Dancers – concert

As of today we have done two concerts, one at the festival “Serendip” and and one at “Lillestrøm kultursenter”.

The first concert was filmed, and it can be seen bellow:

This was out first public performance as a duo and we were quite excited to see how the outcome would turn out to be.

Analysis:

• 0:05 – The beginning gets another function than earlier since now you can clearly hear the audience calming down.
• 1:25 – I like the length, but I think it should have been cut quicker, not faded out.
• 1:27 – I like this sound as it has the same function as the previous one, but another texture so there is variation.
• 1:46 – Yeah, that worked well. I think that starting with a scape in the middle range, then high range and ending with low range worked well.
• 2:02 – I should be aware of that my body is also a part of the visual aspect.
• 2:20 – I am glad Anette waited for this clear sound that stood out from the previous ones. Yet, this obvious pitching is not favorable. Maybe I should go out and look for a bass stapler or something that makes a similar sound as the pitched down version.
• 2:45 – Anette works out of routine. That is fair enough as this is our first performance and one tends to be nervous in such situations and to stick with what one knows best. Yet I like the room she takes between my “clucks”.
• 2:56 – I can like the decrease in volume, but again, I do not like the following pitching sequence.
• 3:15 – The music is evolving really slowly, yet Anette manages to make it somewhat more interesting.
• 3:36 – NO! I know I keep doing that because I like bass frequencies. Maybe I should try to fade it out, pitch it down and then fade it back in? Or I could get an extremely large singing bowl.
• 3:50 – Anette starts doing the moves I usually “squeak” my cymbals to, I choose not to join her on that, I am doing my own thing.
• 3:53 – I like those small wobbling changes in the “sound carpet”.
• 3:53 – 4:35 – I like this part.
• 4:35 – I notice that Anette is getting more intense and I choose to join on “squeaking” cymbals.
• 4:40 – Anette is done with her “move” and has moved on to something else exactly when I join on “squeaky” cymbals, I think it fits very well.
• 4:51 – It looks like Anette wanted to join that “squeaking” as we had done it before, but since she already did it the usual way with her hands, she does it with her legs. That works quite well, but I would have liked to see what had happened if she stayed in the “new room” she was in at 4:40.
• 5:20 – We start to not follow each other as clearly, mainly as a result of me not getting any sound from my cymbal, that is embarrassing yet inspirational and true.
• 5:50 – Anette keeps on doing her thing even though I stop. It look good.
• 6:15 – I try to sample water I am pouring from my bottle, but I fail. Both because the microphone is not gained high enough and that it is sparkling water and it doesn’t sound as “glugglugglugg” as it should. I feel as a result of that that the music is stagnating. However, Anette comes to my rescue.
• 6:57 – It is way to obvious that that sound was not meant to appear. It looks like I am having focus problem this minute.
• 7:12 – And as a result of my malfunctioning focus, I retreat to old habits, I guess that is what they are for. Since the singing bowl is full of sparkling water, it sounds quite dull, should have thought of that.
• 7:50 – It is easy to tell that we now are more secure, since we have done this before. But we might also be too relaxed. Yet, the audience have never seen this before, is that a valid argument?
• 9:50 – I like the progression until here, but why am I afraid of keeping it going? It sounded good. I might, there and than, have felt that it was too much of a cliche. But I clearly play just to loop it and make music of it later, not to make music with it while I loop it. Bad habit!
• 11:36 – I like the part up to here. By being in the beat, Anette gives more room for the nuances in the music.
• 11:37 – Anette is anticipating something she know I will do since that movement usually goes with the lion roar I trigger with my floor tom. Interesting, yet I do not know if I like it. She might have done that because she thought I would do it there (it would have been quite obvious considering the build-up) and just kept doing it since it would have looked strange if she did it just once, or would it? Anyways, that action shows that we both are affected by what we have rehearsed earlier, that is of course a good thing, but I don’t like it as direct and obvious as this.
• 11:55 – 13:20 – Well, it is that thing again, I am personally tired of it and I think it lasted too long, yet I got the beat slicing (the build-ups to the roars) quite well.
• 13:48 – Horrible pitching. The end result is quite cool, but I have to find a better transition.
• 14:40 – I like the transition into the new “room”, You suddenly realize it was there the whole time.
• 14:40 – 17:26 – This is my cup of tea, I enjoy the progression, the texture and the energy of this part. And I actually manage to stick to just playing for a while.
• 17:26 – Anette does something familiar (11:37), and it must have triggered me to break things up, resulting in the fade out. I have gotten feedback that this might have sounded as if it was not intended for, I should probably try to do it more convincing.
• 18:06 – Anettes rapid movements to my busy music seen out of context would have been quite boring and linear as mentioned in my previous post on this project. But in this context where she had been following the slow lines in the music for a while and then suddenly bursting out in this energy passage I found it quite suitable.
• 18:27 – This stop is much more convincing, maybe because it had happened before but I also felt that the overall energy was much more convincing.
• 18:38 – Anette clearly signs that she is done and it is my turn, based on the trading exercises we did earlier.
• 18:39 – I really enjoy the short glimpse where I am waiting for my own loop to appear, a lot of energy in that moment.
• 18:39 – 19:39 – Even though the volume and density curve is decreasing I feel that this was a good part of the piece.
• 19:39 – Fast interaction with electronics, I am getting there!
• 20:00 – Anette is literally back in the picture. I give her some space.
• 20:16 – Even though what I play here is just for looping it, I feel that it fits to the piece.
• 20:36 – I am slowing down, Anette is speeding up. Cool!
• 20:55 – Anette joins me.
• 21:37 – Anette brings structure to my muddy, shifting sounds.
• 22:05 – The sounds Anette make on the floor have an impact on the total auditive product.
• 23:54 – When Anette goes back to floor level, she marks very well that we are nearing the completion of the piece as this was the same state as she started in. She makes this final when she lies back down in the same position as she started, and luckily(?) the music is also close to what we started with.
• 25:23 – 25:35 – I like these quiet seconds where I, with my appearance keep the audience extremely focused on whether this is the ending or not. I like the ending.

Summary:

When there is more time between my comments, I feel we are doing something right since I have nothing to criticize. As you see, these parts appear in the middle of the piece, so our main problem seems to be the beginnings and the ends. That is why we decided to prepare how we were to start, but I feel that it might have affected the overall piece too much. Even though it might not seem so from the audiences perspective, it actually takes 14 minutes and 40 seconds before we are really improvising. Of course one can always say there is improvisation to a certain extent for that period too and one can ask why it has to be improvised. The only thing I can say to that is that I enjoy performing much more when I do not know anything about what is going to happen, yet I do not feel we did anything wrong since this had to be done for me to realize this.

At my request, the audio and video from the concert was streamed live to another room at the venue, where some audio and video artists did the following remix right after our concert. I enjoy this way of remixing, especially when video is included, since then, the link to the original material is much more obvious. Thanks to Bendik Baksaas (Electronics), David Aleksander Sjølie (Guitar) and Sigurd Ytre-Arne (Video).

