is gentle and wide. McIntire gently applies boosts in the 50-300Hz band to add warmth. He applies cuts in the 1 KHz band, to deemphasize nasal vocal sounds, and adds generous ‘presence’ with boosts between 4 KHz and 8 KHz. The magical sense of Nature and air and space involves a wide boost applied between 12 KHz and 20 KHz, and that was really beautiful up-front, seated in Row #1. With these two compositions that explore the interplay between Nature and Technology, between humankind and other species—between inanimate noisy things like water (sometimes seemingly talking to us, almost alive, almost human), and supposedly-sentient creatures (humans) who often act in hostile, destructive and uncaring ways as though they were inanimate—the musical and artistic success absolutely depends upon making these EQ choices right.

I n summary, a fantastic, powerful experience—beautifully composed, engineered, filmed, edited, and performed. Very happy!

T he ArtSounds series, of which the McIntire-Grossman ‘Memory of the Future’ program was a part, is co-sponsored by UMKC Conservatory and Kansas City Art Institute.

J oan Grossman is a Brooklyn, New York-based independent media artist and producer. Her work has been screened in more than 20 countries and won numerous awards. She is currently Visiting Professor in Film & Media Arts at UMKC. Grossman was formerly a producer for NPR and Voice of America on a variety of programs, including All Things Considered, Afropop Worldwide, Kids America, and The Territory of Art. She has worked in Africa, China, Russia, and throughout Europe, has produced media for public interest organizations and NGOs, and has also worked as producer on European documentaries and feature films. Joan has a Ph.D. in Media and Philosophy from the European Graduate School and has taught film production and theory. She has worked with leading theorists and filmmakers such as Agnes Varda, Claude Lanzmann, Chantal Akerman, Jean Baudrillard, and Jacques Derrida. Her book, ‘Blackout: On Memory & Catastrophe’, was published in 2009 (link below).

D avid McIntire is a Kansas City, Missouri-based composer who, with composer-musicologist Kyle Gann, co-directed the 2009 Second International Conference on Minimalist Music at UMKC Conservatory. In 2010, he launched Irritable Hedgehog Music, a record label focusing on minimalist and soundscape compositions. McIntire has performed with Colorblind James Experience. With pianist R. Andrew Lee he has produced a recording of Tom Johnson’s ‘Hour for Piano’ (link below).

Friday, July 17, 2009

Chamber Tabla and Cognitive ‘Affordances’

T he mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan looked to create some of the most complex mathematical patterns of all time. We are all looking [listening]. The question is who can see [hear].”
— Simon McBurney, Ensemble Complicite, ‘A Disappearing Number’, London, Barbican, 2007.

C ognitive phenomena do not always respect the ‘boundaries’ that are observed by textbooks and conferences in cognitive science. Consider the mirror neuron system—neurons in the premotor cortex that fire both when observing and performing an action. This discovery has challenged the assumed distinction between perception and action in the brain. While the human capacity to perceive opportunities for action (i.e., ‘affordances’; Gibson, 1979) has been extensively documented, it appears that even non-action-related judgments are in the ‘currency of action’... Cognitive phenomena do not always respect the boundaries that we draw between people either. Cognitive science has been concerned with the individual in isolation. But there have been striking insights into the brain’s sensitivity to social information and the way in which people think and act cooperatively [as exemplified in music].”
— Kevin Shockley (Center for Cognition, Action and Perception, Univ Cincinnati), Daniel Richardson (Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sci, Univ College London), Rick Dale (Dept Psychology, Univ Memphis), Topics in Cognitive Science 2009; 1:305-19.

S peed for speed’s sake—or overly complex rhythmic structures, or insincere utilization of mathematical calculations as a performance or compositional device—can justly be criticized as aesthetically weak or contrived. Authenticity is threatened by throw-down theory. Virtuosic technic can only be redeemed by genuine feeling. The person in the street needs ‘ghazals’, not maths.

A nd yet... There are some musics whose rhythmic structure is unabashedly mathematical yet deeply moving. Tabla music, for example; and particularly performances by Ustad Zakir Hussain, or his father Ustad Alla Rakha who passed away in 2001. The mathematical design takes into account the length of each phrase, the duration of each pause that comes after the last DHA of each phrase, and the starting point of each tihai (see Gottlieb's book). There is a carefully worked-out, “composed” element, but there are necessarily the wonderful, small-scale human improvisational elements as well. [It's hard to conceive of anything less musical than a MIDI drum machine tabla executing mathematics-governed tabla rhythms. Gotta be “live”.] Here is link to a figure in Robert Gottlieb’s book on tabla, showing (left hand column) the rational-number relationships of tabla rhythms/metrical patterns.

[50-sec clip, Ustad Alla Rakha & Ustad Zakir Hussain, Together, ‘Taal Rupak’, 1.6MB MP3]

T he rhythmic pattern of this MP3 clip is a 'rupak taal', with 7 matras (beats). The word 'chhand' (metrical pattern) is used when constructing the linear superposition of one taal on another--'rupak chhand'.

