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The field in between – the final concert
The field in between I
Ingar Zach, kettledrum with vibrating speaker
The bass shaker’s guide to the galaxy II
Jennifer Torrence, Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen, and Ingar Zach, Gran Cassas with vibrating speakers
The field in between II
Dans les arbres
Christian Wallumrød, piano
Ivar Grydeland, pedal steel guitar
Xavier Charles, clarinet
Ingar Zach, Gran Cassa with vibrating speakers and percussion
In my last concert, I wanted to display three different outcomes of my artistic research on vibrating speakers. At the same time, I wanted to tie the three episodes together in an overarching narrative with carefully shaped transitions, demonstrating how the vibrating speaker can be a valuable tool for musical creation in different settings. My idea was thus to invite the listener to experience three different works uninterrupted. In the first part, I would introduce the kettledrum and vibrating material created by sine tones and voice. The second part would be a piece for three Gran Cassas and features percussionists Jennifer Torrence and Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen, which would spotlight the frequency 40Hz and pulsations that occur when introducing nearby frequencies in addition to acoustic preparations. The last part would be dedicated to the quartet Dans les arbres.
I decided to postpone the decisions about my solo act till the very last moment. However, I had decided to play the kettledrum, and to use my voice. My previous encounters with Levinsalen had left me with sensations that were engraved in my memory. I realized that I already knew what to play. On the soundcheck, alone the day before the concert, I sat down with my kettledrum in Levinsalen. I felt relief, like everything had fallen into place. There was no need for an extensive rehearsal, and I didn’t want to waste a lot of energy wearing out the material before the concert. I left the instrument after five minutes, feeling prepared.
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At the show, I break off the audience’ pre-show chatter with a sudden opening note. The sound engineer, following my instructions, stops the sound in the PA on this note. I stop, too. I want to listen to the decay of the first note, and the silence after. It seems I have gotten the audience’s attention, and I continue to musick with the hall and the decay on the opening phrases. I know Levinsalen well by now, and, this time, I have adjusted the acoustic panels in the hall in order to obtain maximum reverberation. Maybe I overdid it, but my choice does give the music a color and timbral character that I appreciate.
Melodies and harmonies come and go. Distortions and diffractions of sound bounce off the walls. The vibrations from the membrane enter in my fingertips, like little electric shocks. I almost don’t dare to touch the drum skin because every single touch seems to have a crucial significance. I am afraid of ruining it with an abrupt, uncontrolled movement. The volume seems quite loud from my position, and the unpredictable haptic system is taking me for a ride this evening. The kettledrum seems to anticipate my responses to the vibrating frequencies, and the acoustics are guiding me both physically and musically. It feels like the music takes off as if it was written down in my mind ahead of time. I almost forget to sing, so perplexed am I by the vibrational distortion caused by the triangle’s circular motion on the skin. During the entire solo performance, I feel elevated. The music moves forward without resistance. One section overlaps another, and I feel that my presence in the room is more that of a medium than of a performer. The sustain takes hold of me, and I am there to tame the sound and to be the connective tissue between the sound and the listeners. The performance is over before I realize, and so I begin preparations for the ending of the piece. I tame the animalistic-sounding material in the kettledrum by slacking the cowskin to its limit, and I apply circular motions with a metal ring on the slackened skin, which produce the sound of cardboard being torn up. This is the sound signal that opens the door for Jennifer Torrence and Ane Marthe Sørlien Holen to enter the stage in the transition to “The bass shaker’s guide to the galaxy II.”
The frequency 40 Hz has become our friend by now. The three of us have reworked and re-programmed the frequencies in the Droneo app in rehearsals prior to the concert in order to attain accurate velocities in the frequency beatings. We played the first version of this piece in the concert The Vibrating Drum III, in the Capella Johannea in Oslo. Ane Marthe and Jennifer were born to play this piece. They have the ability to endure and to trust in the slowness of the development of the material. However, the performance has felt too short in the past, and I feel similarly about it this time.
During soundcheck, we discussed the amplification of the three Gran Cassas via the subwoofer. Thanks to Jennifer, we changed the position of the subs to be both closer to and behind us. It was the most logical way of transmitting the power of the vibration of 40 Hz to the audience. In our soundcheck, moving around in the hall while playing 40 Hz, we discovered pockets of frequency drops in the low end, and we were worried that the perception of the piece would suffer if we didn’t amplify the low frequencies in the subwoofer. We did amplify, and the music felt static in the hall, like standing waves. In retrospect, given that “The bass shaker’s guide to the galaxy II” has qualities akin to a sound installation, I wish the audience could have stood up and walked around to experience and perceive the 40 Hz wave from different positions. Perhaps the piece would have been more interesting in a larger space where the frequencies could travel and blend more.
Our acoustic preparations are subtle, almost timid. But an increased activity of acoustic manipulation would probably be perceived as intrusive, and perhaps disrespectful towards the 40 Hz, which should be the main attraction. After approximately 20 minutes, I look at the members in DLA, and they take their positions and start playing without any doubts.
Immediately I find myself in familiar territory. DLA has a long history of more than 15 years of playing together, and this is not the day for going through a musical paradigm shift in the ensemble. Our presence creates a notable shift from the narratives of the first and second acts in the performance. The ceramic bells and the sampled versions of these vibrate through the snare drum, together with Christian’s prepared piano. These sounds are coincident with the birth of the band and are resilient materials of seemingly inexhaustible function. What I find curious about DLA is that we always sound like DLA, no matter the substances injected in the veins of this musical organism. It seems that such an organism is capable of digesting anything, and, moreover, that whatever enters its system will lodge itself in the organism’s memory, becoming part of the performances to follow.
I enjoy the challenge of finding divergent approaches to the vibrating material in DLA. This is not always an easy task, and I have raised my doubts about the vibrating material in the dialogues with DLA in this exposition. Based on my previous misgivings, I have decided to explore a different approach by elaborating on sounds that already exist in the palette of DLA. Prior to the show, I prepared and programmed eight different pitches of sampled ceramic bells in a random, slow cyclical pattern in the app Patterning, to be transmitted by the vibrating speakers. Ultimately, I hoped this method would yield a new shading to DLA’s ceramic timbre, perhaps similar to a layer of static sound material, although this time without drones. Perhaps my challenges in DLA all along have involved the introduction of static drones. It could be that the musical organism, for once, has refused a new entrant.
I don’t perceive the new ceramic material as a radical timbral change, as these sounds already existed in the palette of DLA. The material nevertheless offers another element to the music that wasn’t present before—a layer of microtonal ceramic bells, repeated randomly. My work with the vibrating speakers in this piece is more sparse and subdued than in the two previous parts of the concert. But I believe that this section of the performance, as well as the night as a whole, manifests the potential of the vibrating speakers as flexible instrumental tools.