This somehow concludes my first semester and first encounter with dancers and inter-art-form-collaborations.

Dancer controlling sound with sensors – Idea sketch

foto: Jonas Barsten Johnsen

(…) a sensor based setup for a dancer and a drummer, where the dancer can pick up sounds played by the drummer and process them with movement (…)

My project description

What:

Dancer wearing sensors – controlling sound.

The idea is that the dancer can approach my drum set (sound source) and pick up the sounds I am making at that instant. Then he or she can modulate the sounds with movements and try to make it artistically interesting and fitting to the rest of the music if there is any.

Why:

Concrete interaction between music and dance.

The main motivation behind this is that I want to experience a more concrete interaction between a dancers movements and a musician sounds in a live performance setting.

How:

I will make a patch in Max/MSP, buy sensors and rehears with a dancer.

Equipment and procedure:

The dancer will have to wear some kind of gloves and maybe some socks/shoes with the following sensors:

Gyroscope:

foto: wikipedia.org

A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of angular momentum. Thanks to the fast development in smartphone technology they are now extremely small and quite cheap and can look for example like this (not the coin):

foto: sparkfun.com

In this context the gyroscope will be used mainly for detecting the rotation of the dancers feet and hands.

More on gyroscope sensors here.

Flexion (bend):

Flexion sensors, (from Latin flectere, ‘to bend’) also called bend sensors, measure the amount of deflection caused by bending the sensor. There are various ways of sensing deflection, from strain-gauges¹⁾ to hall-effect sensors²⁾. The three most common types of flexion sensors are:

• conductive ink-based
• fibre-optic
• conductive fabric/thread/polymer-based

www.sensorwiki.org

foto: sensorwiki.org

The flexion sensors will be used to detect when the dancer is closing or opening his or her hands.

More on flexion sensors here.

Distance (Infrared):

These sensors uses infrared light whose waves are those just below the visible spectrum of frequencies. I will use one of these to determine the distance between the dancers hands.

foto: mcustore.com

More on infrared sensors here.

Radio-frequency identification:

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) is a technology that uses radio waves to transfer data from an electronic tag, called RFID tag or label, attached to an object, through a reader for the purpose of identifying and tracking the object.

I will place a RFID tag on the dancer and RFID readers by the drums and in the buckets (see explanation further down) or the other way around so that when he or she gets close to the buckets or drums it gets registered.

RFID tags can look like this:

foto: alibaba.com

RFID readers can look like this:

foto: phidgets.com

More on RFID sensors here.

Movement tracking:

I would also like to track the dancers movement on stage, for example with a Kinect so that the sounds that are being carried can be panned to the corresponding location on stage.

Buckets:

The idea also includes some buckets with RFID sensors where the dancer can place the sounds so that they stay looped while he or she continues the performance. It would also be convenient with some lights in the buckets representing if they contain a loop or not.

…

Mapping:

Once again the most challenging factor is the mapping, mapping is to choose what the sensors/controllers should do. A crucial point for me is that the sensors functions are obvious.

I am not quite sure of the gyroscopes function yet, but I guess it will be a filter, delay, distortion or a reverb or a combination of all of them. I could of course say that the dancers placement on stage or another parameter should decide what effect to use, but I will try to keep my feet at the ground and restrict my self until further on in the process so that it will be easier to start working on it.

The two flexion sensors are to decide when to start and stop the looping and also the initial length of the loop. When the left hand closes (if the dancer is close to the drums) is sets the starting point for the loop/starts recording into the looper, when the right hand is closed the en point is set and the loop starts playing. When both hands are opened again the loop stops.

The distance sensor in one of the hands sees the distance to the other hand and, if a loop is playing, decides the speed and pitch (not sure about pitch yet) of the loop. When the hands are closer, the loop plays faster and when the hands are further apart, the loop plays slower.

The RFID sensors, as already mentioned, are to decide if the dancer can record new sounds or not and to tell when a sound is supposed to keep on looping “in a bucket”. If the closed hand is in a bucket wile it is released, it keeps on looping and the dancer can go make another loop.

So the left hand has:

• Flexion.
• Gyroscope.
• RFID.

The right hand has:

• Flexion.
• Gyroscope.
• Distance.

For now, the feet will just have each their gyroscope.

Hypothesis:

I think the first rehearsal will just be amusement over the feeling to “touch sound” and over-using it – like when a guitarist gets a new pedal. Further down the road we will probably encounter problems if we want to play in time and we want loops to be in sync, then I will have to create some kind of transport control and we will need a metronome or backing track.

I think the main challenge will be for the dancer to merge the performance of music and dance. I might have to compose something that he or she can dance, maybe not down to the finest detail, but I think it will be a challenge to improvise well with this setup, then again, hopefully I am wrong.

Reflection:

We will obviously have to practice a lot to make the end result a good experience. I feel that the concept is not strong enough to stand by it self for more than the first 5 minutes of amusement over the technology. I might realize that this is just a dead end, but I have a strong feeling it will not result in that because of earlier experiences with the common denominator between music and dance (see the “Dancers-section of this blog).

Special thanks to Haakon Berg Mathisen for thoughts on how to write well for the internet.

Random impulses

When experimenting with restrictions as mentioned in my project description:

(…) I should instead dive into my setup, experiment and play with it and get to know it as well as possible.

I stumbled upon an interesting aspect where a certain combination of effects resulted in a controllable feedback as shown below:

I used a tone generator, a delay that sounds “drrr”, a simple delay, a reverb (Lexicon Chamber) and another reverb (Waves’ IR1) in that specific order.

The track looking like this:

At the master bus I had a reverb, an auto filter and a limiter like this:

The most essential factor however, is the placement of the microphones and speakers and their properties. I used my “ukko -b-band” microphones in the tom but the other microphones might also have contributed to the feedback to a certain extent.

Anyways, the most interesting aspect with this, I think, is that while improvising with my setup I can stumble upon something unexpected even though I thought I knew every millimeter of my setup. I try to always allow this to happen when performing live. Sometimes it sounds really bad, but other times it’s exactly what the piece needed. That is of course an essential factor of improvising; to be open for other outcomes than you originally expected.

Then again, some artists do not approve of incorporating random factors to their performances. Or at least not a random “decided” by a computer. For me this has been a dilemma for a while, but I think it is all about moderation, that the computer random can be included to a certain extent. Personally I like to have control over what I do, however, the computer random can give me ideas that I can shape as I like or throw away if I do not like them.

Dancers – part 4

We met again for a final rehearsal before our first concert.

Despite what I stated in the previous post,

We agreed on that we had reached a state where we temporarily are agreeing on the expression of the concept and should for a while just improvise together without any specific tasks to solve.

after reviewing our rehearsals we found some things we wanted to explore.

