Misuse as Creation in Electronic Music - A History and Practical Suggestion by August Norborg

In this thesis the author explores the term ”misuse” as a methodology of composition, but also proposes to view it as an informal tradition within the history of electronic music. The author explores the possible definitions of the term ”misuse”, proposing to view it as an inherently destabilizing practice, where the practitioner must reject the defining of a strict identity. The author also highlights the shift away from mastery of technology to a more equal, exploratory relationship that occurs within the practice, as well as its ability to chart the materiality of said practice. The author proposes that this tradition re-occurs historically as both a technical, aesthetic and philosophical phenomenon, serving as a progressive force within the wider genre of electronic music and often as part of a consciously rebellious practice. The author explores how this methodology can be applied within their own contemporary compositional practice using the software Ableton Live, chronicling their own explorations of generating sound via different misuses of the software, including sound examples. Finally, the author evaluates the applicability of this method on their own artistic practice through 2 attached compositions, and gives testimony to their experience and insights working with the material.

Hermaphrodite

For the second composition, I also allowed myself to intermingle the sounds of my workshops with my regular methods. This time, I used the results of my Collission/Corpus/Tension-workshop. My focus, however, was very different. When making this piece I attempted to use my recorded sounds while still achieving what would be considered a "cleaner" production. This meant cutting a lot of frequency content, carefully cutting up and layering small sounds as well as using the sounds to build pitch and chord-based virtual instruments. This in combination with the first composition allowed me to practice a versatility in using these sounds, going from highly disruptive to simply enriching a more conventional practice.

In this piece, I was exploring myself as a vocalist, and how to insert myself as a being belonging to the same universe as the instrumental sounds. I was attempting to avoid, or atleast distort, the voice as the "human" element giving the listener a sense of familiarity. Rather, I was hoping to unsettle, and portray a being morphed in form. I used extreme pitch shifting and layering to achieve this, playing at points with the "unnatural" sense of the vocalist disrupting themselves, like a being containing a multitude of vocal tracts. The usage of the voice did however, as it always does, allow me to approach the instrumental from a different perspective. The fact that it was only required to act as a supportive element for the vocals, which took center stage, aided me in exploring the cutting away of elements in my recorded sounds that were too disruptive.
I was fascinated by the inherent rhythm and slight morphing within the pad that I was able to achieve via the sample. It aided in giving the composition a physicality, further enhanched by the bass that seemed to twist and roll against the ear. The vocals, as mentioned, ended up being inspired by this, wanting to achieve the same warping of form as the instrumental sounds.

The second composition contains non-workshop sounds as follows

5 layers of vocals, all pitched up and processed
A pad sample, present in the outro
The sound of a coin being dropped
The high pitched, echoed and reverberated sound of the physical modeling synth Electric
An arpeggiated synth made from layered samples
The re-pitched and processed sound of an oil drum being hit
One of the layers of the kick drum, the ”thump”

The sounds of my workshop included are as follows:

Various short, glitchy sounds

The sound of richly reverberated clicks with increasing density

A tonal, skittering sound

A sound like a malfunctioning telephone line, processed through rich harmonic reverb

A deep, somewhat pulsating bass with hollow, somewhat panning pitch content in the mid register

A short, buzzy hit layered into the kick drum

A hollow scraping sound with irregular glitch interruptions processed heavily to become a pulsating chordal synth

The main technical revelations in this composition were one, that simply cutting my sounds into very short snippets and mixing them low meant they could be used as rather discrete effects to add character and variation, and two, that even a very strange sound could be turnt into a chordal instrument, giving said instrument a very interesting character. This gives the methods a wider range of application, an ability to not just be elements of chaos in a piece. Considering this, it finds a much wider use in my practice.

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August Norborg - Misuse as Creation in Electronic Music - A History and Practical Suggestion - 2022