Morten Qvenild: The HyPer(sonal) piano project
Currently in section: Poetics 49
This part describes topics that I find central to my project. The trails describe areas of musical, instrumental and personal movements. The poetics underscore my motivations, the reasons behind the doing. These reflections are the map and the terrain, they determine how I move on the different trails.
On artistic core
interagency
poetics inform instrument
instrument informs poetics
poetics are attitudes
attitudes inform performances
These are hard translations. Different languages. Diverse logics.
Cables. Feelings. Pitches. Timbres. Binary numbers. Sweat. Noises. Melodies. Muscles. Meanings. Programming languages.
I am a part of this web. My way of maneuvering in it shapes the making of music, making of sounds, making of an instrument. These agencies oscillate. Not like the usual chain of command: idea, technical solution, sound. The human subject is not the origin of everything.
ambivalence
‘Authenticity comes from a single faithfulness: that to the ambiguity of experience.’ 50
The wanting to stay put and leaving at the same time. I sense it strongly on many areas.
The ambivalence seems to be a part of who I am.
Me: a mixture of doubts, self-contradictions, emotionality, need for control and need for chaos.
Piano: a stable mechanism. Sturdy. Unlike me. I find this stability somewhat disturbing and compelling at the same time.
Technology: could be stable, but also very unstable, fragile. Unpredictable and difficult to understand.
techne 51
Heidegger´s term. Describes the difference in skills between the bringing-forth in art and in the real world. Using materials instrumentally, techne describes the process and skill of controlling and using materials to obtain specific results. Heidegger suggests that the artist can work in another way, the poietic way. This way brings the material into appearance, not like a means to reach a goal but as a material free to be what it is. He suggests that the artist can create from the oscillation between these two understandings of techne. This implies a tension between a technological and a poetic revealing of a material, a tension with potentials to open up the arts. If we mirror this concept in the theories on distributed cognition, the view that our involvement with technology and materials are interactive, this makes even more sense to me.
Heidegger can be interpreted as technology-skeptical. Technologies are there for human beings to use the world, to keep it at their disposal, and in the end destroy it. He asserts an unfavourable relationship between materials and technology.
The aesthetic revealing of materials is considered by Heidegger as the saving force, a direction with a potential of showing us another way. The arts may have possibilities to do so.
The introduction of artificial intelligence and the capacity of machines to be agile and able to adjust to inputs, suggests a situation where the technologies can adapt to and create material autonomously. Materials are no longer at the artist´s or machine´s disposal, yet they are in dialogue with the agencies of man and machine. Art may emerge from chafing between machines, an oscillation between materials, the machine and the artist. May the relationship between materials, man and her machines become one of dialogue rather that one of mastery?
On composition and rhythm
To say it without saying it and how can I say it? Is there a potential in being unclear? The too obvious outputs tend to lose their impact. The too beautiful chord sequence demands destruction. The strong melody screams for a sound that could fall apart any time. In my world… The coated and hidden content creates doubts, depths and a variation that is closer to the truth as I see it.
baroque
Ornaments. Never-ending details. Harmonies and melodies. The variations in timbre and layers of sound. Ornaments on a simple structure. Fold after fold. Excess. Variety of impacts. Halls of mirrors, new viewpoint, new effect. No modernism. No reduction. No scarcity.
Never stopping.
Rough surface, unpolished, leaking out in all directions, stabbing away, overpowering, clogging the structure.
Now and then the ornaments take over and become the material. The instrument becomes the music. The structure is wiped out. Baroque and beyond. From the collapse new structures arise.
delyrify
I like major chords without numbers. The ones you hear in country and western music. I like melodies. I am a simple boy from the countryside 52.
These parameters are referred to as simple, lyric, poetic, tonal or romantic.
This concept describes a musical setting where lyrical or poetic material are delyrified by abstractions in the processed material. To me this represents a balance in the music, like sweet/sour or silence/sound. The poetic tonal language I like using can be (bitter)sweet, but by using these strategies I feel that the output is balanced and deepened, residing between beauty and danger.
denaturalize
If the piano represent something natural and pure, this project is about denaturalizing it, contaminating it, befouling it, destabilizing and muddling it, placing it in unexpected surroundings.
Take the dynamics out of a normal range. Play electronic sounds through the piano. Dissolve tone and pitch. Distort tone and pitch. Multiply the sound. Dub the sound. Play tonic piano and prepared piano in the same instant. Make the notes longer than physically possible. Make the piano sound like you name it … Layers of sound. Accumulations of sound. Noise. Dust. Dissolve pulse and alter gravity. Echoes without gravity, without pitch. Seasick reverberations. Wobbles. Hiccups. Drift and try to land on both two feet.
instability is human?
Qvenild let the electronics find the way into the grand piano, but there is something more to it than a light-footed effect construction. In one way or another the piano player manages to let the twisted become moving and deeply human 53.