T abla sets consist of a smaller teak or rosewood drum (dāyāñ=right=dominant_hand) and a larger metal drum (bāyāñ=left). Each has a drumhead (shāī or gāb) and is nested in cushions (chutta or guddi). The head is tuned with a small hammer (hathodi)—traditionally by inserting tuning blocks (ghatta) into the cords fastening the drumhead to the drum; alternatively, by wrench-adjustable threaded rods on modern instruments, much like other drums. The performer’s hands are coated with talc powder to provide the right ‘touch’ and to insure that the heads don’t get damaged by skin moisture or oils.

T here are several traditional styles of playing the tabla in India, each of which entails a specific playing idiom and performance rules. Two main styles of tabla are Dilli Baj and Purbi Baj. Dilli (or Delhi) baj developed in Delhi, and Purbi (meaning eastern) baj developed in the area east of Delhi. Delhi Baj is also known as Chati baj (chati is a part of the tabla from which a particularly sonorous tone can be evoked). Musicians then recognize six gharānās (schools or traditions) of tabla playing.

Delhi gharānā
Lucknow gharānā
Ajrara gharānā
Farukhabad gharānā
Benares gharānā
Punjab gharānā

I t is the last of these that Alla Rakha and Hussain are exponents of, although there are ‘free-style’ elements in their work as well.

E ach gharānā is distinct in terms of compositional and playing styles. For instance, some gharānās involve different positionings of the tabla and ‘bol’ percussive techniques. Today many of the distinctions between the gharānā have been blurred as successive generations of players have chosen to combine aspects from multiple gharānās to evolve their own ‘voice’. Some traditionalists say the era of authentic gharānā has basically ended insofar as the unique aspects of each gharānā have been substantially corrupted by individualistic mixing of styles and current socio-economic disincentives for sustaining the old “lineal purity” of gharānā through long and rigorous apprenticeships.

P unjab gharana music bears the influence of the Punjabi language and its mathematical, long-range order-admiring temperament. These are closely linked, and in fact a number of Hussain’s and Alla Rakha’s pieces incorporate densely rhythmic vocal parts as complements to the tabla and other instruments. Among the important composition forms of this style are Punjabi-Gat and Chakradar.

A jrada gharana features ‘kaidas’ (qā’idas, al Qaedas?). Graceful figures... less intricate canonical rhythmic structures, compared to Punjab pieces—at least in the examples I’ve been able to hear so far. As a special tonal characteristics of this tabla style are the phrases: GHE NA and GHE GE, GE NA DHA and DHA GE NE, and NE DHI and DHINE DHINA.

D elhi gharana is typically crisp and brilliant—more overtly individualistic compared to ‘collectivistic’, self-effacing tendencies in other gharana. The flowing, streamlike qualities of the rhythmic arc are distinctive. The Delhi-style is also known as Kinari-ka-baj-baj Kinar, which means, more or less, ‘Kinar under control’, while Kinar (literally: the edge, shore), a hard, clear sound is concerned, on the edge of the Dayan is generated. Characteristic phrases of this style are TI TE, DHINA GINA, DHAGE DHINA GINA, DHINA NOS.

M y own fascination with tabla music, its mathematical underpinnings, its drama arising from the tensions between individualism and collectivism, and its chamber-music-like intimations of psychophysical/neurocognitive ‘affordances’ between the performers—is just beginning. If you have experience in tabla performance or composition, I would be most grateful for your comments and suggestions as to how I might better understand and learn this beautiful music. Thank you!

P eople like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
— Albert Einstein.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Jeff Herriott: ‘Dissipation of a Thought’, Emergence of Another, Yet Another

I ’m working now with some very high-pitched material... It’s seeming likely that I’ll end up with something for two soprano saxes, with some high multiphonics cascading on top of one another. Right now, the form is seeming like it will consist of some close intervals that slowly open up and out, with focus on some intricate tuning adjustments or quarter-tones. There will likely also be a few little ascending and descending lines as the piece progresses, and the whole thing will probably end up being close to 100 seconds. My plan is to take my thin electronics part and try to flesh out the ‘live’ part a bit more.”
— Jeff Herriott blog, 28-APR-2009.

T he thing that troubles me about the analysis in Peter Kivy’s new book is that it seems to crystallize both music and text—holds them, for the sake of analysis, to be ‘static’ when in fact they are dynamic and ‘emergent’, particularly when the material is new to us. Implicitly, the analysis undervalues the processes of remembering or forgetting—of retrieval, of dissipation. In other words, the ‘ancient quarrel’ between literature and music seems to depend on our ignoring major aspects of neurobiology and how our cognitive processes handle qualitative complexity. Dependent, too, on our ignoring not just the emergent aspects of reading, playing, and hearing the piece, but the emergent aspects of the compositional process itself—embodied by remarks like the ones that composer Jeff Herriott makes in his blog (blockquote above).

T his thought occurred to me as I listened to Jeff Herriott’s ‘dissipation of a thought’, right after finishing reading Peter Kivy’s book.

