Music, Recording, and the Art of Interpretation

Presently working on a new research project with pianist extrodinaire, Dr Stephen Emmerson. The project examines the recordings of a series of classical piano works, but rather than try to attempt to record these 'authentically' (following the recent fascination with recordings 'as' music), the project aims to deliberately manipulate and re-construct the pieces as sound art or 'phonography', with a view to expanding of some of the underlying narratives.

As a starting point, we took a series works performed by Stephen on the 29 October 2008 in the Queensland Conservatorium’s Ian Hanger Recital Hall. The compositions date from 1908, regarded as a landmark in the history of European Modernism with a number of the 20th century’s most remarkable composers finding their distinctive voice around that time via seminal works for solo piano. These included Alban Berg’s Sonata Op.1, Arnold Schoenberg’s 3 Piano Pieces Op.11 and Béla Bartók’s 14 Bagatelles Op.6.

Here's a few excerpts from the concert:

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Next, we're working to present a paper and interactive session in the IMERSD recording studios as part of the CreateWorld 2008 digital arts conference, this coming December. In particular, we will be preparing 5 of Bartók’s Bagatelles, famous as a collection of pieces which explore a range of innovative compositional techniques (polytonality/bitonality, symmetry, twelve-note collections, quartal harmony, clusters etc.) as well as reflecting his explorations with folk music.

The range of the musical languages employed has encouraged the view that they are a collection of separate individual and almost incompatible pieces. However, as a musciologist, Emmerson is convinced that the sharp contrasts in style are part of the overall concept of the work as a cycle of pieces that successively builds with a cohesive sense of narrative progression. Beyond merely a collection of compositional experiments or exercises, he understands them as having strong emotional and programmatic implications that develop through the cycle.

Stephen has come up with a range of 'sound types' to parallel musicological arguments about the personal emotions and historical settings for the pieces, and we'll be producing these though a variety of multi-track and post-production techniques, including varing treatments for right and left hand parts . .

. . . overdubs, layers, compression, tape distortion, a host of microphone placements and manipulations of spatiality. 

Fundamentally, the project challenges the predominant approach in the recording of classical music where such works promote the illusion of capturing a concert experience and that sound production decisions appear to be transparent. Here the authors argue that classical music language can benefit from deliberate interference in the recorded product provided this is congruent with research into the underpinning musical meanings. 

And so the music is not just manipulated/remixed to produce an essentially a different piece (although this remains a valid possibility) but maintains that central aspect of musicking which leads to new ways of experiencing music. If this can be realised, then perhaps the artists have begun to master the art of interpretation and the ability to speak music’s language more effectively.

We'll be continuing the project following CreateWorld by producing all the works on Steinway and recorded in the Conservatorium's Concert Theatre. Aiming for a journal articel early in the new year, accompanied by a two CD set and booklet. Perhaps 'before and after' CDs, and what we're most interested in is – which one is really the 'fake'?

ACUADS in Adelaide

Just returned from a week in Adelaide, brilliant old buildings, terrific art, but also must be the Australian capital for the best restaurants in the country! (a pic here of Glenelg, beach-side of Adelaide).


I was in Adelaide to attend the Australian Council for University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) annual national conference.


So, why a muso at an Art & Design conference? Well, for one reason, my partner Jenny was presenting some of her PhD work there, about the state of the creative and performing arts and their place in academia. 'Goal displacing behaviour' as some call it, that is, metrics about grants and journal articles, rather than about (say), music, art or film.


One of the relationships that is quickly developing now in Australia, is a ever-closer relationship between the arts peaks bodies. This includes matters of lobbying the federal government around the ERA review (Excellence in Research for Australia) of research indicators, ideas about a national Creative and Performing Arts body, and alternative competitive funding arrangements to what some consider as currently science-dominated Australian Research Council. In the case of this year's ACUADS conference, these and related themes were well put by Australian Chair of ACUADS and acting Head of the Victorian College of the Arts (part of the University of Melbourne), AsProf Su Baker:


To date, Art & Design (ACUADS), Film (ASPERA) and Music (NACTMUS) have been forging ever closer links and collaboration. For example, I think there is a particularly strong and useful example in the Future-proofing the Creative Arts PhD project. Essentially, this is a national collaborative project to examine the practices, outputs and assessment standards for research higher degrees in these disciplines, and by exemplar of course, what creative and performing artists *really* do when it comes to the nexus of practice-as-research through art projects . . . onward and upward.

Clocked Out

Back in the studio again, and in concert recording with Clocked Out, a wonderful Brisbane based duo who have been writing, rehearsing and recording for their album Foreign Objects.


We spent about five days trying out ideas and getting sounds for some of their more unusual ideas for instrumentation, arrangement and subsequent sound production interpretation. Prepared piano, strange percussion objects scattered about the floor, really unusual combinations of timbres, but orchestrated remarkably and performed with professional precision - terrific performers and composers. Quite challenging but a very enjoyable experience for us all.


After the studio work, we moved directly into a live concert event, and from my perspective, moved the technology approaches of what I had learned from them into the concert environment. The IMERSD studio was patched into our Ian Hanger Recital Hall and off we went with the concert entitled Dedications - compositions that paid homage to 2 giants of contemporary music: Terry Riley, the master of expanded space, and Morton Feldman, the master of intricate patterns.


This was then a premier for the new works, centred around six pieces, viginettes entitled Foreign Objects. Later back to the studio, the thing now was to produce and edit all of the material from both studio and live recordings - in some cases, by comp-ing together both environments together within a single piece. Normally, I would find this somewhat of a challenge, but these people are so professional and given that we got to know each other so well, I think the outcomes are really beautiful. Some snippets and teasers here:

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Boomp3.com

Clocked Out will be touring the US West and East coasts late November /early December 2008, so look out for them around Los Angeles and New York if you're in the area. Just wonderful in concert. Foreign Objects the album will be out in early 2009.

Brian Eno's 'Bloom'

Speaking of iPhone apps (see earlier post on ProTools controller), Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers have teamed to produce this highly addictive generative music application for the iPhone - Bloom.


Its available from the iTunes App store for around $US4.00 and has to be of the nicest little additions I've made to my iPhone in recent times. Hard to put your finger on just why this works, but I do know that everyone who touches it is enthralled (and by this I also mean, those who are not musicians or usually have that little interest in music technology).

The user (performer?) is provided with a colored screen and a quiet drone. Tap the screen in various places and different tones play depending on where the screen is tapped. This loops, creating a unique piece of music on the fly, and one that changes gradually on its own. It's also beautiful, with the tones appearing as colored spots that slowly fade.

An interesting idea for musicians - to make such little apps/pieces of interactive music for a different kind of 'prod-user' audience - quite different to the old record consumption culture? For more on developing iPhone Apps and distribution, see the iPhone DevCenter.