In this review of Personal Piano, the poet Øyvind Vågsnes is describing a main reason for me to apply electronics to the grand piano: suddenly there is an alien sound- substance entering the acoustic world. The role of the piano is challenged. One may think that introducing this sound-world would lead to an alienated acoustic sound; that the piano sound could easily be homeless and the electronic sounds indisposed in these surroundings. I don´t think so. I find that the immanent potentials of these sound-worlds, their strengths and weaknesses and their emotionality are uncovered when put side by side and allowed to interact.
I think that the electronic tool´s ability to destabilize the music is the key to the humanity of this interaction. The piano sound itself is quite obstinate. The electronic tools has the potential of challenging this obstinacy, tearing the sound apart, introducing instability and contingency to different parameters.
)) The simple piano line that could be tiring and one-dimensional when looped for four minutes, is treated and twisted electronically to become a trembling, fragile organism that drives the music forward. At the same time it suggests that the situation is so fragile that it might just dissolve into dust.
When the piano is treated like this, it resembles this life, this body, this nature, rather than suggesting a stability that is not existing.
song lyric 54
Personal distant artificial emotional cold kitschy
2-1-7-o
Where does that cable go?
Where is the point where it really matters?
Where is the point where it hurts the most?
Too heavy, strong, bland, blurry
Where is life in all this?
Why grasp something that wants to slip away?
Why say something that exists beyond being said?
structure/surface
Regular pulses divide time into equal segments, the irregular into unpredictable durations and the stutter is an intermediary category which destabilize the regular.
)) Repeated notes in the piano. Dubbing with an artificial piano sound adding low end to the output. Five layers: 1) While playing I am trying to mimic three different unrelated metronomes playing simultaneously. 2) The sound material from the piano is pitched up and altered (Hadron). 3) The same material is frozen occasionally when I hit a foot pedal (Squarewave Parade Teaspoon), creating a new pulse. 4) The piano is dubbed by an artificial sound that is processed. 5) The piano is dubbed with a prepared piano sound.
Layers 1, 2 and 3 constitute different irregular pulses. The relation between them creates a situation with the attributes of a regular metric, even though the different durations on pulse-level are not equal or fixed. There is also a hierarchy between the different layers, which is deciding the perception of pulse.
I often search for an irregularity in a rhythm that at the same time suggests the regular version of the same rhythm. I find it useful to imagine that the rhythm I am playing shall refer to something regular, have a regular ‘skin’. When the irregular inherit this nod to the regular, I am playing with urges to look for and feel regularity in music, and interesting relations between the listener´s perception and my intended output may occur.
stutter
‘The flow is broken by repetitions, prolongations or abnormal stoppages.’ 56
Stuttering disturbs the pulse. When there is stutter, the regular gravitation towards the next beat is disturbed or broken. The repetitive function of a regular pulse is challenged. Stuttering adds tension between what we expect to hear from a regular pulse and what we really hear. For me, stuttering opens up a new set of timing possibilities when I play. I feel much more free, no longer bound to mathematic subdivisions. The stuttering gives interesting variation to the repetition.
Stuttering disturbs the linearity of the melodic line. When there is stutter, the gravitation towards the next note is disturbed or broken. The self-will of a regular melody is challenged. Stuttering adds tension towards what we expect to hear from a regular melody and what we really hear. For me, stuttering can be poetic, emotional, lyrical, because the stuttering will question the expression, act like a resistor, throw the expression into a relief.
In the HyPer(sonal) Piano there are several electronic memories that can create unrelated rhythmical patterns. The custom made four track recorder (Max) is not related to a master sync tempo, and the tempo on each track can be manually adjusted after recording to deliberately create a situation of non-related timings. The smaller memories like the bug brand delay, the lo-fi loop sampler, the teaspoon or the hexe revolver pedal can create those rhythmical patterns. In addition to these memories that create layered pulse situations, there are processing tools that use pulses as a part of the processing, such as the crystallizer, hadron and LFO wobbler.
The instrument also has processes that utilize steady material. Pre-recorded drum sequences. Delays with a certain tempo. Vibratos with fixed speed. Arpeggiators, low frequency oscillators, tremolos. For every rhythm-conserving process in the instrument, there is at least two that can destabilize rhythm. Granular processing, delays that vary in tempo, vacillating tremolo and vibrato, ring modulation, stuttering effects on percussive sounds. Unsynchronized samples and sound clips. Distortion that generates irregular feedback. Random playback of looped material. Random length of playback. Many rhythmical layers. Augmented, accentuated, stretched, altered. A trail from a clear rhythmical output to a situation of rhythmical ambiguity.
many tempos
A fixed tempo has a gravity pulling towards the next beat, but the complexity of the many tempos stops or stutters the horizontal movement.
When attacks collide at uneven intervals, the movement and gravity of the total rhythmical output is altered.
The situation is trying to ram itself down into the soil. The arrow of time is broken, and we are left with a vertical dance on the spot.
short loops
)) The sounds and the looping here adds an artificial vibe to the rhythmical aspects. Like a broken vinyl-record stuck in the same groove. An opposition to the flow of moving on.