The “call and response” as in the previous rehearsal at 13:45:

I like this tool, but as previously stated:

(…) I might think that one or two times is enough, if it occurs for a longer time than that, it might seem we have locked us self’s too tight. That will of course depend on the context.

Unfortunately it’s quite clear that we didn’t agree clearly enough on this being strictly a “call and response” rehearsal before we started.

But it feels good to have repeated it, because now, it’s a more established tool than before.

We also wanted to look into the concept of following each other completely linear:

I did not like this at all. There is no depth in it and it feels way too naive. There can of course exist a touch of it when we for example want to gradually change who is in focus or just playing with the tension between us, but I feel it can not be as obvious and naive as this.

One interesting aspect that came out of this is where our visual focus was when trying to do the same thing at the same time. Anettes focus was on my hands, and my focus on her legs, so we were focusing on the limb closest to the most obvious communication act. Maybe, if we instead had eye contact, we could have shared intentions and been “one step ahead”?

Last Rehearsal:

Analysis:

• 0:00 – Obvious beginning, setting the mood, I’m glad that it lasts as long as it does.
• 1:08 – Unnecessary sounds, my intentions were that they would be “ambient” sounds, but it didn’t turn out as I hoped. I was inspired by the sounds in theroom from the light bulbs and other “cracking sounds” and that intention I feel is right.
• 1:21 – This sound has the ambient quality I was looking for and it triggers Anette to do her first movement.
• 1:36 – Too early for cymbals, I should have saved those frequencies for later.
• 1:42 – 1:56 – I try to do too much, cymbals, rims and “chair cracking”, it’s not clear enough what I want to express.
• 1:57 – This I consider an obvious statement. Anette gives room to me.
• 2:14 – You see that Anette already started a movement and when I introduce another sound, it affects how she carries it out.
• 2:19 – 2:30 – A “call and response” where Anette starts and when she stops, I take over, probably not conscious, but since we have rehearsed it, the the technique lives in our sub consciousness.
• 2:36 – Extremely unprofessional of me not to put my phone in silent mode.
• 2:40 – I get inspired by this happening and decides to try to get some auditive results out of the vibration feature on my phone, but fails to do so. Than again, this gives more room to Anette.
• 2:52 – In curiosity of why it doesn’t work, I tap the microphone to check it’s gain level, this of course has an auditive result which I like. This is a “technique” I have continued to use.
• 2:58 – This again inspires me to use other body parts as input source, and then of course, the most obvious, is the mouth.
• 3:12 – I change to a new texture, should have restricted my self to one.
• 3:22 – Unnecessary sounds. All the sound should have come from Anette moving on the floor.
• 3:49 – I’m back to my earlier “accident” and I like it.
• 3:56 – I like the change in background texture, but I think the change should have been faster, if not immediate.
• 4:00 – I really like the interaction between Anette and me until now, we give and take place as we feel is right, and I do not think we steel focus from each other. She could of course have done the directly opposite of what I am doing by moving a lot with extreme energy, but I think that would have been to much.
• 4:15 – I stop and Anette takes focus. It’s been back and forth for a while now.
• 4:30 – Even tough I now change the texture back to what it was initially, Anette now continues her “story” and puts the texture in a new context, I feel this presents a new room in the peace.
• 4:41 – Unnecessary sounds.
• 5:05 – Took to long before my sound reappeared looped, it should come immediately, and I have to avoid that pitching scale thing, I am extremely tired of it!
• 5:20 – I should have held the background texture longer. It is an interesting aspect with gaps and stops, but I should have saved it, I am generally too impatient. Than again, I like the new “room”.
• 5:30 – I like the sounds Anette make on the floor.
• 5:45 – More rapid actions, I like the intention, but I feel I don’t manage to keep it going.
• 6:04 – New room, I really like it, because of the acoustic organic sounds blending with the pulsating loop.
• 6:48 – For some strange reason it looks like I think what I’m doing is boring and decides to do something else, not good!
• 6:55 – Why this pause?!
• 6:59 – Same intention, new sounds, should have kept the same sounds, I liked them.
• 7:24 – I change again, not cool.
• 7:42 – Again, now with reverbs. Seems like I’m afraid of just playing on top of a loop even tough it sounds good, I’ll have to work on that.
• 7:49 – As I start looping my self, Anette also starts to loop her self, that’s cool, I don’t think it is conscious, but I like it.
• 8:13 – As previously stated, I don’t like that pitching, why do I keep doing it?
• 8:41 – Anettes loop keeps going even tough I stop, good!
• 9:00 – Anettes looping stopped, and I seem to have taken a new direction, new room.
• 9:30 – Even though I’m quite “busy”, Anette keeps her calmness emphasizing the underlaying slow rhythm.
• 9:54 – I seem too obsessed with breaks this day. I would have liked to see that idea evolve. Yet, I like the new room.
• 10:09 – Anette keeps doing looping. I like it!
• 10:23 – Perfect sync! I really enjoy when these moments appear.
• 10:32 – Anette takes the lead, good!
• 10:43 – Everything goes well until I start pitching and Anette stops.
• 10:53 – We’re back after 10 seconds of nothing.
• 10:56 – Anette is calming down, I would have liked her to keep it up and continue the lead.
• 11:10 – 13:10 – Suddenly we entered a room with great communication and I felt it was very natural and good what we did.
• 13:10 – I decide to take some space, and Anette seem to agree and gives me space.
• 13:31 – I like the way Anette slowly starts to illustrate the underlying massive slow rhythmical intentions I have, and doesn’t just go for the first most obvious impulse.
• 14:09 – YES! Once again, perfect sync!
• 14:12 – Anette starts to take back the focus.
• 14:21 – 14:50 – We decide to go hand in hand for a while and react quite linear to each other, I think that in this context and for this short period, it works well.
• 14:50 – I decide to let Anette back in focus.
• 15:07 – I decide to join and Anette keeps going, but makes space for me. It might sees as we have a common understanding of how much place there is in the total expression and adjust our selfs to this.
• 15:07 – 16:14 – I like this.
• 16:14 – 16:32 – My interaction with the electronics is way to slow.
• 16:32 – 16:37 – YES! Another sync, and many in a row.
• 17:32 – Even though it’s a cliché, I like how this room ends.
• 17:32 – I think Anette does a good job here, just keeping her loop and processing it.
• 17:58 – I don’t like what I do here, but that is probably because I am so tired of that sound.
• 18:23 – I like that Anette kept her loop as long as this, she could also have kept it even further. I get the feeling that we just do what we always do on that sound here, but I saved it for so long so it might get another effect, but unfortunately, it didn’t. We just fell into old habits.
• 18:55 – Unnecessary sounds.
• 19:00 – 21:00 – You can clearly see that I’ve lost focus and that I am still falling into old habits.
• 21:00 – 21:04 -  For a short period I feel we are onto something more aggressive, extreme here, would be cool to test it out.
• 21:29 – The same feeling comes back, should have kept it.
• 21:36 – 21:38 – The “accident” at the beginning is back. Cool.
• 21:38 – Still old habits, guess it is because we are not used to play for this long and we are loosing focus. That is bad and has to be worked on.
• 22:22 – Way too sudden fade out.
• 22:42 – And it is back, I don’t see any artistic reason for this 20 seconds absence of that loop.
• 22:42 – 26:21 – We (at least I) are still just falling into old habits and I seem quite out of focus, yet, to someone that has not heard this earlier, it might sound good?
• 26:21 – 28:31 – Even though it is quite cliché improvisation with this abrupt beat, I like how it floats on top of the all too familiar loop.
• 28:58 – It becomes too clear after a while that my intentions with playing this is mainly for looping it and pitching it down. Instead of thinking about the end result and start playing something based on that, I should instead think of what I could do with what I already am playing, than it might not sound as forced as it now does. However, I consider it a good thing to have a clear direction/goal with what I am doing since than it might sound more convincing, but the end result does not have to be what you intended it to be. So what I am saying is that I can make a plan, as I did here, regarding where to go, but then be open to derive from that plan if I sense it will sound unnatural as I should have done here.
• 29:27 – Too fast fade out.
• 29:53 – I love the ending with the trading and all the space, air and individuality.

