Navigations
Navigations is a piece where I play my viola using a pair of transducers. The viola is placed on a table in front of me, with one transducer attached to the bottom of the body of the instrument, and the other transducer left free, to be held by hand on various parts of the viola. The piece emerges in a loose set of steps, related to a set of patches played by supercollider into the viola, and a fixed media recording played at the end of the piece.
The score of the piece is a series of brief instructions written into the Supercollider file containing the code for the various patches. The openness of this score, more of a roadmap, is important to the piece. In Navigations I want to have the sense that I am exploring my instrument like it is its own space. Having a small set of musical landmarks to arrive at gives me the freedom decide how I get to them, and as a result the piece has changed every time I play it. The vagueness here gives Navigationsa sort of life of its own, some changes made in performances that work well I will repeat again in later versions, but no changes are baked into the score. Each landmark written in the score helps me to arrive in a particular musical situation, with the transducer (or bow) located in a particular place on the instrument, the transducers playing a particular patch from the Supercollider file, and a vague instruction like ‘Explore instrument with FM’.This gives me a form I can drift through and explore. The way that I move from one destination to another with the transducer on the instrument is open.
This piece was directly inspired by elements of my improvisation practice, two techniques that I employ while improvising. The first is to change my physical relationship with my instrument – moving it from my shoulder, to playing pizzicato in my lap like a mandolin, or performing on it vertically between my legs like a cello. There’s a kind of proprioceptive comfort in the familiarity of the standard position of the instrument, and interrupting that familiarity leads me to make different decisions and find different sounds. The second is to choose an arbitrary cue – for example, listening for another member of the ensemble who is only playing occasional notes, and only responding to them, turning my own sounds into a sort of echo for somebody else.
The instructions for Navigations written in comments in the Supercollider code. Descriptions for each of these moments are to the right.
//clicks - one minute
The piece opens with low frequency pulses, running through bandpass filters into the transducer on the back of the instrument. In a quiet space, one can hear the decay of the strings after the impact of the clicks. This continues for a minute and is the only time in the piece where I use an external timer.
//Explore instrument with FM
FM refers to a short pattern which includes some FM synthesis, a series of bell like sounds which start strong and fade out slowly. These sounds come out of the handheld transducer, which I begin by placing on the lower bout of the instrument, or one of the F holes. Each time I play back this pattern, I move the transducer slightly, finding different sonorities within the instrument.
//Explore strings with FM, transition into Saw
Eventually, I place the transducer on the strings, where we can hear the way that the impacts of the vibrations of the transducer rattle against each string. I will usually take time for us to hear the sound of the FM pattern playing through each string while the transducer is stationary, and then through each string while moving the transducer up and down the string. At the end of this, I eventually start another pattern – made up of sawtooth waves playing the same frequencies as the re-tuned open strings running through bandpass filters at different frequencies.
//Bring in Pulses
I engage a regular, low pulse pattern that plays through the transducer on the bottom of the instrument throughout the next passages
//Rhythmic saw bits, slowly incorporate pizz and bow
The saw wave sounds have interesting qualities when they are played back onto the strings of the viola. By muting different strings with my fingers, so that the vibrations coming from the transducer can’t reach the bridge through that string, I can operate the viola as a sort of filter – each string only carrying a part of the frequency spectrum being played through them by the transducer. ‘rhythmic’ refers to a way in which I mute the strings rhythmically, creating a groove against the pulse playing through the transducer on the bottom of the instrument.
//switch to saw 2, continue
A similar sawtooth pattern with slightly different harmonies, keeping the same sonic texture in a slightly expanded harmonic world
//turn off pulses, turn on clicks, start QT player
Another simple change in what patterns are playing. The QT player is playing back an audio file through both transducers. The contents of this file are discussed bellow.
//Phase out saw 2
The sawtooth waves fade out
//listen to clicks and QT player, eventually joining in
This ending section of Navigations involves playing back an audio file through both transducers. This recording was made using a recursive process; I would record a short improvisation using vertical strikes of the bow against the strings, then record another improvisation while playing that recording back through my instrument, responding to my previous improvisation as if we were performing a duet. I repeated this process several times until the recording had a mix of degraded bow hits and subtle built-up feedback. To end the piece, I perform another iteration of this recursive process, improvising in response to the many recordings of myself improvising on top of a previous improvisation. In both the recursive recordings, and this section in performance, I apply a simple rule that I hit the strings with the bow every time I hear myself making the same sound in the recording playing through the viola. This means that the events come in ‘clumps’ of bow-hits, with each impact having a slightly different level of degradation from the recursive recording process.