Taking out short parts of musical movement and looping it creates a temporary freeze in the musical pass. I like this way of looping, it generates a new momentum for the movement of the music.
memory #6
12 March 2014, Ghent, Belgium.
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The concert starts.
This week I have been updating my Ableton setup to the latest version running on 64 bit.
I didn´t have enough time to test the stability.
The computer crashes. This happens seven times during this concert. My insecurity escalates for every time. The music I play is based on this system. If I drop it, and play acoustic piano only, it is not my music anymore. This option feels even worse than the crashing.
So I play with my left hand while restarting with my right hand. My left hand is not very virtuosic. Roger and Pål, the other players on stage notices in a split second that something has happened. Insecurity spreads, but they deal with it. They cover for me when I am struggling with this shit… Force quit. Start again. Not working. Restart the whole damn machine, wait, start Ableton. Now it is working. 7 times… This must be the worst situation I have ever been in on a stage. The instrument that I use to present my material for a paying audience is not working… After half an hour I find a configuration that is not crashing. We play the rest of the concert without problems, but we use a long time before the feeling of despair is shaken off.
This situation showed me that the electronics and the piano are no longer separated modules delivering different content. They are one. If one disappears, my music disappears… I am willing to go through a lot to make it work. This willingness implies an ambiguity towards the machines. I have to trust them because they play a major role in my music. I like the insecurity of a complex setup, but complex or unstable work differently on my limbic system. If I don´t trust them to be stable they make me anxious, and I don´t need anxiousness on stage. This leaves me with a choice, a choice to take the instable factors into account, or try to ignore the risk of inexplicable crashes until something really happens. This is not an easy situation, especially not blended in a cocktail with more general nerves set off by the performing situation. But, as far as it goes, I try to be ignorant …
On performance
risk
when something is at stake
the hearing is different
the sweat smells different
there will be turbulence
there will be energy
there will be mistakes
adrenalin is involved
one is exposed
the fall is higher
the tall is taller
the dog barks
there might be fireworks
the body feels different
what is to be trusted?
the instrument takes over
you are not indifferent
no one in that room is indifferent
the instrument is not indifferent
it will not be flawless
the flow will be obstructed
there will be instincts
restlessness
or
a feeling of constantly looking for something to improve
that gaze
looking for something to add
or remove
alter
subdue
constant change
constant sorrow
elasticity
Elasticity is reaction. The opposite is inertia. Elasticity is dancing with the material. The opposite is clinging to it.
My elasticity towards a musical material depends on my control on the instrument, how I rehearsed, how much I rehearsed and how I set up my instrument. Also my overview of the signal routing plays a role. Too much insecurity is stiffening. To little insecurity is dulling. The right balance is when I can be elastic, fast and alive with my material.
Elasticity in musical performance (to me): being able to work with elasticizing pitch, rhythms, chords, details. To swiftly perform what you hear. To be able to go away from the original plan. To go back again. To move away from my material. Time to turn back? Or break loose? Repetition: Elasticity is reaction. The opposite is inertia. Elasticity is dancing with the material. The opposite is clinging to it.
Elastic ideas and technology
An interface designed in relation to the music and the musician could provide more elasticity. The musical ideas must take part in the tool making. What do I want to hear and how can I achieve it technically? And next, how will the technical development change my poetics, what can I achieve technically and how will it sound?
When expanding the technical possibilities, I am also expanding the sonic possibilities. It is easier to make technical changes based on poetic needs. Technical expansion for the sake of technical innovation may not be precise enough for my ideas. Despite this, I sometimes need to plunge in, try new equipment, carry out a programming or download some software based on a hunch, install it and see what happens. The sounds found by this kind of searching may expand the sound-vocabulary in unexpected ways.
accidents
play a vital part 57
small artifacts grow when listened to
listening is nourishment
water is running through my piano
an island emerges from the water
On sound
sound 58
At the ears, sound arrives first. Then tones, chords, structures, melodies, texture, ambience.
Sound is always first.
Searching for sound was also my starting point.
The sound quality must be taken care of first.
sound control
It is important to me that the musician’s role is developed, so that they take in and control the whole process of shaping sound while making sure that other factors, including the actions of technicians, are not placing overly strict conditions of their own on the final sonic result.
)) A melody, played and looped. The processing makes the sound tremble, it sounds fragile. Cymbals. A shaking sound. Another piano enters. Shimmer. Several movements in the back are commenting on the acoustic piano sound playing a solo. Bells out of tune. In the back, a reminiscence of a destroyed piano. Air. Low-end. Gospel chords.
Usually, the concert situation plays out on a stage with a stereo PA-system and a mixing console in the audience-space. In a normal ensemble situation, the sound engineer creates the sound-scenery by altering and leveling sound from each musician. This situation is comparable to the layering of different sounds internally in my instrument. Sometimes, it is beneficial to isolate different layers for the sound engineer to balance, especially when I play in big rooms with little overview of the audience´s listening conditions. With the HyPer(sonal) Piano I deliver a stereo mix with all the processed material, a stereo mix with percussive material, two amplifier signals and sometimes I send sound through small loudspeakers in the resonance case of the piano. This moves much of the spatial and leveling work over to me, but still I need the supervision and the communication with the engineer to secure a balanced output in the audience-space.