Summary:

I feel we generally had good communication and flow trough out the piece, yet the long period of falling out of focus can not be tolerated and I have to work on that. I mean that no professional improviser can blame the surroundings or the flow of the day for a bad performance, one has to deliver quality music every time. Yet, some interesting aspects arose in the areas between full focus and the lack of it, where I noticed less seriousness and more playfulness from my side. This is where I feel that some of the most interesting and innovative turns happened, I have to remember that to play does not only mean to perform music, it also means what children do when they are free to do what they want.

I have to emphasize that there is nothing as exciting for me like when we suddenly are in sync for just a fraction of a second.

It is hard to equally divide the roles that music and dance have in the performance since people with a background in dance will probably focus more on the dance and vice versa. One could ask someone that have the same amount of experience in both dance and music, but people will look at it individually and you can, as far as I know, never have a completely neutral relationship to art.

However, it is nice for us working towards a feeling of equality.

Equipment Standard – Audio latency

One of the first issues I wanted to look into when I started working on my master thesis was audio latency.

Audio latency is the delay between when an audio signal enters and when it emerges from a system. Potential contributors to latency in an audio system include analog-to-digital conversion, buffering, digital signal processing, transmission time, digital-to-analog conversion and the speed of sound in air.

The reason I wanted to look into this immediately is that I felt that for a drummer, being quite conscious about timing, this would be an essential aspect.

To elaborate further:

When playing with effects such as reverbs and other effects that lasts for a certain amount of time, I don’t feel that some milliseconds back or forth have any disadvantage, it could actually be an interesting musical aspect.

But when it comes to triggering sounds, delays, looping, gating and other effects that have to react fast, audio latency is relevant.

When I started testing this, I was very fixated on finding the sound card with the lowest latency and I thought that when I did, it would radically revolutionize my setup.

With my current setup, I have to live with a total latency at about 8 milliseconds. What i gathered from my research (as shown below) is that I could obtain a latency at about 2 milliseconds with a certain, and quite affordable setup. That’s a difference of 6 milliseconds, let’s put that into context.

In dry air at 20 °C, the speed of sound is 343.2 meters per second. That is 343.2/1000 = 0.3432 meters per millisecond ≈ one meter in 3 milliseconds. So the difference in audio latency between the two sound cards corresponds to two meters in distance to a sound source. Many guitarists have at least that distance to their amplifier. The distance from my drums to my ears could be close to a meter, that’s 3 milliseconds. What about a taller drummer than me, that would mean even more latency. From this reflections, I can’t conclude on anything else than that it’s all about habituation.

So, to a certain extent one can get used to a fair amount of latency, you learn to press “loop” a little bit before you actually will loop, and you make sure you push the beat just a little bit when playing with delays or triggering samples. This definitely doesn’t have to be conscious, by practicing and listening, one adapts to this quite quickly.

But compressors, gates and similar effects still demand low latency to operate at their best. When compressing drums, I don’t think you would want to add another 8 milliseconds before the compressor actually kicks inn. That’s why I completed the following test.

First, a brief run trough of the parameters needed to control the latency.

- Sampling rate:

When analog audio is sent into the computer, it goes into an ADC (Analog-to-digital converter) which takes X samples of the audio per second. X is defined in hertz, is called the sampling rate and is usually at a value of 44’100 or above if you want to listen to Swedish-American engineer Harry Nyquist and how his theorem is described on Wikipedia:

In theory, a Nyquist frequency just larger than the signal bandwidth is sufficient to allow perfect reconstruction of the signal from the samples: see Sampling theorem: Critical frequency. However, this reconstruction requires an ideal filter that passes some frequencies unchanged while suppressing all others completely (commonly called a brick-wall filter). In practice, perfect reconstruction is unattainable. Some amount of aliasing is unavoidable.

Signal frequencies higher than the Nyquist frequency will encounter a “folding” about the Nyquist frequency, back into lower frequencies. For example, if the sample rate is 20 kHz, the Nyquist frequency is 10 kHz, and an 11 kHz signal will fold, or alias, to 9 kHz. However, a 9 kHz signal can also fold up to 11 kHz in that case if the reconstruction filter is not adequate. Both types of aliasing can be important.

When attainable filters are used, some degree of oversampling is necessary to accommodate the practical constraints on anti-aliasing filters: instead of a brickwall, one has flat response in the passband up to a point called the cutoff frequency or corner frequency, (pass all frequencies below there unchanged), then gradual rolloff in a transition band, finally suppressing signals above a certain point completely or almost completely in the stopband. Thus, frequencies close to the Nyquist frequency may be distorted in the sampling and reconstruction process, so the bandwidth should be kept below the Nyquist frequency by some margin (frequency headroom) that depends on the actual filters used.

For example, audio CDs have a sampling frequency of 44100 Hz. The Nyquist frequency is therefore 22050 Hz, which is an upper bound on the highest frequency the data can unambiguously represent. If the chosen anti-aliasing filter (a low-pass filter in this case) has a transition band of 2000 Hz, then the cut-off frequency should be no higher than 20050 Hz to yield a signal with negligible power at frequencies of 22050 Hz and greater.

- Buffer size:

A buffer in this contexts can be explained as how much time the computer can use for “processing” before we have to see or hear something happening and it is defined in samples. So, if the buffer size is 512 samples and the sampling rate is 44’100Hz, the buffer adds an additional delay of 512/44100 ≈ 0.012 = 12 milliseconds. The computer do need a buffer, how low you can go regarding buffer size depends on the computers cpu, ram and hdd speed but also, a really important factor is what audio interface (sound card) you are using. This is because all the manufacturers write their own drivers and have different ADC’s (analog-to-digital-converters) and DAC’s (digital-to-analog-converters), which are all major contributors to latency.

