Compositional Methods in Electroacoustic Music - Adrian Moore ...

Scott, Richard
STEIM, Lancaster University
A discussion of the very different senses of time experienced by the electroacoustic composer and programmer/instrument
designer and that of the improviser in performance and of the questions these create for those
designing instruments and interfaces for electroacoustic composition, improvisation and performance.
A digital system, whether computer, sampler, sequencer or synthesizer, is above all a way of translating, preserving
and addressing time and memory. Digital technology functions by separation and division and by predetermination.
It separates the processes of programming and performing and divides them into two quite
different concepts of time. Programming time is compared to the productive conditions of conventional (paper
or electroacoustic) fixed media composition; in both there is no organic relationship between the time of
the music’s composition and the moment of the music’s performance. The fixed composition is a ‘piece’ because
it is abstracted from the time of its creation and has become fixed: it’s is a pre-determined ‘piece’ of
time that has become abstract from time.
Contrast this with the irreversible and indivisible moment of improvisation: an immediate social and somatic
encounter located in the present, between actors and witnesses, between performers and audience. Quoting
Nietzsche, Kent De Spain, Derek Bailey and John Stevens, these encounters are perceived as kinds of immediate
acts and as intimate personal sonic and temporal relationships.
But temporal and somatic intimacy is challenged by technology. Existing and emerging technologies offer the
electroacoustic improviser access to what represents an almost infinite virtual digital memory. Electroacoustic
improvisers are no longer limited by immediate time or by their own bodies. The time and memory that
was once subjectively encapsulated within the body of the performer is now held in the machine. The machine
is increasingly doing our remembering for us. Does that liberate us from the task? Or does it make us
machine-dependent? The inadequacy and failure of human memory might itself also be an importance source
of creativity and new ideas. The idea that improvisation contains the necessity not just for remembering, but
also for forgetting, is considered: because we forget, we must invent.
If qualities of intimacy and timeliness are to be maintained time must be kept permeable by unpredictable
events, not closed to them. Machine memory should not be allowed determine either the detail or boundaries
of what occurs in improvised electroacoustic performance. How can we design instruments, which go beyond
what we can predict and what we already know? How can we make a truly interactive electroacoustic music
that maintains a real contact with time as it unfolds, and share this immediate experience with others?
Paper 25 - Minature form in electroacoustic and instrumental new music.
11:00
Chippewa, Jef
In recent years, in both the instrumental New Music and electroacoustic milieux, there seems to have been
an increasing interest in miniatures, works having a duration of less than a specific threshold. There is, however,
a surprising shortfall of reflection and discussion on the nature of the miniature or the ‘work of limited
duration’. With a certain number of projects promoting the form now having been realized and a large number
of works available which purport to be in miniature form, we are now able to make an assessment of the
nature of this particular musical form by asking such questions as: Why it is relevant or interesting to compose
in this form(at)? More fundamentally, what in fact constitutes a ‘miniature’? The few discussions that
do address the differences between miniature and non-miniature form typically concern duration, with no conclusive
explanation of why the particular duration (varyingly 60 or 90 seconds, 3 or 5 minutes) was found to
be an appropriate threshold to establish a piece as a miniature (and therefore make it eligible for a particular
project).
Many works of limited duration might more aptly be deemed short works rather than miniatures, as they
display indisputable correspondences to one or another form type already established by larger scale compositions.
Using the term ‘miniature’ to refer to a specific piece is a qualitatively different declaration than
referring to it as ‘a short work’, or even ‘work of limited duration’. Accordingly, for a musical work to be considered
a ‘miniature’ as opposed to ‘a short composition‘, a ‘pop format’ or ‘radio format’ work, for example ,
it will need to conform to certain basic criteria, independent of the work’s duration. Here, it is proposed that
27