The reason for not leaving more work to the sound-engineer is that I want to make sound-decisions an integral part of music making 59. The sound placement in the stereo image, low or high fidelity, presence, distance, levels, stereo width, frequency profile, distortion, noise, pitch… These are musical and not solely technical parameters. Still, I need help to administer my outputs: an engineer making adjustments, giving me feedback if my scenarios aren´t working within this particular room´s technical layout and listening conditions.
To foresee how the sound in my listening position will work in the audience´s part of the room is of the essence. I try to develop this ability by recording and listening back.
The sounds act very differently in different areas of a room, especially amplified sounds. The stage is a separated ‘room’, meaning I will never have complete control over the sound in the audience-space. The sound engineers Daniel Wold and Ingar Hunskaar have been working with me for many years, they know the project, the music and the technical solutions I use. Many solutions have been realized after discussing issues with them. I trust them to administer and comment on my output in the audience space.
feedback
#1: I play and record what I play. I send the recorded sound to loudspeakers sitting on the resonant bottom of the piano. I play on what I have recorded. I record again. What I played on what I had recorded and what I had recorded earlier is recorded again. The material from the past is feeding into the present. Like watching a portrait where the portrayed person is holding the same portrait.
#2: The microphone and the exciter-loudspeakers are directed towards the same surface, the resonance bottom of the piano. When I gain up the microphone and open the loudspeaker, there is feedback instantly. The feedback is recklessly dynamic 60. Without close attention it will escalate and eventually destroy the loudspeaker. With one hand on the frequency shifter, EQ or ring-modulator and another one on the volume control, it is possible to play with the feedback. Making dynamic shapes and gliding tones, it feels like having an argument with the instrument. The feedback has a very strong will, reacts to the room and is unpredictable.
#3: The sound is sent via a separate output to a 2x3 metre grey carpet with built-in led-strips and hundreds of acrylic triangles forming its shape. Before the led-strips, the sound meets an Arduino-board with programming that in different ways relate to the sound it receives. I control which programming state the carpet is using, there are 15 different states available at any time. I have a mirror on stage to make sure I can see the visual results of my playing. The fact that I see it will affect my playing, and the change in my playing will affect the visual result. (See ”lightning mountain” on page 151).
#4: Every room is different. Some are lively and will produce a substantial acoustic reaction to my output. Dampened rooms produce a smaller reaction. The room´s reaction to my output will come back into the instrument feeding the instrument processes and the way I play.
#5: In a setting with other performers, I will inevitably get some of their sound into my processing setup. My sound will also feed into their systems or microphones recording their instruments.
emulsification
In cooking, there is a sauce technique called mounting. Just before serving, cold butter is added under constant whisking to emulsify the water, milk-proteins and fat in the sauce. In a split sauce, this emulsification process has failed.
In the beginning of this project, I struggled getting the piano sound to emulsify with the processed and abstracted sounds. The sounds separated the music. They didn´t seem sonically or poetically connected. A communication in-between the different sound- categories in the music was lacking.
I often let other sound sources into my instrument. I use pre-recorded materials like voices, rhythmical tracks, I sing and I use synthesizers and other electronic sound-generators like the Bug Brand Postcard and the Folktek Sound Field.
The sounds from the outside became the emulsifier needed to make a more united sonic situation with the piano and the electronic processing. The piano sound and the processing still feels like two sound-categories in the music, but the additional sounds are connecting them and strengthening their interferential connection. The processed sound is often harsher and more lo-fi than the piano sound. Other sound sources provided the frequencies needed to fill the gap between the two sound-categories.
humane/human
I want my electronic sounds to be humane. How does humane sound? Compassionate? Real? How does real sound? Warm? Fragile? Approachable? Democratic?
Living organisms inhale and exhale. They are dynamic, vital, steadily changing. They have flaws, outgrowths. Listen to the heartbeats of a newborn baby. You might be afraid that the child has a heart defect, but the variation is nature, it´s human.
I want my electronic sounds to have some kind of natural or human attributes. Notions of wood, metal, bugs, birds, listlessness, anxiety, melancholia, imperfection and fragility. The sounds may be perceived as human because of our associations, cultural references and such. A sound like the Theremin was hardly perceived as human in the 20s, but I believe it is now.
Human and non-human exist side by side in my music creating individual layers, they mirror each other, shedding light at each other, discussing, creating confusion. Like HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. A human voice coming from a robotic red eye. Putting the piano in an artificial scenery takes it out of its jurisdiction. What happens then? Is it challenged, alienated, neglected, illuminated, blacked out, elevated?