The complete audio monitoring latency of a configuration, often referred to as the roundtrip latency, is the sum of:

• AD converter latency
• Input portion of the I/O buffer
• Audio driver latency
• Output portion of the I/O buffer
• DA converter latency

When just doing playback, of course you don’t have to go trough all of these and the latency is the sum of:

• Audio driver latency
• Output portion of the I/O Buffer
• DA converter latency

Now, let’s move on to the actual test:

These where the candidates:

Focusrite Pro40 (FW)
RME Babyface (USB)
RME Fireface 800 (FW)
“Lynx Aurora 8 (FW)” Didn’t get this to speak well with OSX 10.7.1, or I had the wrong break-out cable.

Focusrite ISA 828 (ADAT)

I tested the I/O-latency by running a cable from the output to the input and measuring the delay with a program called MaxMSP.

I used a MacBook Pro 6,2 (15″ mid 2010), 2,66GHz intel core i7, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 ram, running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.1 (11B26).

I/O vector size and signal vector size as described in the MaxMSP manual:

• The I/O Vector Size (I/O stands for input/output) controls the number of samples that are transferred to and from the audio interface at one time.
• The Signal Vector Size sets the number of samples that are calculated by MSP objects at one time. This can be less than or equal to the I/O Vector Size, but not more. If the Signal Vector Size is less than the I/O Vector Size, MSP calculates two or more signal vectors in succession for each I/O vector that needs to be calculated.
• With an I/O vector size of 256, and a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, MSP calculates about 5.8 milliseconds of audio data at a time.

The I/O Vector Size may have an effect on latency and overall performance. A smaller vector size may reduce the inherent delay between audio input and audio output, because MSP has to perform calculations for a smaller chunk of time. On the other hand, there is an additional computational burden each time MSP prepares to calculate another vector (the next chunk of audio), so it is easier over-all for the processor to compute a larger vector. However, there is another side to this story. When MSP calculates a vector of audio, it does so in what is known as an interrupt. If MSP is running on your computer, whatever you happen to be doing (word processing, for example) is interrupted and an I/O vector’s worth of audio is calculated and played. Then the computer returns to its normally scheduled program. If the vector size is large enough, the computer may get a bit behind and the audio output may start to click because the processing took longer than the computer expected. Reducing the I/O Vector Size may solve this problem, or it may not. On the other hand, if you try to generate too many interrupts, the computer will slow down trying to process them (saving what you are doing and starting another task is hard work). Therefore, you’ll typically find the smaller I/O Vector Sizes consume a greater percentage of the computer’s resources. Optimizing the performance of any particular signal network when you are close to the limit of your CPU’s capability is a trial-and-error process. That’s why MSP provides you with a choice of vector sizes.

—–

Babyface (USB), 44,1kHz, Line (XLR):

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 171 samples = 3.877551 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 203 samples = 4.603175 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 267 samples = 6.054422 ms

I/O vector size: 1024, Signal vector size: 1024 = 2187 samples = 49.591835 ms

Babyface (USB) + ISA 828, 44,1kHz, Line (XLR):

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 170 samples = 3.854875 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 202 samples = 4.580499 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 266 samples = 6.031746 ms

I/O vector size: 1024, Signal vector size: 1024 = 2186 samples = 49.56916 ms

Babyface (USB), 48kHz, Line (XLR):

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 171 samples = 3.5625 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 203 samples = 4.229167 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 267 samples = 5.5625 ms

I/O vector size: 1024, Signal vector size: 1024 = 2187 samples = 45.5625 ms

Babyface (USB) + ISA 828, 48kHz, Line (XLR):

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 170 samples = 3.541667 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 202 samples = 4.208333 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 266 samples = 5.541667 ms

I/O vector size: 1024, Signal vector size: 1024 = 2186 samples = 45.541668 ms

Babyface (USB), 96kHz, Line (XLR):

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 140 samples = 1.458333 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 263 samples = 2.739583 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 327 samples = 3.40625 ms

I/O vector size: 1024, Signal vector size: 1024 = 2247 samples = 23.40625 ms

Babyface (USB) + ISA 828, 96kHz, Line (XLR):

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 140 samples = 1.458333 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 263 samples = 2.739583 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 327 samples = 3.40625 ms

I/O vector size: 1024, Signal vector size: 1024 = 2247 samples = 23.40625 ms

Babyface (USB), 192kHz, Line (XLR):

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 116 samples = 0.604167 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 228 samples = 1.1875 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 422 samples = 2.197917 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED

I/O vector size: 1024, Signal vector size: 1024 = 2342 samples = 12.197917 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED

Fireface 800 (FW400 -> 800), 44,1KHz, Line:

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 219 samples = 4.965986 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 251 samples = 5.69161 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 315 samples = 7.142857 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 4283 samples = 97.120178 ms

Fireface 800 (FW400 -> 800) + ISA828, 44,1KHz, Line:

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 213 samples = 4.83 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 245 samples = 5.555555 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 309 samples = 7.006803 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 4277 samples = 96.984123 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED

Fireface 800 (FW400 -> 800), 48KHz, Line:

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 219 samples = 4.5626 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 251 samples = 5.229167 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 315 samples = 6.5625 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 4284 samples = 89.25 ms

Fireface 800 (FW400 -> 800) + ISA828, 48KHz, Line:

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 213 samples = 4.4375 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 245 samples = 5.104167 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 309 samples = 6.4375 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 4277 samples = 89.104164 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED

Fireface 800 (FW400 -> 800), 96KHz, Line:

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 188 samples = 1.958333 ms OUTPUT HAS POLARITY REVERSED
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 348 samples = 3.625 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 412 samples = 4.291667 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 4380 samples = 45.625 ms

Fireface 800 (FW400 -> 800) + ISA828, 96KHz, Line:

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 189 samples = 1.96875 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 347 samples = 3.614583 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 411 samples = 4.28125 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 4379 samples = 45.614582 ms

Fireface 800 (FW400 -> 800), 192KHz, Line:

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 166 samples = 0.864583 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 326 samples = 1.697917 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 598 samples = 3.114583 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 4566 samples = 23.78125 ms

Fireface 800 (FW400 -> 800) + ISA828, 192KHz, Line:

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 166 samples = 0.864583 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 326 samples = 1.697917 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 598 samples = 3.114583 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 4566 samples = 23.78125 ms

Pro40, 44.1Khz, Line:

I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 5.827664 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 6.55328 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 8.004535 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 97.981857 ms

Pro40 + ISA828, 44.1Khz, Line:
I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 6.485261 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 7.210885 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 8.662131 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 98.639458 ms

Pro40, 48Khz, Line:
I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 5.354167 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 6.020833 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 7.354167 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 90.020836 ms

Pro40 + ISA828, 48Khz, Line:
I/O vector size: 16, Signal vector size: 16 = 5.958333 ms
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 6.625 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 7.958333 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 90.625 ms

Pro40, 96Khz, Line:

I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 5.541667 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 6.208333 ms
I/O vector size: 128, Signal vector size: 128 = 7.541667 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 47.541668 ms

Pro40 + ISA828, 96Khz, Line:
I/O vector size: 32, Signal vector size: 32 = 5.916667 ms
I/O vector size: 64, Signal vector size: 64 = 6.583333 ms
I/O vector size: 128, Signal vector size: 128 = 7.916667 ms

I/O vector size: 2048, Signal vector size: 2048 = 47.916668 ms

—–

Note that hardware with very slow transient response may decrease accuracy of measurement.

