Intro

For the past 25 years, I have been working as a percussionist in the field of contemporary music—namely, in the convergence between improvised and composed. My musical background is multifaceted, ranging from stints in progressive rock bands and jazz big bands as a teenager to folk music and jazz studies during my conservatory studies. In 1997, my interests crystallized around contemporary experimental music, which thereafter became my professional field. Since then I have worked as a freelance musician with my regular ensembles Dans les arbres, Huntsville, O3 and Mural, and also as a solo performer. As a composer, I have produced commissions for Ensemble Musikfabrik, Quatuor Bozzini, Speak Percussion, Pinquins, Caroline Bergvall, Alessandra Rombolà, Ludus Gravis, and Kenneth Karlsson. For me, the roles of composer and performer are intertwined, as they stem from the same core—the continuous research, exploration, and transformation of sound that begins with my instruments and my practice as a percussionist.

During my career, I have devoted myself to sound production and alternative techniques involving the bass drum or Gran Cassa, which I have mounted horizontally. In this setup, the Gran Cassa becomes a table, a physical base as well as a musical foundation for orchestrating resonating and amplified sounds. My interest in this subject began, in 2001, with my experience of Evan Parker's solo soprano sax performances, in which he employs a circular breathing technique to produce layers of harmonically complex sound. I have long admired his masterful control of all these layers in real time, as well as how he is able to innovate this sonic language time and again. Percussion instruments do not naturally sustain sounds, and, as the years have passed, I have looked increasingly for methods to achieve sustain using mechanical tools. I am curious about the decay of the sound after the attack—the rich, complex, and fading timbre after the impact. How can I sustain that sound and make it last in time for me to interact with it or add other layers of sound over and beneath it? 

To answer this question, I have mounted small battery-driven ventilators in front of gongs to make them sound continuously, resulting in a rich and ever-changing harmonic spectrum. I have put electronic shruti boxes close to the skin of a drum, making objects vibrate on the skin in sympathy with the tones from the shruti. I have bowed Tibetan singing bowls on top of the drum skin which made triangles vibrate in sympathy on the skin. One day, in a gadget shop in Madrid, I discovered the Vibe-Tribe speaker, a Bluetooth speaker with radio that could transmit sound through vibration by placing it on any resonating surface (also known as a vibrating speaker). I bought three, and I started to use them in my setup and in many of my ongoing projects. Ever since, I've been fascinated by the potential of transducers on the membrane (also called the drum skin) to create novel sounds. The transducers allow me to experiment with timbre and duration by coloring and shaping the sustained sounds with acoustic preparations on the vibrating drum skin. At a certain point, I realized the tools I had at hand were not powerful enough, and the technology of my speakers had limitations and flaws in their design, use, and power. I started to look for an ideal user-friendly transducer that could handle a wide frequency spectrum, especially in the low end, where my work with the Gran Cassa occurred. 

My aim for this research project was primarily to develop a tool—the haptic system—to further investigate the practice of using vibrating speakers within modern percussion music. In this artistic research project, I ended up using a combination of two transducers. This pursuit has allowed me to think in various directions by augmenting my solo practice towards a more expressive, orchestral aesthetic, and, in my collaborative practice, by helping me work within a less hierarchical musical environment. My approach takes place outside established Western classical approaches to percussion performance, and, in my view, constitutes a "post-instrumental" approach to performance, which Håkon Stene has defined as a practice that does not involve instruments or techniques associated with general classical percussion (Background).

Many of my partners in this project have worked with me over the long term, and so can speak to my development within this project in the context of my career at large. In speaking with Ivar Grydeland and Jim Denley about my fellowship project, I've gleaned numerous insights into the nature of my evolution as a solo performer and creator of works for percussion, as a member of the ensemble Dans les arbres, and as part of a new constellation with fellow percussionists Etienne Nillesen and Riccado LaForesta (Dialogues). 

A note that, in this project, I have chosen to avoid the terms "improvising" and “composing.” To me, these terms restrict consideration of what can happen between categories. I use Christopher Small's term "musicking"—the notion of that musical performance involves the presence of multiple activities simultaneously —instead of improvising and composing, as I believe it better encapsulates my strategies and methods of creating music in real time.

My reflections in this exposition dwell on my observations of the physical, sonic and human, non-human aspect of musical creation. Some of the prose is interspersed with poetic reflections that I have found helpful in order to achieve a deeper awareness of my relationship with sound. 

This exposition documents a period of growing with a certain approach to practice and performance that has transformed my trajectory as a musician. I have conducted practice-based studies and a concert series (Episodes) where research material has been presented and evaluated, which further have influenced my method of collecting and assembling valid material to produce the Artistic results. My hope is that the work offers some possible new directions, both for myself in my future work and others who might like to work in this way. Ultimately, I am proposing a way of thinking as well as a series of techniques and a tool, defined by a good deal of trial and error and learning to manage the vacillations of artistic development.