On instrument-building
tools
‘You’re telling a story using tools, you’re not using tools to tell a story.’ 61
This quotation cannot be applied to my project, yet it marks a distinct division between two ways of thinking about the instrument´s role in constituting an artwork. I make music using tools, but I also use my instrument (tools) to tell the story (music), to shape it or change it. And the other way around; this influence is omni-directional.
manual labour
I am a fan of the Norwegian poet Hans Børli (1918–1989). He was a writer and forest worker, doing hard manual labour in all kinds of weather, winter and summer, still managing to create a large production of poems and novels. He often memorized new poems while working, writing them down at the weekend when he came home to pen and paper. For Hans Børli, the combination of hard work and writing was ambivalent. He describes it as a division in his mind between living one life for his hands and body, and another one for the dreaming and yearning. He could never completely make up his mind whether this contrastive life was beneficial for the writing or not.
In my opinion, basing an artistic output on a life that holds elements of physical labour is not just a romantic ‘one should suffer to make art’ cliché. The labour does influence the art. Building and constructing instrument setups, soldering, toiling, travelling, repairing, troubleshooting. I own and feel the instrument in a different way now. It has become a part of me through all the labour we have done together.
There is something about Hans Børli’s approach to writing that I like, an approach I suspect is coming out of a life of doing manual labour. He approaches writing as he would approach a tree, with respect yet with precision, confidence and determination. There is a tranquility in his poems that marks a sharp contrast to the anxieties, melancholia and feeling of smallness that is also present. Yet this tranquility is different and more similar to the state of being worn out. I have a hard time seeing this state coming out from an artistic life in which all spare time is used for promotion on social media. I can´t help but thinking that it is the nature of a forest worker to be in physical balance and to know by heart the total exhaustion induced by heavy labour. And I can´t help thinking that this backdrop may ground the artistic process.
I envy those who have physical labour as a major part of their artistic process, like a Terje Isungset molding his ice-instruments for several days before a concert or a Liza Lou in the painstakingly slow process of making her glass-works. Both in a situation where the labour of the process becomes as significant as the work itself.
The HyPer(sonal) Piano project embraces the idea of DIY 62 and the idea of letting manual labour into the project by building cases, carrying equipment, soldering, rigging, packing, driving, promoting, running, selling, accounting. In the live situation I am the first line sound engineer and light technician. In the studio I am the performer, the recording engineer and the mixing assistant. In the garage I am the wood worker and the DIY electronics builder. Now I am trying to be a writer.
The forest worker´s load is for real. Try to cut down a tree, and do the labour needed to get a wood stack ready for the winter. The sweat is for real, the wood is for real, the heat from the burning flame… A physical and mental ownership to the firewood is gained. I try to import this feeling of reality into my project.
memory #7
1230: Leave home. Drive to airport. Check in four pieces of luggage, 30kg, 23kg, 16kg and 11 kg. Pay 370 Kroner for excess luggage. Go through security, take out two computers, three midi controllers, OP-1 synthesizer, one contact microphone, two sound cards. Take off watch and belt. Go through scanner. Bomb check on electronics. Pack down into two pieces of far too big hand luggage. Go to gate. Pray that they won´t stop me at the gate because of my oversized hand luggage.
1530: Take airplane. Get some sleep. Land one hour later. Get picked up by promoter. Go directly to venue.
1730: Start rigging instrument, first all the data cables, then power supplies and finally midi and audio cables. Rig and connect vocal effects. Check amplifier and pedal board. Rig the Lightning Mountain. Find out that one power supply is broken. Send promoter to get one. Set up grand piano microphones and pickup under the grand piano. Start up computer, check audio and midi signals. Assist the house technician in patching.
1900–1945: Sound check, go through all crucial parts of the compositions with the sound engineer, check all vocal presets.
Go through the states of the Lightning Mountain, check threshold volumes for every state. Save presets.
1945: Go to door with CDs and Vinyl. Make poster with prices. Connect iZettle to iPhone, instruct the local staff.
2000: Dinner
2045: Concentrate for a little while
2100: Showtime, 70 minutes concert with the Personal Piano material.
)) A loop of the piano figure, and another loop made by playing in the piano with a bottle neck slide.
The piano comes in, a contrast to the harshness of the loop
Some small sounds, like they withdraw from a harsh world
Playing on the strings with a bottle-neck
Turning Returning too late to come around
Turning returning too far from holy ground
A sample of an omnichord strum plate playing in the background. Still the same elements. Sounds like the piano is whistling.
Instrumental part. A clean piano. The other processed pianos in the background. More whistling. Marxophone samples played backwards.
The bottleneck hits the strings. A synth-bass comes in on the verse. Turning Returning.
Thinner, more artificial voice. Only the vocoder is left. A single note Morse-signal on the piano.
Next song. Drum-machine from an Omnichord. Upright piano sound sample from my living room. An ostinato. The strum plate sound from the omnichord again. A wooden toy with hens picking, making sounds on a round board when you move the toy 63. The stutter effect on the drums are more and more audible. Playing on my daughter’s toy owl for the other percussion sounds. The feedback is coming from the piano through a Fender Twinreverb amplifier. The feedback sounds plays a solo. Stop. A chord is emerging. The ‘noise’ is from the toy owl, it has some cellophane in it.