When I connected the adat cable and the ISA was at 192kHz when I turned it on, I got super system failure …

Here are some graphs, x=buffer size, y=latency in milliseconds:

—–

One parameter I didn’t realize until later I should have measured is how different sound cards handle low latency also called LLP (Low Latency Performance), I didn’t record any numbers for this, as I didn’t know how to do it, but I experienced that the RME Babyface handled low buffer sizes quite well compared to the other cards, I used the “test section” in Ableton Live, which simulates a certain cpu-usage and lets you listen to a test tone and hear if there are any drop-outs.

I also experienced that I could increase the sampling rate, thereby lowering the latency which is defined by samples in the buffer size, and still get good performance from the test tone. Any thoughts on sampling rate vs buffer size and how this affects the performance of the system? why choose low sampling rate and low buffer size, instead of high sampling rate and high buffer size, if they result in the same amount of latency? To get an answer to this and the concept of LLP, I had to seek help amongst other nerds at gearslutz.com and I stumbled upon this forum thread where they answered me on my issue on buffer size vs sampling rate:

“TAFKAT”:

Raising the sample rate not only effects the latency value but also increases the overhead in DSP processing , throughput and data file sizes so its a balancing act. For those needing to work at the higher sample rates the usual practice is to raise the buffer sizes accordingly to compensate for the increase in processing overhead. There is no real advantage to increase the sample rate simply to lower the latency value if the higher sample rates are not specifically required for the project IMO.

“tuRnitUpsuM”:

(…) Higher sample rates do not equal lower latency in the bigger picture when you (action <> reaction) have to raise buffer values to compensate for increased DSP data overflow. Data size increases, time value increases to process the change. Whats gained on the front end – is lost on the back end.

My response:

Are these relations linear? From the numbers I ended up with, I got the impression that they’re not. Would there be any reason to measuring the sound cards LLP at different sample rates and see if the performance/sample-ratio is the same?

For example: would a setup running 44.1KHz with a buffer size of 16 samples perform exactly equally to a setup running 88.2KHz with a buffer size of 32 samples on the same computer?

“Timur Born”:

There is a linear correlation and a non-linear one.

Linear: Double the sample-rate at double the audio buffer size equals exactly the same audio buffer latency.

Linear: Double the sample-rate equals exactly double the data/bandwidth the CPU + RAM + HD need to process, which at double the audio buffer size equals about half the number of tracks/fx being usable.

Non-linear: AD/DA conversion is faster (=lower latency) with higher sample-rates. But we are talking about a maximum of 2 ms here, usually less.

Non-linear: Your computer (CPU + RAM + HD) may not be able to deal with the number of “theoretically” possible tracks/fx, so either you may not get double the tracks/fx at half the sample-rate or may not get half the number of tracks/fx at double the sample-rate.

“TAFKAT”:

I don’t believe it will remain linear with the number of Plugins/Polyphony when using a higher sample rate at double the buffer to maintain the same latency, as the system still has to deal with the higher processing associated with the higher sample rate.

It may be interesting to get an empirical value to the exact scaling variable , I have some 96K alternate sessions of DAWbench DSP that I will give a run up when I get some time and see what it tips up.

They also had developed quite an extensive database of the LLP’s of different audio interfaces. They used a benchmark program called DAWbench DSP to measure the LLP, keep in mind that some of these cards are high speed PCI cards (which soon is available to laptops trough thunderbolt expansion bays) and not USB or FW cards:

I made a more graphical presentation of the mentioned LLP rating values, the numbers are all just in linear relevance to the best card, higher is better:

When researching on latency, after this point, it starts to get quite technical and the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. I feel that for now, I know enough about the subject to understand the latency and DSP performance of my current setup. I’ve learned that latency is not as relevant as I originally feared, and that there is more to the concept of latency and DSP than I thought.

Music – Bendik Hovik Kjeldsberg

Bendik Hovik Kjeldsberg is studying composition at the same Academy as I am doing my master degree.

He asked me to perform one of his compositions with him.

Since the composition’s nature is very electronic it presented some challenges when we were to perform it.

Listen to the composition here, keep in mind that this is intended to be a score and that the actual composition is what we perform based on this:

After some intents to solve this with Ableton Live, I decided the best way would be to just use MaxMsp for this project. I’ll elaborate later in the following text.

The first “blipp”-sounds that appear I wanted to play by triggering them one at a time in a sequence. In Ableton I could slice the track to MIDI on it’s transients, then extract each section, put them one after another in an audio track as clips, than map the MIDI-signal generated from the amplitude of the input signal to “next scene” and set global quantization to “none”. But it is quite self-explanatory that this is not particularly favorable.

As an alternative I tried to figure out how to do transient-detection on an audio file in Max, and then play the transients one after another, but I ended up manually putting all the transients locations in millisecond format in a [coll] object, then triggering them one at a time trough a [play~] object.

I’ve been looking into the [slice~] object, but I haven’t quite figured it out yet.

I’m extremely open for suggestions on this subject.

Our main intention with the performance of the piece was that the sounds Kjeldsberg had created in advance should be our instrument and what we performed should only be based on the mentioned composition and not contain any backing tracks. We achieved this using the following methods:

- All the sounds Kjeldsberg wanted to use where broken apart to as small pieces as we saw convenient.

- All drum sounds that I could manage to play at one time where removed from Kjeldsbergs setup.

- Sounds that were layered with these drum sounds were triggered by the corresponding drum using this max patch I made.

- Since the mentioned layered sounds changed during the performance, I added the ability to in real time change the sound that were to be triggered.

…

Kjeldsberg wanted to play both a melody line and a bass line at the same time with one one hand while triggering samples with the other hand.

Since the melody and bass line were not unison, that presented a challenge.

Bendik wanted to play the top melody line shown in the picture bellow while triggering the corresponding bass notes. We could of course have triggered a clip containing the bass notes in a certain tempo he would have to follow, but then we would loose his unique phrasing.

So I made a Max for Live patch that triggers each notes corresponding bass notes (some of the top notes are harmonized with different bass notes) in the right sequence, only problem is that the performer have to press a “reset sequence”-button for each time he or she plays it. I could have had the sequence restart when the last note is played, but we figured out that this was the easiest and most convenient method in this context.

