I consider the term "live remixing" a bit misleading when describing my artistic practice, since remixing has such strong connotations to the traditional approach of reinterpreting a composition in new ways, yet retaining enough to recognize the original. What I do is perhaps better explained as spontaneous composition and live transduction. I will argue that introducing the term "remixician" helps to bring us a bit closer to the reality of this craft. A musician that uses remixing as their main instrument, thus encompassing the emergent, spontaneous, compositional role that we do in our approach, as well as the interdependency of external sources of music to sculpt from.
Rethinking live remixing
The term 'live remixing' often conjures images of DJs and producers rearranging or manipulating existing tracks in real-time. However, this conventional understanding might be too narrow for the diverse realities of modern performances where musicians blend improvisation with sophisticated digital manipulation. In this setting, live remixing transcends mere rearrangement—it becomes an act of spontaneous creation, where the familiar is deconstructed and reassembled into something entirely new.
The traditional view of remixing suggests a linear process, working within the boundaries of pre-existing material to add a fresh twist. Yet, in a live context, the remixician does not just alter, but fundamentally transforms the sonic material into spontaneous, novel compositions.
This goes beyond adjusting tracks; it involves a direct interaction with sound, where elements are not just remixed, but wholly reinvented.
I want to challenge the reader to consider live remixing not as a derivative form, but as a genre in its own right - a platform for innovation and a showcase of the musician’s ability to navigate and orchestrate complex audio environments dynamically.The remixician, akin to a conductor of frequencies or a sonic alchemist, transforms raw audio data into a rich tapestry of music that is bound neither by the original compositions nor by traditional performance techniques.
By advocating for a broader interpretation of live remixing, we invite a richer, more nuanced appreciation of its potential as a form of artistic expression. This not only enhances the understanding of what remixicians do but also elevates the practice to a form of art that challenges and expands the boundaries of conventional music-making.
Challenging the notion of representation
When I approach my hybrid percussive setup, I do not try to emulate or imitate or create a representation of a drum kit. I am looking for the possibilities beyond what representational thinkers would call "the original". In the same way, I stopped identifying with being a "guitarist", or "drummer" or even "electronic musician". These are all merely roles I might pass through during a performance, depending on what is needed. The Triaxis helps to facilitate this kind of intuitive overview of what is happening in the live remix environment, and gives a sort of navigational compass I can also relate to in terms of being able to name and conceptualize the undercurrents of what drives our emotional responses and intuition during a performance.
Consider the piece "Somnambulance", where when I put my hands on the rim of the Korg Wavedrum, conductive copper threads I have attached connect to a Playtronica circuit board, generating streams of MIDI based on the degree of skin contact. The MIDI signals trigger sample racks of field recordings I have gathered from urban environents over the past years. This subversion plays with the listener's expectations and understanding of sound origins, crafting an auditory layer of augmented reality that transcends traditional acoustic expectations. It is a creative manipulation of sound sources that does not rely on external "Augmented Reality" technology for the listener, but rather on the innovative use of existing musical elements and processes in a recontextualized way of interaction.
Creative subversion
In live remixing, the remixician engages not merely in the reproduction of sound but in its active creation and transformation, challenging the traditional representational thinking in music. Inspired by Gilles Deleuze's critique of representational thought, live remixing can be seen as an embodiment of Deleuze's concepts of difference and becoming. This approach breaks away from the arborescent model of music that seeks to replicate and modify existing tracks, moving towards a rhizomatic process where creation emerges spontaneously and without a predefined hierarchical structure.
Instead of adhering to a linear progression of musical themes or replicating established patterns, the remixician navigates through a fluid landscape of sound, where each performance is an act of becoming. This process, where the identity of sound elements is not predefined, but continuously formed and reformed through dynamic interaction and modulation. Live remixing, therefore, becomes a platform for exploring non-linear soundscapes that defy traditional categorization and allow for unique, unrepeatable musical experiences.