Double tempo. The backgrounds are the same as the first part. The owl, the drum-machine and so on. Chords establish. Dm – C/E – F – Am – G/H – C. Pad sounds from OP-1. More drum sounds. I am singing through a heavily distorted AutoTune. The singing is in focus. A melodic line is moving around in the stereo field.
Next song. Past. Vocoder saying:
Longing for those days now, why can´t I see ;
that past wasn´t doing good to me…
The music freezes. Piano being echoed in an abstracted sound. The delay effect pedal making bird sounds. Always makes me think of Messiaen. Heavy reverberated drum sounds. Drums from a Casio Sk-10 keyboard. Sounds of me hitting the strings on the piano with a metal item.
A shaken soul in the morning dew.
Gone are the colours you see,
’cause past wasn´t doing good to me…
Depression.
Chorus. The Morse signal from the first song is reassembled.
Next song. The first part is seasick. The singing. A rhythm and a chord structure. A cover version of the Rihanna song ‘we found love’. A small piano solo, quite heavily distorted. Rising intensity of the drums. Bass. Nodding towards the 80s. A synth solo nodding even more.
I just can´t deny.
I just got to let it go.
Dissolving. Smaller. Breaking down the already un-solid ground made for this song.
I remember the intention of making something fragile but still powerful. An opposite to the sense of destruction and dereliction? In the kingdom of kitsch I will be a monster.
Next song. Piano chords with long reverb. Prepared piano sounds with even longer reverb. A toy piano sample. A wobbling effect on the same piano, and a pitched representation of the wobbling effect. A digital sound made with a spectral delay, taking out small pieces of the specter and making a new sound representation from it. It wanders around as a sick little dog. A marching drum comes in. The piano is heavily manipulated to take away the sense of a tempered pitch. This piano is again doubled with a tempered piano. Harry Partch. Singing through the same radio as the drum is coming from. Celesta samples dubbing the melody. Mellotron strings dubbing the piano chords.
A sub bass comes in, manifesting a simple chord progression, playing on the piano strings. Sounds like an autoharp. The piano is also pitched and delayed, which makes for another lighter rhythmical element.
Piano loop, Lo-Fi loop sampler. Same as the first song. Clean piano. E flat A flat.
A distorted piano sound coming from a very small amplifier that runs on battery. Voice.
A -aaaaaa.
Chorus. Piano solo. The loop comes back in.
Wild horses come and set the flare.
Wild horses see the lights disappear.
Wild horses join us way down low.
Wild horses see us through until we go.
Sound of me leaving the piano chair.
Fade out.
2115: Wipe my face. Go to front door. Sell albums. Talk to many nice people.
2130: Listen to next band
2300: Take down instruments and Lightning Mountain. Coil up all cables and power supplies. Pack everything in cases. Carry to car.
2400: Do album sales settlement. Talk to some people.
0100: Go to hotel. Go out to get some food
0200: Sleep.
interconnections
I made this project a messy and complicated one on purpose. All sound signals can be routed to all outputs. The PA system, the guitar amps, the small loudspeakers inside the piano, the sub-woofer under the piano. Different outputs give different sound qualities. Midi signals from the piano keyboard can be routed to all midi devices. Audio from the microphones can go to the digital and the analogue modules at the same time. The processed material goes back into the microphones and are processed once more. Midi messages in the digital system are converted to CV and sent to the analogue section. CV are converted to midi messages and sent to the digital systems.
A broad mantra throughout the technical and musical work has been one of interconnectivity. New and old equipment. Ideas from different musical fields. Sounds that I just found. Sounds that I have kept for years. Unpredictable feedback sounds. Vocals processed through the piano. Inspirations generating sounds. Sounds generating equipment. Equipment generating inspirations generating sounds. Different sonic eras. Intuition and machinery. Serial connections. Parallel connections. Analogue and digital.
Using many standards for control signal transmission. MIDI. CV. USB. OSC. Many choices of sound outputs.
Giving up control over the connections, the sounds, the music, the instrument, oneself.