…

I enjoy this way of interpreting a composition since it’s a lot like how I’ve been working earlier when extracting sounds from pieces I like. But then again this IS the actual composition as the composer intended it to be, in earlier examples I’ve only extracted sounds to make them part of a new, improvised piece.

In a way this is like going back to the original way of composing, where the composer didn’t make the final auditive experience, but rather a score for the performers or conductor to interpret. And since there are not yet instruments capable of making most of these sounds, we have to modify our own instruments to perform the composers intentions. Again, this is a fairly strange thought, since it is some how comparable to that some one writing a piano piece before the piano was even invented. This also incorporates the role of the instrument maker into what’s expected from the performer and/or the composer.

Here is a video from a concert where we perform the piece (the picture gets more descriptive at 2:00):

Free Play – Prologue: A New Flute

Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art – by Stephen Nachmanovitch.

A god can do it. But will you tell me how a man can penetrate through the lyre’s strings?

Ranier Maria Rilke

As a prologue to the book, Nachmanovitch starts of by presenting an old Sanskrit world: lila.

Lila (Sanskrit: लीला, IAST līlā), or Leela means:

• Play
• Divine play
• The play of creation
• Destruction
• Re-creation
• The folding and unfolding of cosmos
• The play of God
• Love

He presents “lila” as a homecoming to our true selves, and suggests that it can be harder to do as we mature trough our life experiences.

Then, we get to read the following story transcribed from Japanese folk sources which emphasizes quite well that statement:

A new flute was invented in China. A Japanese master musician discovered the subtle beauties of its tone and brought it back home, where he gave concerts all around the country. One evening he played with a community of musicians and music lovers who lived in a certain town. At the end of the concert, his name was called. He took out the new flute and played one piece. When he was finished, there was silence in the room for a long moment. Then the voice of the oldest man was heard from the back of the room: “Like a god!”

The next day, as this master was packing to leave, the musicians approached him and asked how long it would take a skilled player to learn the new flute. “Years,” he said. They asked if he would take a pupil, and agreed. After he left, they decided among themselves to send a young man, a brilliantly talented flautist, sensitive to beauty, diligent and trustworthy. They gave him money for his living expenses and for the master’s tuition, and sent him on his way to the capital, where the master lived.

The student arrived and was accepted by his teacher, who assigned him a single, simple tune. At first he received systematic instruction, but he easily mastered all the technical problems. Now he arrived for his daily lesson, sat down, and played his tune – and all the master could say was, “Something lacking.” The student exerted himself in every possible way; h he practiced for endless hours; yet day after day, week after week, all the master said was, ” Something lacking.” He begged the master to change the tune, but the master said no. The daily playing, the daily “something lacking” continued for months on end. The student’s hope of success and fear of failure became ever magnified, and swung from agitation to despondency.

Finally the frustration became too much for him. One night he packed his bag and slinked out. He continued to live in the capital city for some time longer, until his money ran dry. He began drinking. Finally, impoverished, he drifted back to his own part of the country. Ashamed to show his face to former colleagues, he found a hut far out in the countryside. He still possessed his flutes, still played but found no new inspiration in music. Passing farmers heard him play and sent their children to him for beginner’s lessons. He lived this way for years.

One morning there was a knock at his door. It was the oldest past-master from his town, along with the youngest student. They told him that tonight they were going to have a concert, and they had all decided it would not take place without him. With some effort they overcame his feelings of fear and shame, and almost in a trance he picked up a flute and went with them. The concert began. As he waited behind the stage, no one intruded on his inner silence. Finally, at the end of the concert, his name was called. He stepped out onto the stage in his rags. He looked down at his hands, and realized that he had chosen the new flute.

Now he realized that he had nothing to gain and nothing to lose. He sat down and played the same tune he had played so many times for his teacher in the past. When he finished, there was silence for a long moment. Then the voice of the oldest man was heard, speaking softly from the back of the room: “Like a god!”

Dancers – part 3

We started with full-length run-trough of the usual framework:

We were growing tired of our usual framework, so we decided to try something completely different and “free”:

To do this didn’t feel any harder than working with the usual framework, since within the framework we had been working more on the concept than on the “composition”.

We agreed on that we had reached a state where we temporarily are agreeing on the expression of the concept and should for a while just improvise together without any specific tasks to solve.

We somehow feel that what we do is natural, whatever that would mean.

When we throw away the framework, we get more clear in the head and are willing to test new ideas and push them even further.

Knowing we have established a platform for us to fall back on if something doesn’t work out is also extremely motivational for going further away from what we have previously done.

Analysis:

0:00 – Starting is hard and might sound insecure.

0:30 – Too linear.

1:00 – She keeps her moves even though I stop, good.

1:45 – She decides to go somewhere else.

1:50 – I decide to tag along.

2:26 – Anette covers her ears, I find this quite interesting, since then she draws a line between the two aspects, and you might realize that you have seen them as one … This also triggers me to take some more space, and “solo”.

3:05 – Anette keeps her idea even though I stop, this shows that we stand as equals.

3:45 – “back to start”, I like this … “red line”.

4:15 – Anette takes the lead, and I’m just creating a space for her. I like that her rhythm and intentions are so clear.

4:36 – The sound that Anette makes against the floor is an interesting aspect since I felt that it somehow triggered me to do something else.

4:45 – I feel that Anette gives away all the focus to the music, since it’s obvious she is listening.

5:34 – As her feet start to move, she presents the entrance to a new space. I feel it’s clear that something new is about to happen.

6:40 – The sounds Anette make are really having an impact on the auditive aspect.

7:14 – That scale thing sounds really bad.

7:19 – Anette fills out the static drone with intense rhythms, I feel we complement each other here.

7:32 – As soon as I start getting more busy, she calms down, keeping the contrast.

7:50 – It looks like I’m ready to get some impulses from Anette, but apparently, she is somewhere else.

8:05 – I feel this part is quite diffuse, it doesn’t point in any direction, too stagnant.

8:22 – Anette takes responsibility – New room, new energy.

8:54 – New room escalated and stopped too fast, I liked that room, should have taken more time to explore it.

9:18 – I find it quite unclear what Anette wants to communicate with her face-touching. If I remember correctly I thing she mentioned it as a focus glitch and “just had to repeat it to make it not seem like one”.

9:36 – I feel that Anette wants somewhere more aggressive. She is tired of my slow evolving sounds.

10:00 – I start to follow her on that. We play together in the same energy.

11:21 – Anette wants to go somewhere else, but I want to stay, creates a contrast and gives more focus to the music.

11:30 – She joins me again.

12:08 – 12:12 – I like that we suddenly can be in sync for a while and then step back out of it again.

12:24 – Yeah! Since my sequence is quite random, when it syncs up with the dancer, it get even more effect full.

12:25 – Calming down.

12:31 – The concept of integrating theater must be looked into, I feel it gives a nice touch to the performance when it’s done in as small doses as this.