H erriott’s compositions are often surprisingly textual—even the ones that are wordless, instrumental pieces. How can we know this? Well, text linguistics studies structural and formal variants of textuality, for which separate descriptive and ontological models are developed beyond surface-level syntax. A ‘text’ is defined as an utterance or communicative occurrence that meets [most of] seven criteria of text-ness (Beaugrande & Dressler, 1981):

Expressive cohesion,
Coherence,
Intentionality,
Acceptability/Consensuality,
Informativity (conveying something or bringing about a change in [many of] the text’s readers/hearers),
Situationality, and
Intertextuality, including persistence and/or replication-publication.

[‘dissipation of a thought’, for flute, vibraphone, cymbals, crotales, voice and live electronics]

T he structure of ‘dissipation of a thought’ meets most if not all of the seven criteria above. It is not only a ‘text’ in the sense of a persistent, published, replicable, intertextual document. It is coherent, cohesive, and localized to a situation or context. The intentions... may be ambiguous, but the evocative title is enough to focus our reception of the piece, beyond what the music itself does.

T he hermeneutic ambiguity in the first section of ‘dissipation’ arises in its complex harmonies, paradoxically at odds with the piece’s ‘primrose path’ development. It also arises in Herriott’s ingenious manipulation and deviation from prevailing electroacoustic topoi. Examples include a deviation from deceptive cadences and voice-leading, as well as Herriott’s use of subtle, remote tonal relationships—between the tonal base of ‘dissipation’ and the modulation in later sections.

E ven the ambiguity that we experience can be assessed from the perspective of the seven standards of textuality:

the musical text itself [‘dissipation’] as process and product, including harmonic relationships and voice-leading in cohesion and the relationships among underlying morphemes caused by the manipulated topoi in coherence (including novel, remote tonal relationships);
the participants’ intentionality (manipulation and deviation from topoi) and the recipients’ [listeners’, performers’] acceptability concerning various approaching interests rather than contextual understanding (the reasons for the perceived ambiguity);
the broader context of informativity (including the musical events based on the simulation of resolutions, the deception instead of fulfilling of expectations and the compensation for the deceptions as well as unexpected deviations from usual topoi), the situationality of the title ‘dissipation’ concerning its genre and intertextuality involving similarities to other mixed-ensemble electroacoustic compositions.

S o how we interpret a piece while playing or listening should be decided not only by intuition but also by a contextual understanding of musical flow. We get clues from the application of rubato, for example; from the manipulation of expectation and deception in the management of rhythmic flows. Through the correlation of Herriott’s [explicit] ‘temporal management’ to his [implicit] ‘compositional plot’, the tension and relaxation of a composition become clear to us—become informative.

I t may be crucial that some [sub-]systems stay constant or do not learn, whilst some must have ‘flexible-response’ characteristics, including learning and innovation and forgetting. Taken-for-granted movements of the hands and feet may be focused-on with uncustomary, acute consciousness in music, dance, visual art.”
— Jenks & Smith, p. 204.

T o find a piece informative, we don’t need to posit a ‘persona’ or ‘personae’ who are engaged in a representational tableau. Nor do we need then to concede that a narrative piece that is not inhabited by personae is necessarily ‘program music’, a point that Kivy persuasively makes (Ch. 5). So here we have a case-in-point, this ‘dissipation of a thought’ by Jeff Herriott. Not that it doesn’t or couldn’t have personae represented by the parts; it could. My points are that we are not sure about this during our early engagements with it, and that our comprehension of the piece’s textuality ‘grows’ on us, emerges, is subject to ongoing revision as we absorb it.

P eter Kivy is right in saying that there is nothing wrong with absolute music affording [empty] pleasure to the ear and mind—providing that and nothing more. Some music happily does precisely that. But it seems to me a mistake if we so narrowly define what a musical ‘text’ is in such a way as to rule out the possibility that it provides much, much more—define it so narrowly and statically as to rule out processes that routinely do happen to us… happen inside us as we perform or listen to absolute music, such as Jeff Herriott’s ‘dissipation of a thought’.

E mergently, each thing leads to others.

O ften [in a piece that is new to us, or that we have heard or played only a few times], we don’t appreciate what the meaning of a passage is until its successor is already upon us, or maybe not until much, much later. In some cases, our recognition of the meanings conveyed by a musical text takes a lifetime to emerge. How about you?

T here is a kind of Gradgrindian mentality at work [when researchers report that listening to Mozart improves academic performance, etc], which must find a utility in every innocent pleasure, pleasure itself not being enough—perhaps a waste of time; worse still, harmful in some way or, at least the product of mere ‘amusement’, which Aristotle described as a form of rest, necessary ‘because we are not able to go on… and therefore not an end, since we take it as a means to further activity.”
— Peter Kivy.

U nfinished Music’ draws its inspiration from the riddling aphorism by Walter Benjamin: ‘The work is the death mask of its conception.’ The work in its finished, perfected state conceals the enlivening process engaged in its creation… We need to rescue the experience of absolute music from the clutches of that damning word ‘pleasure’.”
— Richard Kramer.