NOTES:
49 Poetics of music in the form of six lessons, Igor Stravinsky. I read this text at the start of my project. The personal expression, the bold stands, the energy and clarity of these lessons (that were actually written down with the composer Alexis Roland-Manuel as ghostwriter) has stuck with me. They made me think that my change of instrument and sound palette called for a formulation of my poetics; an attempt to write out a framework for the technical-musical interagency. David Borgo´s writing about improvisation and his work with improvisation and technology in the duo KaiBorg have also inspired and informed me in this process. [back]
50 David Shields. Reality Hunger. Vintage Books, 2011. [back]
51 Perspectives gathered from the book Heidegger Reframed by Barbara Bolt. I.B Tauris, 2010. [back]
52 yeah right! [back]
53 Øyvind Vågsnes. Dag og Tid. 10 September 2015 (my translation). [back]
54 Playlist when making dinner 23 September 2015: Wilco – ‘I Am Trying To Break Your Heart’, Robyn – ‘Be Mine’, Joni Mitchell – ‘A Case of You’ (from the Both Sides Now album), José González – ‘Every Age’, Daniel Nordgren – ‘Like There Was a Door’, Beck – ‘Guess I´m Doing Fine’, Annie Lennox – ‘The Saddest Song (I´ve Got)’, Kanye West – ‘Runaway’, Sufjan Stevens – ‘Should Have Known Better’, James Blake – ‘Retrograde’, Radiohead – ‘Paranoid Android’. [back]
55 Hearing the songs ‘Woods’ by Bon Iver and ‘Hide and Seek’ by Imogen Heap, I noticed a strange, subdued and twisted emotionality in their processed vocals. This marked a sharp contrast to the colder vocoder-use in music by Kraftwerk, Herbie Hancock or Daft Punk, to name a few. I like both approaches, but the challenge of combining these approaches was compelling to me. [back]
56 http://www.stutteringhelp.org/faq [back]
57 This approach to mistakes is found is the movement of glitch art, a field where the aestheticization of digital errors, such as artifacts or other ‘bugs, creates the artistic outputs. [back]
58 My approach to sound is coloured by working with the producers Jørgen Træen, Andreas Mjøs and Kåre Vestrheim, all of them considering electronic sound-shaping of acoustic sound an important tool in creating a personal ouput. I have also been moved towards this standpoint by listening to producers like Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno and Nigel Godrich. [back]
59 Jon Hassel, Arve Henriksen, Helge Sten, Fennesz, Maja Ratkje, Tone Åse, Øyvind Brandtsegg, Thomas Strønen, Nils Petter Molvær, Squarepusher, Audun Kleive, Eivind Aarset, Ivar Grydeland and Hilde Marie Holsen are some of the performers in my field working with processing their signals before the sound distribution, and in different ways augmenting or abstracting their source sounds. The members of the band Supersilent, Ståle Storløkken and Helge Sten have used the processing system Kyma for some time, and they use it mainly as a tool in improvising and interplay. John Paul Jones also uses this system for the same purposes in the band Minibus Pimps with Helge Sten. I did a two days workshop recording and discussing Kyma with Ståle Storløkken in May 2014. [back]
60 The harp also has a large resonance case, which makes it similar to the piano. This creates a situation where feedback can be created as a musical element. The harpists Rhodri Davies and Zeena Parkins are both working on electronic and mechanical extensions of this instrument. Davies, especially, uses feedback as a central part of his expression. [back]
61 Taken from an interview with George Lucas. [back]
http://nofilmschool.com/2015/12/charlie-rose-show-george-lucas-interview
62 Do It Yourself [back]
)) The piano resides in several places in the music, because of the different treatments and spatial mix of the original piano sound. This coating decides its presence, distance, directness and emotionality.
Listeners sometimes describe my music as coated, meaning it is difficult to grasp what they see as the most important element, the piano. Often the piano sound is a shadow of itself, not easy to grasp, hidden in other layers of sound. From the visual impression of me playing, I can understand this confusion. There is a conflict between the visual and audible output of my project in the live-situation (and also on the recordings. I state that there is a piano being played, yet it is not always present). For me this conflict holds a potential; the audience sees or imagines a big grand piano, surrounded by cables, blinking lights, computers and boxes. The piano is at the centre, the mothership. Then, when there is sound, the piano is more or less blurred. The conflict appears. The piano is not the centre anymore.
The potential? The fact that the visual info states the piano´s presence, while the sound is on an axis between tonic piano sound and noise, is presenting a dubiousness that I like. The conflict between what you see and what you hear resembles the ambivalence that inhabits my music.
In architecture, a pivotal point occurred when the exterior walls of a building didn´t have to support the whole structure. Introducing steel or concrete columns as building structures in the 18th century, allowed for non-structural walls and surfaces. The introduction of so-called curtain walls opened for a construction technique where structure and surface had independent functions. The columns have a bearing function, and the surface could either reveal these structures or hide them. This allowed for an aesthetic surface function in combination with its other non-structural function of keeping the weather out and the occupants in.
This perspective led me into some experiments of thought:
What if:
- The musical idea is the structure. The instrument creates the surface, shows and filters the structure alongside visual aspects, my gestures, audience and sound production. Sound constitutes the surface, ornamenting of the musical idea. The surfaces opacity decides what parts of the structure we perceive, its clarity and poetic potentials.
Or
- The piano-sound is structure. The processed material makes up the surface. The processing can reveal the structure, illuminate it in different ways, magnify and diminish. The surface can hide structure, alter it, subdue it, make quiet, distort it, destroy it.
And further:
- The ornaments take over. The structure disappears. There is only surface left. Ornaments become structure.
The last scenario here is interesting regarding my project. When the technological extensions of the instrument is capable of taking over, what started out as a detailing and extension of the piano sound has developed beyond a point where the extensions itself can become the instrument, the structure and the musical material. The ornaments become the main thing.