12:47 – I decide to take more space.

12:54 – Anette gets my intentions and we build it up together, I feel we’re in sync here, in a good way, and our accents fall at the same places (13:04-13:31).

13:31 – Anette keeps on going. We have been talking about being independent, and it’s starting to show.

13:45 – I take over, and Anette gives me all the focus and we establish a “trading concept” like “call and response”. Maybe Anette could have covered her ears to give more focus to the music instead of fixing her hair? Hehe, very well …

14:01 – 14:06 – I don’t like this gap, and that it mainly is my fault, I should have kept on going until Anette released me if we were to keep the “call and response” idea we had entered, but from this experience I might think that one or two times is enough, if it occurs for a longer time than that, it might seem we have locked us self’s too tight. That will of course depend on the context.

14:47 – Anette takes the initiative to something new. A nice reaction to what just happened if you ask me.

15:10 – Suddenly a new room, fast reaction.

15:50 – A clear ending.

Summary:

After around 7 minutes, I feel things started to establish quite well, we had good communication and we clearly stood as two individuals.

An interesting aspect is that now, when we didn’t use the framework we used to, the interaction seems faster and also the impulses and the overall rhythm in the performance seems to have seeded up. I like this.

Yet, the beginning seemed insecure since we didn’t have the starting point we were used to, and we needed some minutes to tune into each other.

Even though I liked this, we didn’t want to afford our first public performance to start bad and might not evolve anywhere because of all the unknown factors. So we decided to start in the usual position with the usual sound.

One aspect that concerned us this day was the lighting in the room. We felt that with a dim or warmer light, it was easier to be calm and patient with our ideas, and it was easier to “step into another world”, focus and open the flow of creativity. And we decided to rehears with the lights on at the next rehearsal and rather be blessed with its dim properties in a concert setting, in other words make it harder for us when rehearsing.

 

Dancers – part 2

After some reflections covering our first rehearsal, Anette and I got together once again to rehears.

We felt that the interplay between us in the last rehearsal was to linear, there was no friction, we just followed each other. This is definitely a good thing in certain contexts, but we wanted to create more tension, depth and range.

We used some specific methods to try to reach this:

1 – What ever the first reaction to an impulse were, we should wait for the second or third one. This way the performance becomes more profound because we get time to interpret the impulse and the context.

2 – We can choose to hold on to our ideas even though the music or dance change. Then we will get more tension and the audience experiences two courses at the same time and the interplay between them.

Watch the first attempt here, I did some enhancements to the audio recording method (replacing the microphone on an iPhone) but the image got very blurry … Something I actually think was quite cool.

In the first post about dancers, I made this statement:

I’ve made a temporary holding point for my self: if the musics intentions are not clear enough for the dancer to interpret it as I intended it, it’s not good enough.

After some reflection, I find that quite stupid. It provokes a monotone and linear behavior which excludes all the discussed qualities I want in the performance. It’s always good to have some temporary guidelines, but this one didn’t last for very long.

But there is something in the statement, about being clear and concise which I find very important. Less is as we all know – more. I’ll have to, in time, try to rephrase this statement.

You might wonder why we are doing the same framework every time. The reason for that is that when we first met, we were not sure about where we would go. I didn’t know Anette’s dancing very well, and she didn’t know the intentions with my music. That way, working with the same framework for improvisation every time was actually a really good thing, because then it was more clear what worked and what didn’t and we could focus more on the interplay then on the improvisation.

This method was not a conscious decision from us, rather a concept that emerged from the process.

We have been discussing to what extent composition and frameworks should be a part of the performance and the only thing we know for certain is how we shall start, the first sound and the starting position for the dancer. This gives us peace and a room where to start building the performance.

We rehearsed our framework once again, but this time we tried to continue even further.

Now, after entering the “unknown”, we felt that this was the right way to go. After all the reflections and thoughts regarding our previous rehearsals we had established a way of communication that could work as well with the mentioned framework as with any other improvised piece.

We wanted to try something “completely different” as shown bellow:

The framework that we rehearsed established some borders for our expression. Or in other words, it defined somehow our expression. This I regard as something good.

I like the concept that every thing should be open and free, and even tough what we are going to present during performances is already somehow defined, I was free to not invite Anette to dance, she was free to say no, we were free to decide that we didn’t like what we were doing and cancel or play hip-hop instead. So our defined expression came from something very open and free. And that’s good enough for me, for now.

Thanks to Anton Ligaarden for great promo photos:

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Dancers

As stated in my project description:

- Look at the possibilities for at external sources, such as the audience, a net stream, dancers, humidity, lights etc. can control the development in the music and in the video trough out a performance by using alternative sensors, controllers and programs.

I want to look into collaboration with dancers. The last month I’ve invited professional dancers Hedvig Bang and Anette Boge to collaborate with me.

One of the main things I discovered was that improvising with dancers is not so different from improvising with musicians: we can choose to follow each other or we can choose to do something completely different that might inspire the others. We can also decide upon to what extent composition should be a part of the performance.

This collaboration also presents an embodiment of the energy in my music, this I can say, with out a doubt, is very interesting, since I easily can see if the dancers interpret my music as I intended it.

I’ve made a temporary holding point for my self: if the musics intentions are not clear enough for the dancer to interpret it as I intended it, it’s not good enough.

Regarding the musical aspect, lately I’ve been very influenced by Amon Tobin and as some of you might hear in the following recording I’m mainly just playing around with the sounds from Tobin’s song Big Furry Head.

Here you can see and hear rehearsal 1 & 2, both 15 minutes. The dancer is Anette Boge. Both video and sound is recorded with my phone, so the resolution on both is quite bad, but I want to emphasize that this is just to show the earliest stage with a collaboration with a dancer.

After this we sat down and watched the recording and processed it mentally.

Musically I liked the progression of the piece and it’s beginning, but when it hits it’s peak I don’t feel I manage to keep it there. I’ll need some more practice with these sounds.

We spoke about making the beginning a stronger statement.

We both agreed that we liked the interaction on 5:07 and would try to develop this further the next time.

Apart from this, there were some minor ideas and adjustments, then we did it again:

This time I played a little louder, so on the recording you actually can hear what I’m doing.

As previously discussed, we took our time at the beginning. I really enjoyed that and I think an audience would to, this because you get time to empty your mind and get ready to perceive or perform a performance.

As you can see at 3:42 and on, we develop what we talked about regarding 5:07 in the previous video.

Musically I felt this time went better than the last one, but I still need to play more with those sounds to make it sound more convincing.

The development we had at the beginning and at 3:42 resulted in that those two parts came almost immediately after each other and constructed a framework for how we want to start the piece. So from recording and evaluating, the peace slowly takes form. How strict we’ll want to be regarding the form, only time can tell.

Thanks to Anette Boge and Hedvig Bang for showing interest in collaborating with me. And thanks to Anders Tveit and Erik Strutz for introducing me to Amon Tobin’s music.