Pre-recordings refer to electronic drone-textures, samples from my microtonal prepared piano as well as full-scale compositions and improvisations. In the context of my solo project, I’ve used transducers, attached to the piano's sound board, to convey these pre-recordings and they interact with my live piano playing. The pre-recordings also become compositional elements in the mixing stage and create a multi-layered-ness.
excerpts from drone improvisations
Re-amping can provide a number of perspectives of the same material. Perspective in terms of where the listener places himself or the recorded music in the “virtual listening room”.
Three comparative examples ———
dry reverb dry + reverb
Emersion into liminal states between wakefulness and dreaming. This involves hypnagogic or hypnopompic states. Embodying and re-calling these states to the best of my ability, I sketch mood-scapes and thematic gestures (relating to both micro and macro form). Accessing my journal of dreams and reflections, I dialogue with the subconscious, my dreams, and make creative bridges, or connection points into a specified sound world. In this sense, composition from a timbral perspective becomes highly evocative of these liminal planes of experience. For within timbral exploration - for instance piano preparations - I can find sound correlates to my subconscious experiences.
excerpt combining pre-recording through transducers and live improv
"Temptations towards sorcery" (postcards of nostalgia
Methods toward composing and creation:
Composition and rehearsal methods include: use of pre-recordings; visual communication through conventional scores, graphic scores and paintings; spontaneous composition and reverse abstraction; a variety of rhythmic frameworks; re-amping and mixing; and emersion into liminal states between wakefulness and dreaming.
Rhythmic frameworks relate to my study and deep appreciation of Karnatik Music (South Indian Classical) My rhythmic vocabulary continues to build upon formal studies in South India in 2015. Within the last two years, I’ve been developing two concepts: rhythmic cadence (define) and proximity grooves (define). In the context of piano and percussion “proximity grooves” serve as frameworks for gradual development in which the listener might not perceive the small changes moving by.
Visual communication includes conventional scores, graphic scores and paintings. I’ve used conventional scores to convey intricate musical ideas relating mainly to rhythm and melody. I’ve used graphic scores to convey more abstract textural and improvisatory gestures. For instance, writing for Lotte Anker in my project Juniper Fuse. Paintings have been used to communicate macro-form intentions and overall themes. For instance in Juniper Fuse, I’ve used paintings by my grandfather, Don Choboter, to abstract upon the theme of palaeolithic cave paintings.
“Reverse Abstraction” is a term expressed by my grandfather and painter, Don Choboter. This concept and it’s realization through his paintings have had direct impact on my solo project, Postcards of Nostalgia. Musically, it refers to starting with formless or static improv sketches and later abstracting definable features. Mainly in the case of ongoing solo work, I use collage techniques, semi-modular electronics and re-amping. In forming “definable features” I tend to collage polyrhythms together, that may create appealing interference patterns. Semi modular drones can be played through transducers attached to the piano sound board which creates soundscapes that I interact with in real time and/or record over top of.