This situation occurs more often now than when I started the project. I notice that I am using the piano less, and the processing modules more actively. A small seed of piano can start long excavations with the electronics. Yet I always know that the piano is there, and I think that this anchor is making me go even further on my electronic outings. This situation occurs because there are two main materials merging in the music: the acoustic sound and the electronic. The acoustic sound is so stable that it is functioning as a safe haven for castaway electronic evolvements. Good or bad? For me, this possibility of retreat is opening for more trust in the playing situation, less anxiety, and a courage to push limits in the electronic domain, seeing how far I can go. From my perspective, this turning of what used to be the ornaments into the main material opens other rooms.
density
The ideas are too many, the urge is too strong. I am to restless. I am a maximalist who wants everything to happen. I have difficulties taking choices, excluding, setting up limitations. I am afraid of missing something if I do. When I talk on the phone, I talk too soon. Before the other person is finished talking, I am interrupting.
I wanted to be a one man band; drums, chords, bass, vocals, loneliness, driving, promoting, rigging, doing sound. I border towards tacky. There is not much silence in this.
melody
I don´t do free, but still I try to be. I don´t do open unbiased improvisation (whatever that is) but I merge the pre-conceived with the present. I gravitate towards melody, and at the same time I want away. The melody is my spokesperson. It can be obnoxious, kitschy and emotional. It can be a druid, telling far too obvious things with capitol letters, important stuff, but heavily simplified. It needs the resistance and the noise of my instrument in order to balance, to be sincere and honest, to go in depth and be nuanced. It has a pull towards melancholia, at the same time it wants away, becoming clear and cold as mountain water. It wants away from what is, but at the same time it is clinging to it.
vocals and influences
Using the voice is functional to what I want to say, and to my poetics. At the same time using the voice evokes a heavy set of references.
I make songs with chords and lyrics. My project is heavily influenced by pop music. Radiohead, Beck, David Bowie, Prince, Annie Lennox, Scott Walker, Bruce Hornsby, Japan, Nick Drake, Abba, Tom Waits, Frank Ocean, Jamie Lidell, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, Air, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Bob Dylan, Daniel Nordgren, Herbie Hancock, Daft Punk, José Gonzales, Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Bon Iver and James Blake, to name a few.
And: the Europe-cassette I bought when I was 4, the Metallica (80s) and Judas Priest albums I stole from my brother, the Beatles vinyl that I listened to again and again, Phil Collins, the blues-concerts that I went to with my brother on guitar, my other brother playing drums in a pop-band. The big band, the Dixieland-band and the ‘The Doors’ cover-band that I played in when I was in my teens.
I studied jazz, learned scales and chords with many numbers. Played too fast and never too slow. Misha Alperin introduced me to a big array of classical piano music and folk music, and I met with Jørgen Munkeby and his hangups on Lutoslawski, Messiaen and Ligeti. I met Torgrim Sollid and his surrealist mind. Paul Bley and Svein Finnerud trio. Jon Eberson and his enthusiastic approach to everything. Jaga Jazzist, 10 different pairs of ears onto the alternative music scene, prog-rock, big ensembles like Oslo 13, Tortoise. I played with Susanna Wallumrød, establishing a connection between my sounds and her voice that I was totally submerged in for many years. Solveig Slettahjell, who wanted to play very slowly. Pål Hausken and Roger Arntzen, whose intuition is now mirroring mine after 14 years of playing together.
These diverse meetings blurred my preferences. They made me question them, address other issues with them and see them from other angles. I search for a way to merge the (for me attractive) formal aspects and contents of ‘pop’ with my other inspirations, the noise music, Glenn Gould, the Messiaen, the Schumann lieder, the improvisation scene, the sound-art scene. Other inputs moved me to a personal standpoint where I have a strong relation to the voice, the melody and the lyric, yet I also have a strong urge to question, mask and destroy the directness of this medium. It came natural to me as a non-singer to start altering the sound of my own voice, making it more artificial, less direct.
I have tried to move the vocals away from directness towards the ambivalent, distanced and layered nature of an instrumental expression. The vocals also depict my ambivalence.
I have used several vocal processing techniques in the studio making the Personal Piano album 55. Hardware: Roland SVC-350 vocoder, Electroharmonix Voice Box. Software: Antares Auto Tune, Native instrument The Mouth and SpeakerPhone.
When realizing this material in concert, I use several programmed presets in a TC Helicon Voicelive 2, receiving midi signals from the Moog Pianobar.
a regular skin
#1
A re-presentation of material in a delayed and abstracted sound allows me to see other sides of my original material.
#2
The sound of processed material affects register choices and vice versa. This is possible because audio and midi is feeding the processing with information simultaneously.
#3
Feedback is generated from within the processing system. These potential sounds arising from the physical/technical attributes of the instrument are difficult to control.
#4
Computer crash making a temporary stop in the musical development of the pass and a drop in quality.
#5
The possibility of playing loud makes me want to play loud.