By embracing this Deleuzian approach, live remixing serves as a radical departure from the conventional aims of music production. It challenges the listener's expectations and the performer's creative boundaries, fostering a musical environment where representation gives way to a vibrant experimentation and the perpetual creation of the new. This paradigm shift not only redefines the role of the remixician but also reshapes our understanding of music as an ever-evolving field of artistic expression.
In live remixing, the remixician acts as a sort of perceptual alchemist, challenging and subverting the traditional signifying chain of musical sounds through innovative techniques.
When I utilized Vochlea's Voice-to-MIDI technology on Nils Petter Molvær's trumpet during our performance at Punkt 2020, his melodies refracted into several octaves of piercing synths, where I could "indirectly" remix his ideas without appropriating his trumpet sound.
This augmented auditory reality invites listeners into a more active and exploratory engagement with music. Techniques that disrupt conventional signification have transformative effects on listener perception and experience, challenging traditional expectancy of relating instruments to a specific timbre or sonic quality. By redefining roles within musical creation, the remixician blurs distinctions between drummer, pianist, or vocalist, encouraging a fluid understanding of musical contribution and identity. Such practices not only question the rigid structures of musical roles, can suddenly flip hierarchies of relation, where a female high pitched voice suddenly serves as a menacing bass line in real-time.
For listeners, this blurring of sound origins and traditional roles can inspire a more engaging and introspective listening experience, prompting a deeper questioning and reinterpretation of the sounds they encounter.
The remixician should, in my view, challenge and expand our understanding of music, offering new perspectives on engagement, creation, and the very nature of sound itself.
Transducing the transmodal
Understanding and manipulating audio signals in ways that transcend traditional sensory modalities, is an approach that invites us to perceive audio signals akin to how one might view low-frequency oscillators (LFOs) and envelope curves, enabling dynamic responses and parameter modulations that adapt in real-time to the music.
For example, as the amplitude of Alessandra’s vocals increases, I might design an inverse response in my effects chain to vary how "dry" her voice sounds, introducing an interdependency that deepens the collective auditory experience.
This transductive translation extends further into the physical domain, where contact microphones attached to a wooden cutting board from the kitchen can transform it into an expressive MIDI trigger, or using field recordings as textural, fluid envelopes that drive synthesizers' and control parameters. To capture the movements within anything ranging from the flowing wind, recordings of construction machinery, household appliances to the bustling noise of a cityscape, each becoming a unique instrument in the remixician’s hands.
Such methods exemplify how everyday sounds, when rerouted through imaginative effect chains, can serve not just as mere sound bites, but as integral components of a larger sonic tapestry. By setting thresholds that trigger effects based on volume inputs - like activating saturation, compression, or even freezing audio buffers - live remixing becomes a fertile ground for experimentation.
Training in transmodal perception equips a remixician with the ability to intuit complex relationships that challenge what we expect from instruments and sound sources.
Inter-disciplinary inspiration
In the Triaxis, the ultimate sonic concrescence occurs in the Origo (0,0,0) - where the musical experience transcends the experiential disjunctions of the axes into the most optimal novel moment of experience. Concrescence implies a synthesis or coming together of actualities and potentialities, which thereby come to concretize, and thus form the basic units of the world, which Whitehead termed actual occasions or entities. These occasions, rather than enduring objects, are processes and not "bodies". An actual occasion is formed by the process of concrescence, and the nature of those relations are what Whitehead calls prehensions.
Imagine the X-axis as a field of musical indeterminacies, akin to the quantum wave function - a spectrum of possible beats and notes. Just as quantum particles exist in a state of flux until observed, musical elements await their definitive form. The Y-axis represents the processual choice of observation, measurement, or 'transduction of musical processes' in remixing, where the act itself influences the music's outcome.
We can creatively draw a quantum physics analogy to the measurement collapsing a quantum wave - choosing a particular way to process sound determines the final 'position' of the musical element from a cloud of possibilities.
In this sense, prehensions in the musical domain can be likened to the interactions in quantum mechanics, shaping the definite from the indefinite.
Each remixician's interaction with sound waves can be seen as a 'processual decision' that collapses the music's wave function, crystallizing a plethora of potential rhythms and harmonies into a singular auditory event.